‘This Is Shocking’: Some Democrats Demand CNN Apologize, Denounce Alleged ‘Islamaphobia’ Made Against Ilhan Omar https://t.co/PkDdBuwt6f via @dailycaller — Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 16, 2024 It is shocking! I haven’t been as shocked since Claude Rains discovered gambling at Rick’s Cafe. I think Democrats really do believe that the role of corporate media in general and CNN in particular is to serve as a public relations arm of the Democratic party. A journalist taking an adversarial position vis-a-vis a Democratic representative should not be allowed to have a job. What CNN commentator Scott Jennings said is that Ilhan Omar is a “public relations agent for Hamas living in the United States Congress.” To me, that’s a pretty good one-liner, no better or worse than political barbs I read every day. All the people that I see complaining about the remark are people who’ve called Donald Trump Hitler, Satan, a fascist,… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Muslims
White Rural Rage?
There’s a new book out called White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. I haven’t read it but it did give me an idea for a fun drinking game. Every time you hear the phrase “threat to democracy” or a variant thereof between now and the presidential election, you take a drink. The downside is you’ll be dead long before November and you’ll never find out who gets elected. The authors of the book were interviewed on MSNBC this past week. One of the authors, Tom Schaller, said this: “First of all, [white rural voters] are the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay demographic in the country. Second, they’re the most conspiracist group: QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, Covid denialism and scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism. Third: anti-democratic sentiments. They don’t believe in an independent press, free speech, they’re most likely to say the president should be able to act… Read more →
See You in Hell, Violent Idiots
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals! I was reading about the shootings that occurred in Atlanta last Tuesday. The author says, “Eight people were murdered. Six of them were Asian-American women. It seems impossible to feel this as anything other than anti-Asian and misogynistic violence.” Here’s a tip: Whenever someone prefaces an opinion by saying “it’s impossible to feel differently about this than the way I feel about it,” the speaker is full of shit. State your case. Hit me with some evidence. If the shooter had opened fire in a supermarket like the violent idiot in Boulder, he could have killed anyone he wanted to. Had he killed mostly Asian women, then I’d say you’ve got a good case for anti-Asian, misogynistic violence. But the guy in Atlanta shot up massage parlors. He blamed them for turning him into… Read more →
How You Should Think Of Me
A disciple came to Maruf Kharki and said: “I have been talking to people about you. Jews claim that you are a Jew; Christians revere you as one of their own saints; Muslims insist that you are the greatest of all Muslims.” Maruf answered: “This is what humanity says in Baghdad. When I was in Jerusalem, Jews said that I was a Christian, Muslims that I was a Jew, and Christians that I was a Muslim.” “What must we think of you, then?” the man said. “Some do not understand me and they revere me. Others do not either, so they revile me. That is what I have come to say. You should think of me as one who has said this.” — The Way of the Sufi Read more →
Liberalism and the Wrath of the Privileged Whites
The largely white and affluent solid liberals are notionally egalitarian and opposed to white privilege, but they include many of the most privileged whites in America. . . . Millions of working-class whites felt that Obama was talking about them, too, when he said, “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America—there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” And many of those same Americans knew that Hillary Clinton was talking about them when she ranted about the “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it” deplorables. — Pete Spiliakos | First Things Read more →
Cognitive Dissonance on Muslims
How are these two ideas about Islam and Muslims, seemingly held simultaneously by a lot of people, not completely incompatible with each other: Islam is a religion of peace and Muslims are peaceful folks (e.g., Hillary Clinton: “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.”) We must be careful not to offend Muslims because if we do, they will kill us (e.g., Hillary Clinton: “They are going out to people showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists.”) What am I missing? Read more →
Joyce Carol Oates Gets Slammed
EppsNet stands behind Joyce Carol Oates in this Twitstorm, in opposition to those who think that while raping women may be a bad thing, what’s really deplorable is freedom of thought and questioning theocracy. In solidarity, we publish a couple of previously unseen (because they’re terrible) photos of the two of us taken with Mark Twain in the Doe Library at UC Berkeley. Read more →
Demonizing Bogeymen
From Salon, before the bombers were identified, captured and/or killed: Shame on everyone who assumed that the bombers were Muslims from a foreign land! Wait — what? They were Muslims from a foreign land? OK, never mind. Calling out “far-right extremists” for “demonizing bogeymen” is either hilariously ironic or depressingly symptomatic of American decline. Since Salon is not known for its satire, I have to go with the latter. Read more →
Pleonasm of the Day: Offended Muslims
ple·o·nasm, noun the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy. an instance of this, as free gift or true fact. My fellow Americans — U.S. embassies in Egypt, Libya and Yemen have been attacked by Muslims offended by a YouTube video. “Offended Muslims” — there’s a pleonasm for you! The embassy in Egypt, hoping to pacify the attackers, issued a statement opposing “continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.” DISAGREE! We should be APPLAUDING efforts to offend religious believers. We should be STEPPING UP efforts to offend religious believers. My friends and I risked everything — including our lives, that’s how important it was to us — to ensure that Americans could speak their minds without interference from government. Religion is all horseshit anyway. There’s no God. There’s no… Read more →