Punishing Agitators Depends on Who’s Being Agitated
Miss America contestant misses out over PC remarks.
Last night’s Miss America pageant won’t only be remembered for its unfortunate ending but also for its political correctness run amok. Miss Puerto Rico Destiny Velez missed out on the pageant entirely after being disqualified for taking filmmaker Michael Moore to task on the issue of Islamic sympathizing. Here are a few of the remarks via Twitter that landed her in hot water:
“All [that] Muslims have done is provided oil & terrorize this country & many others!”
“There’s NO comparison between Jews, Christians & Muslims. Jews nor Christians have terrorizing agendas in their sacred books.”
“[The] Islamic god is NOT the same God of the Christians & the Jews.”
“All they do is build their mosques, feel offended by American values and terrorize innocent Americans…”
You can read all of them here. To be clear, Ms. Velez is over-generalizing — not all Muslims disrespect Western values — but she has a point. And pageant officials levied an embargo before she had an opportunity to take her opinions to the main stage. According to a statement: “[T]he Miss Puerto Rico Organization feels that her words do not represent the integrity and esteem of our program. Miss Velez’s actions were in contradiction to the organization, and therefore as a consequence of her actions, she has been suspended indefinitely.”
Oh, the horror. To refresh your memory, here are some unflattering remarks Democrats have made — and gotten away with — talking about conservatives:
“Syed Farook joins long list of murderous psychos enabled by NRA’s sick gun jihad against America in the name of profit.” —NY Daily News
“You cannot negotiate when they take hostages and when they extort, period.” —Sen. Chuck Schumer
“What we’re not for is negotiating with people with a bomb strapped to their chest.” —Dan Pfeiffer
“I call them legislative arsonists. They’re there to burn down what we should be building up.” —Nancy Pelosi
“[T]he anarchists have taken over,. They’ve taken over the House and now they’ve taken over the Senate.” —Harry Reid
“We need to act like adults, not like squealing political pigs.” —Sen. Dick Durbin
“The only phrase that describes it is political terrorism.” —Al Gore
“Those people are guilty of murder in my opinion.” —Sen. Angus King
“What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people.” —Barack Obama
“We have negotiated with terrorists. This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.” —Rep. Mike Doyle
“It has become commonplace to call the tea party faction in the House ‘hostage takers.’ But they have now become full-blown terrorists.” —Politico’s William Yeomans
“You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people.” —New York Times’ Joe Nocera
“Today’s Tea Party movement is merely the latest of a series of attacks on American democracy by the white Southern minority, which for more than two centuries has not hesitated to paralyze, sabotage or, in the case of the Civil War, destroy American democracy in order to get their way.” —Salon’s Michael Lind
And let’s not forget Mr. Moore himself (via Twitter):
“My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders r worse.”
But by all means, Miss Puerto Rico should be disqualified for expressing her (supposedly) First Amendment-protected opinion about Muslims. (For the record: We contend the Miss America pageant is phony and quite frankly not worth anyone’s time. This is merely to point out the liberal hypocrisy on the issue of free speech.)
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