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What’s wrong with CNN? [updated]

I have problems with CNN’s news coverage, but occasionally they do some things that really bother me. On American Morning, there was a story (between 9:50 AM and 10:00 AM) about the US Postal Service pulling it’s sponsorship of Lance Armstrong because an audit revealed they weren’t getting enough of a return on the investment. Jack Cafferty (sp?) says it’s because USPS is going to spend more time on “those Islamic stamp.” What stamps? What a non-sequitur! Was he making a cheap and acceptable shot at Muslims? Then he’s doing a segment where he solicits feedback on a topic, in…

Invoking Spinoza

Cornell West has a brave op-ed piece on the moral disaster that is the Middle East: As we witness another sad chapter in the Middle East — the loss of precious human beings, the presence of deep hatred and revenge, and the absence of Socratic questioning and empathy for all — the spirit of Spinoza haunts us. Where are the courageous thinkers who ask the hard questions that shatter our simplistic and sentimental frameworks of pure Israeli heroes and impure Arab villains (or vice versa) in the conflict? Is it possible for Jews to reject the ugly Israeli subjugation of…

Eating Your Own

In the last month three articles have come out regarding the Muslim attack on Islamist ideologues. Chris Dickey came out in Newsweek with a few good examples in the Muslim majority world. My two (minor) gripes are that he didn’t mention the stuff happening here in the US, for example, that’s been going on much longer, and the gates of ijtihad never closed for the Shi’ah, so the debate is very different. Lawrence Wright has a wonderful piece in The New Yorker that highlights the nuances involved in the ideological dispute happening in AQ now. Most importantly what emerges is…