Bill O’Reilly’s “Watters World” segment last night encapsulated perfectly much of what’s wrong with Fox News. Instead of doing any real investigating or even explaining to viewers why Pakistan has arrested and convicted the doctor who helped the U.S. kill Osama Bin Laden, O’Reilly sent producer Jesse Watters to interview a number of ambush interviews with Pakistanis. Then, after a number of them supported the arrest, Juliet Huddy came on to fan the flames of ignorant hatred by suggesting that they should be racially profiled as terrorists.
“Why is (New York Police Commissioner) Ray Kelly spending money on our officers going over to Newark… send ‘em out to follow Jesse Watters! Some of these people really concern me,” Huddy said.
The New York Times did do the reporting and found that the arrest may have had little or nothing to do with Bin Laden, though it's by no means clear. But, apparently, putting hard news over sensationalism is only for the liberal media.
Video via Mediaite.
There’s a YouTube video of “The Most Beautiful People of Pakistan” (at www.youtube.com /watch?v=2iokTP05Cco ;hopefully, the space before the “/” disabled the link). Even though I only watched 2 minutes of the 5-minute long clip, I have to admit many of the people in the piece don’t look all that different from many Latinos or even Kardashian-Americans (and quite a few could even pass as “good ol’ white ’Murkins”). And it only took me a few minutes to find that link (I started off with a search for “pakistan” then narrowed it to “people of pakistan”; the video was the 7th item in that search).
Now, of course, what was obviously ignored in all the anti-Pakistani ranting and raving is the fact that the main reason the doctor was arrested was because of RIGHT-WING Pakistani government corruption. Most of the Pakistani military supported bin Laden (which was the main reason that bin Laden was able to live in Pakistan so comfortably) and most of the Pakistani government leadership are concerned about keeping the “common people” under control—and the easiest way of doing that is to allow Islamist groups to have limited amounts of power at the local level, especially in the “tribal areas” along the border with Afghanistan. The hardcore Islamist groups don’t really have as much power in the rest of Pakistan (where they’re largely limited to social work but they’re also tempered by the larger societal framework—young people in the big cities, even in the poorest neighborhoods, aren’t as ready to abandon the things they like about “Western” culture simply in the name of “Islamic purity”*).
And let us not forget that, prior to the Taliban’s collapse following the US attack on Afghanistan, Pakistan was one of only 3 countries that not only recognized but also financially supported the Taliban regime (the other two were Saudi Arabia and the UAE—maybe the people of those two countries should also be racially profiled; whoops, FoxNoise can’t suggest that since one of the network’s principal investors is from Saudi Arabia—never mind, nothing to see here). And the Pakistani government has somewhat resented American interference in its foreign affairs; Pakistan had to be coerced into rescinding its recognition so the US could overfly the country to launch attacks on Afghanistan—the US didn’t really have any real access from the north because we didn’t have any bases set up in the the old Soviet -stans at the time (those came during the buildup and were planned to be little more than refueling stations**) and, for obvious reasons, the US couldn’t attack from Afghanistan’s west.
Of course, if FoxNoise’s favorite president—good ol’ Dumbya—hadn’t decided that he just wasn’t all that interested in capturing bin Laden after 2002, this whole tirade against Pakistan’s arrest and conviction would be for naught.
*(Sort of reminiscent of the old post-WWI song, “How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree?”)
**(A bit ironically, some of those bases are in countries which are run by men just as ruthless as the Taliban—they just weren’t playing host to Osama which allowed them to be given “ally” status.)