By: Linda Case Gibbons
You probably found it hard to swallow when our own president told us, "you didn’t build that,” last July, but last week, MSNBC’s weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry topped that one and then some.
Unabashed and fully backed by her network, Harris-Perry, took to the airwaves to feature what can only be called a Communist propaganda "spot.”
In the guise of addressing what she believes is a "critical education problem," Harris-Perry traced the "failure to invest enough in public education” back to the fact that American parents have responsibility for their children.
And she had the solution. Give up your ownership, parents. Give your kids to the commune where they belong.
"We have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families," she said in a bored, professorial tone.
All of this should be seen for what it is and this woman taken to task. But there were no alarms, no red flags from her network. It was business as usual.
Democracy 101 states that the building blocks of a democracy -- family, the church and a free press -- have always been the biggest obstacles to the establishment of a Communist/Socialist government.
And they are the first to go when a free society is being high jacked by anti-democracy elements.
In her "sermonette,” Harris-Perry and the left-wing MSNBC made no secret that the race is now on in America to destroy the nuclear family.
And this week we had another unsettling occurrence with the free flow of ideas.
For journalists everywhere, the Associated Press Style Book is their Bible for usage and grammar.
They consult it and conform to its directives when crafting an article to be stylistically correct: How to address an Army colonel; what are the correct terms used in describing a Catholic funeral.
Form. Consistency. But this week it was all about content, and therein lies the rub. Another line has been crossed.
So now, according to AP style guidelines, there are no longer "illegal immigrants,” "undocumented immigrants” and as of now, there are no "Islamists.” Journalists are stylistically forbidden to use these words except after an exhausting review of what the story is about and a review of the murky guidelines.
The AP stylebooks entry for "Islamist” now reads:
"An advocate or supporter of a political movement that favors reordering government and society in accordance with laws prescribed by Islam. Do not use as a synonym for Islamic fighters, militants, extremists or radicals, who may or may not be Islamists.”
Well, that cleared that up, thank goodness.
In a tragic breach of tradition, AP has joined the word police and is now controlling what journalists say.
But, nay, nay, says AP. The organization says their update is about avoiding labels rather than showing sensitivity to the immigrant community.
"We try to be fair to people’s feelings,” standards editor Tom Kent said, "but we’re not responding to one political current or another.”
William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, says, "This Big Brother move by AP is political correctness on steroids. What class of criminals will the Associated Press make disappear next with the stroke of a pen?”
Indeed. And what about facts?
We’ve witnessed in the political arena, the political correctness that sidelines "facts” and highlights "feelings.”
We’ve seen it in the mainstream media, so determined to protect Obama that facts are the last thing on their minds. As late as yesterday, the bleeding heart, liberal New York Times posted a disgusting headline, sympathetic to the Boston terrorists: "Far From War-Torn Homeland, Trying to Fit In.”
We have been doing this wearying "terrorist” dance with Obama and his administration from the very first, when it became clear what the rules of the dance were.
We know for a fact that the president will not use the word "terrorist,” if it will come back to bite him.
He won’t use the word in Benghazi and Fort Hood. He will, however, use the word when he can’t be blamed for whatever it is, such as in the recent Boston attack by Chechyn nationals.
And the fallout?
Thirteen veterans killed by Maj. Nidal Hasan in the Fort Hood massacre will not be awarded Purple Hearts because the 2009 attack was deemed to be "workplace violence” and because U.S. Army officials want to "ensure fairness” in the prosecution of the Fort Hood shooter.
Six months after the fact, survivors of Benghazi are still incommunicado, fearful of telling what they know because doing so would put their jobs in jeopardy.
And "Tonight” show host Jay Leno lost his job, for whatever reason "they" care to say, but it is a fact that Leno was the only comedian that would do what comedians used to do many moons ago: treat the president with an equal hand in making jokes.
His latest was about the AP.
Said Leno, "And in a groundbreaking move, the Associated Press, the largest news gathering outlet in the world, will no longer use the term ‘illegal immigrant.’ That is out. They will now use the phrase ‘undocumented Democrat.”
Sounds wrong, doesn’t it? Sounds like a poor tradeoff, engaging in a foolish parsing of words when all we have to do is call it what it is when it happens, terrorism; call someone who crossed our borders illegally an "illegal immigrant.”
The PC road is a treacherous one for all of us to navigate.
Former Florida Rep. Allen West addressed this ridiculous and dangerous trend for what it is, something the mainstream media and everyone in this administration and Democratic Party will never do.
"Let me be very clear, the terrorist attack in Boston and evolving events indicate we have a domestic radical Islamic terror problem in America.
"We must no longer allow the disciples of political correctness and the acolytes of the Muslim Brotherhood to preach to us some misconceived definition of tolerance and subservience. When tolerance becomes a one-way street, it leads to cultural suicide.”
"When N.Y. Rep. Peter King attempted to have hearings on domestic terrorism,” West said, "he was attacked for being racist. No more excuses. No more apologies. We are in a war of ideological wills and we shall prevail.”
It is frightening that a country without a state-controlled media is so state controlled. That this media blindly supports Obama and the Obama administration to such an extent that they will bend over backwards to neutralize any and all news that might involve the words "Islamic,” "terrorist” and "illegal immigrants.”
It is most frightening because we sit back and take it.