I wrote about the the Patriot Guard Riders last week. They finally made it to a funeral service in the Chicago-area this week. An article about the service, in the Daily Southtown, had this unfortunate headline:

"Heaven's newest guard"

Stupid fucking editors. If a prostitute had died, would they have had a headline, "Heaven's newest whore"? Don't think so. Obviously, the practitioners of any religion believe that their funeral rites commute their dead to the next step. But again, if an Islamic person died in Chicago's South suburbs, I don't think that the headline would read "South side man enters Paradise". Journalism shouldn't give its tacit endorsement of any faith over any other (or over a lack of faith, for that matter).

A headline like the one in the Southtown suggests, indirectly, that the soldier was doing God's bidding. And for Islamic people, who perceive the U.S. military actions in the Gulf as a war on Islam, this kind of thing suggests that we think that way.

Turning idiots like Cal Thomas on their own argument. Crap like this emboldens our enemies.

I'm not terribly surprised at this. The area where this paper originates is a place where you'll very rarely see "For Sale" signs in front of homes, even though they have a normal amount of real estate transactions in the area. Instead, Houses are advertised through word-of-mouth and on church bulletin boards. You know, they want to make sure that they have the white right kind of buyers.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 21, 2006 at 9:03 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.