Why the Shock? Atlas Upset Over Negative Coverage

Uh oh, Pamela Geller is putting on a beautiful show of crocodile tears and any other kind she thinks will help her out after being criticized by The National Post for her campaign to buy a headstone for the murdered teenager Aqsa Parvez. Apparently the idea of her being called an "anti-Muslim maniac" doesn't sit well with her for some reason, despite her own blog. What did Selley actually say?:

Because the family is Muslim, and because Aqsa fought bitterly with them over her adopting a more Western lifestyle—most notably refusing to wear a hijab—some have suggested this was, as Toronto Life put it, the city’s “first honour killing.” Her remains currently lie beneath a simple steel plate bearing the number 774, and this anonymity understandably dismays many of her friends. But as teenagers of limited means, they haven’t been in much of a position to do anything about it.

Enter the blogosphere.

As the Toronto Sun’s Joe Warmington reported last week, the online campaign to properly memorialize Aqsa has been led by one Pamela Geller, proprietor of the blog Atlas Shrugs, with support from other prominent right-wing bloggers on both sides of the border. It hasn’t been going so well. Geller raised more than $4,000 US for a headstone—it was to read, “Loved, Remembered, Free”—but apparently you can’t just plunk down whatever you want atop somebody else’s daughter’s grave.

Warmington, Geller et al profess bafflement at all this, the former suggesting last week that “the politically correct police seem to be winning out.” I have another theory. I think the cemetery and arboretum managers typed Geller’s name into Google, backed slowly away from their computers and decided they weren’t touching this thing with a ten-foot pole. A wise choice, I’d say; in my non-professional opinion, she's at least a few chickpeas short of a falafel.

She seems to believe, just for example, that the presidency of Barack Obama—whom she refers to, variously, as “Obambi,” “B. Hussein” and “the Jihadists’ President”—is the result of a calculated infiltration of the U.S. government by radical Muslims. In December, when Obama advisors indicated he was considering delivering a foreign policy speech in an Islamic capital, she declared “America will be unrecognizable after Hussein’s first and last term (if we live through it).” She does not think highly enough of Muslims to expunge words such as “raghead” from her comment threads. She reacted to a particularly gruesome report of an honour killing last year in Pakistan, in which three teenage girls were apparently buried alive, as follows (her italics): “The bodies of the five women … were desecrated by the wild animals. This is Islam. … I have utter contempt for any human being who will not call this death cult what it really is. Pure evil. The horror.”

A decent summation, and one that would have taken the reporter about 5 minutes to discover, which hardly makes his conclusion surprising:

I do know that as an anti-Muslim maniac, Geller makes a very poor spokeswoman for the cause, and that it’s no help to anyone to pretend, as Warmington did, that her motives are pure.

(emphasis mine)

As usual lately with Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer (along with some of her loyal readers) rides to the rescue, leaving this gem for her to gush over in the Post's comments:

by Robert Spencer
Feb 19 2009
10:32 PM

To call Pamela Geller an "anti-Muslim maniac," and to dismiss her noble effort to stand up against honor killing and memorialize one of its victims, and to do so over the bones of Aqsa Parvez, is the bitterest irony of all.

So why would Geller want to post on this critique of herself and shine the spotlight on it all? The usual reason, she thinks she's right:

Calling me an “anti-Muslim maniac” over the bones of Aqsa Parvez is the bitterest irony of all

Have you seen this? It is a disgusting pack of lies. This dhimmi tool, Chris Selley at The National Post, did a hatchet job on yours truly. No good deed goes unpunished, especially by a witless asshat who does nothing to help. Leftists have no conscience. He piles on lie after lie to discredit me and my motives.

My motive? To honor this girl. But what is this vulture's motive in smearing me? My readers and I raised funds for a gravestone. Period.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah, you "dhimmi tool", Geller's motives and self are obviously sweetness and purity as we've seen by her reaction. She proceeds to pick through the article trying to refute reporter Selley's commentary:

"Somebody else's daughter's grave" -- the murderer's daughter's grave. Selley stands with the murderers.

Falafel? Anti-semitic too, eh, Chris?

