The tables were turned on CNN media critic Howard Kurtz on Sunday when he submitted to being grilled by two fellow media critics on his own show over a series of mistakes including false claims about a gay NBC player. The Daily Beast announced last week that it had a retracted a column about NBA…
Conservatives rally behind MSM’s Howard Kurtz
You would expect Howard Kurtz’ departure from the Daily Beast to be fodder for conservative critics of the liberal mainstream media, but probably not in this way.The problem they seem have with the incident is not that Kurtz falsely accused openly-gay NBA player Jason Collins of concealing his engagement to a woman, or that he spread himself too thin and let the quality of his work suffer, but that the Daily Beast fired Kurtz for it. Here’s popular conservative blogger Ace of Spades, spelling out what many saw as a double standard:Clearly Kurtz erred, and rather dumbly. But he does this a lot, and no one’s had a problem with it in the past. Why now? I think it’s pretty obvious — Jason Collins is now the Gay Black Sandra Fluke, and therefore now An Hero, and the Left protects its heroes.And John Nolte of Breitbart News:Kurtz’s sin was making this error with a sacred cow. Had he made EXACT same error with a Palin or Bachmann, media & Beast woulda shrugged. — John Nolte(@NolteNC) May 2, 2013Continue Reading… … Read More
“Where Islam meets America”: the making of Zaytuna College
Light without Fire: The Making of America’s First Muslim Collegeby Scott KorbBeacon Press, 2013 What inspired you to write Light Without Fire? In the wake of the Fort Hood mass shooting by Army Medical Corps officer Nadil Malik Hasan, Forbes published an essay under the headline “Going Muslim,” written by Tunku Varadarajan, who today often writes for The Daily Beast. At the time, Varadarajan was working at NYU, where I teach writing courses, often about religion. The coinage he explained this way:“This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American—a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood—discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans.”Continue Reading… … Read More
Anonymous on Rehtaeh Parsons: We couldn’t turn away a request for justice
In a Friday interview, an organizer of #OpJustice4Rehtaeh said that hacker collective Anonymous got involved in the Rehtaeh Parsons rape case after people in Nova Scotia asked for their help, explaining: “Could you turn them away?”As the Daily Beast reports, Anonymous has confirmed the identities of two of the four alleged suspects in the Canada rape case, but has no plans to move forward until they can verify their information: Anonymous got involved because people in Nova Scotia “are coming to us and asking for help. Could you turn them away?” [Anonymous source] dbcoopa says. They quickly confirmed, via pictures and the multitude of reports coming in from “several sources near Halifax,” the identity of two of the suspects. One of them is widely known in Cole Harbour, dbcoopa says, “because he is easily recognizable in a photograph showing him raping the victim while she is visibly ill… why the RCMP decided these photographs aren’t evidence of rape is beyond us.” Dbcoopa declined to say who is providing Anonymous information, but he did say the hackers have been told the rape took place on the two suspects’ property. As that’s “unconfirmed,” though, it isn’t part of what the hackers are threatening to release. As for the other two boys, “all we have is hearsay,” dbcoopa tells The Daily Beast. “We won’t be moving forward with unverified information.” The collective is waiting to release any names, but, as dbcoopa told the Daily Beast: “We’ve received the same list of names from dozens of people already. It’s only a matter of time before they are doxed [released].” Continue Reading… … Read More
Bitcoin’s crazy day
When Salon published my story “A Libertarian Nightmare: Bitcoin Meets Big Government,” less than two weeks ago, the value of a single bitcoin in U.S. dollars hit an all-time record of $72. On Wednesday morning, bitcoins were trading at $147, and press coverage of the “cryptocurrency” had risen in parallel.You might be wondering why people are making Bitcoin jokes in your Twitter stream. Simple: when a unit of currency rises in value from $13 in January to $147 in April we are witnessing the very definition of a speculative bubble. And when that currency is the preferred denomination for libertarian hackers who believe passionately that they have finally found a tool that will allow them to “starve the beast” of big government, well, it’s hard to resist rubbernecking.Continue Reading… … Read More
Tea Party group boycotting Fox News for becoming ‘too liberal’
A number of Tea Party activists are turning their back on Fox News, claiming the news network is becoming too liberal. According to The Daily Beast, disgruntled conservatives are boycotting the right-leaning news network, their second such action. “Particularly after the election, Fox keeps turning…