What's his gripe? That I report news that this coward won't? What has Selley done to fight the misogyny in Islam? What has Selley done to fight Islamic supremacism?

True. The man is President a month - and the country's economic and foreign policy is unrecognizable.

She does not think highly enough of Muslims to expunge words such as “raghead” from her comment threads.

This is a lie.

"Anti-semitic too?" Pamela, are you actually asking....?!?.....never mind....

Selley:

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the foregoing, she also advocates banning all Muslim immigration to the United States. Her most prominent Canadian blogging supporter, who calls Arabs “violent retards,” advocates the same in Canada. The irony is overwhelming. The people leading the charge to memorialize the purported victim of Toronto’s first honour killing would have preferred she grow up in Pakistan....

(emphasis mine)

Geller:

I have never called Arabs "violent retards" - why is he attributing this to me? "The people leading the charge" care deeply about women who want to escape oppression and brutality. What's your excuse, Selley? Who's paying you, Selley? Who'd you sell out to, Selley?

Uh, he didn't say you did, Pamela, he attributed that quite to someone else (Mark Steyn perhaps?). Anyone seeing where the "maniac" label came from here? Doesn't that last statement seem just a tad bit paranoid to anyone else?

Truth is the new enemy.

Shame on you, Selley.

The Atlas Shrugs slant on the truth is the new enemy? Why Pamela, I rather agree with you! Now let's just wait and see what Little Green Footballs will do with this story....LOL.



UPDATE: We have an update thanks to Jeppo in the comments here. The Canadian blogger was not Mark Steyn, as I had thought, who calls Arabs "violent retards, but a blogger (Steyn has a site with published mail, not a blog) named Kathy Shaidle who is similarly outraged by Selleys' fine reportage. In this case, Shaidle is outraged that Selley didn't actually name her in his piece as the person finding Arabs to be "violent retards" as well as being a supporter of Geller's. So, who's the retard here?:

Here's my email to the National Post:

Dear Ms. McParland,

RE: Chris Selley's post yesterday regarding Aqsa Parvez and Pamela Geller:

The commenters have already done a fine job castigating Mr. Selley for his perceived sins.

I only wish to add that, the next time Mr. Selley and your newspaper decide to call me out in public, I request that you spell out my name, the name of my blog, and give me a link.

I realize that the National Post and other newspapers make what's left of their revenue by ripping off bloggers, but the least you can do is give us credit.

So:

My name is Kathy Shaidle.
My blog is FiveFeetOfFury.com
http://www.FiveFeetOfFury.com

And I have indeed called Arabs "violent retards" on my blog.

That's because they insist upon behaving in a violent and retarded manner on a seemingly daily basis! Oddly enough!

Of course, being a knee jerk liberal who wants to hang onto his precious Big Time Media Job, Mr. Selley doesn't have the courage to speak his mind.

Or maybe he does.

Maybe Mr. Selley, and the editors at the National Post, ACTUALLY BELIEVE that my calling Arabs "violent retards" a handful of times during my nine years of blogging is WORSE than the violent deeds -- mutilation, murder, assorted mayhem all perpetrated in the name of Islam -- which prompted my Seventh Grade name calling.

If so, you've all got bigger problems than declining circulation.

Naturally, because I follow the rules, I will be linking to Mr. Selley's post on my blog this morning.

See?
http://www.fivefeetoffury.com/:entry:fivefeet-2009-02-20-0005/

If you notice thousands of extra visitors to Full Comment today than you'd otherwise have, that'd be me.

--
Kathy Shaidle
http://www.FiveFeetOfFury.com
http://www.twitter.com/kshaidle


"Kathy Shaidle is one of the great virtuoso polemicists of our day..."
-- from MARK STEYN's intro to Kathy's new book "The Tyranny of Nice"
http://www.TheTyrannyOfNice.com

(emphasis again mine)

What was I saying about the shock that these women are shocked at this coverage? This isn't an "I told you so" situation, but a squarely "I thought you knew!" one. Seriously, how do these women not know that this is how they are regarded by most of the people who even know who they are? Yes, Virginia, there are "anti-Muslim maniacs" out there. Surprise! It's one of you!