I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
I think Nicholas Kristof thought he was being really cute when he began his column:
Many Americans have suggested that more moderate Muslims should stand up to extremists, speak out for tolerance, and apologize for sins committed by their brethren.
That’s reasonable advice, and as a moderate myself, I’m going to take it. (Throat clearing.) I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you. Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.
How many problems can you find with this? How about rewriting the actual suggestion -- that Muslims condemn acts of violence committed in the name of Islam -- so that it becomes "Muslims must apologize."
You may or may not find value in the suggestion -- but at least be accurate about what it is.
I also can't stand fake apologies. I've dated men who were unable to apologize or who did this Kristof-style fake apology. I can't stand it. It's unmanly. Apologies should be offered seriously, not as a means to mock people with whom you disagree.
But more than anything, this moral equivalency is just silly. There's the fact that when a pastor of a flock of 30 poor souls set out to burn a Koran, roughly every Christian in America condemned the act -- Including the President of the United States and our Secretary of State. It was almost a condemnatory overkill. When a Seattle cartoonist was forced into hiding and has lost her very identity and livelihood in the face of Muslim extremists, have you heard much condemnation? And that's just when talking about people who haven't been killed in the name of religion.
Or what about the entire premise of the piece? The suggestion that all Muslims are accused of being terrorists and that waves of Islamophobia are ripping through America like 300-million alarm fire?
The prescient Cliff May, a former New York Times newsman, mocked the mainstream media's accusation of Islamophobia in his column from last week. He discusses the media handwringing over one poll that showed 49 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of Islam. The stories declined to note that the figure is up 3 points from the previous poll, within the margin of error. If there has been an uptick, he writes, maybe it has something to do with the recent attacks or threats by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Faisal Shahzad, Anwar al-Awlaki and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
There's a difference between having an unfavorable view of a given religion and bigotry. Kristof would be well served to learn that difference.
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Jul '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Nick Kristof is still alive?
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Mollie (if I may), I had tried to post something on the Kristof piece earlier today, but I was too angered to write anything coherent. I'm happy you accepted the task, and did it not only coherently, but eloquently. To all of America's apologists, please keep the rest of us out of it. If you want to apologize for your own actions, please do, but you have no authority to apologize for the rest of us. Then, again, as Mrs. Hemingway indicates, that's not really your point anyway, is it?
Aug '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
I can't find it now, but I remember being disgusted a few years ago when one of the mainline Protestant denominations had a pastoral Easter letter of repentance that basically said "we apologize for not doing even more to stop George W. Bush." Not that they weren't in their rights to oppose his policies, but saying "I repent that I lost a policy struggle" isn't a confession, it's tattling.
Jul '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Of what possible use are we unwashed peasants to the Nick Kristof elite?
Who gave us license to inhabit his continent?
Oh, OK, we pay our serfs' tithe and our idiot sons and daughters go off to fight the occasional just war.
But otherwise, we're just a total embarrassment to fine folk like Nicholas Kristof. Bigotting all over the joint, shrieking racist invective at our pathetic mob excursions, leveraging our bloated carcasses into polling booths to cast our ignorant votes.
Heck, we not only don't buy the New York Times, we don't even know of its sublime existence.
It must be unbearable to even contemplate our lowly species, breeding away out in the benighted hinterlands.
When poor Nick goes abroad - say to some conference of the the elect in Gstaad - I simply cannot imagine how the poor man can possibly resist the impulse to grovel amongst his ilk and beg forgiveness.
Edited on Sep 19, 2010 at 9:36pmJul '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
I would really like to know what kind of social life this Kristof fella enjoys?
One useful aspect I've derived from following a number of commentators on the Web is that I realize that there are a lot of not-very-bright-people making an excellent living opining. Amazing. I remember the look on a friend's face when he realized that the people running the world (ie, economic councils, etc) were not any more intelligent that he. Now, that is a terrible realization.
May '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Excellent Mollie! I don't know about unmanly, but adolescent I'll grant you. I think the standards for the New York Times should be much higher than sarcastic. Between that and the sanctimonious moaning in which he is more commonly engaged, I get the sense that Mr. Kristof must be a total dishtowel. Really.
Jul '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
heathermc: I would really like to know what kind of social life this Kristof fella enjoys?
One useful aspect I've derived from following a number of commentators on the Web is that I realize that there are a lot of not-very-bright-people making an excellent living opining. Amazing. I remember the look on a friend's face when he realized that the people running the world (ie, economic councils, etc) were not any more intelligent that he. Now, that is a terrible realization. · Sep 19 at 9:21pm
What did you do to your poor friend?
Show him a YouTube video of Christina Rohmer?
Every time I see Christina Rohmer or Elena Kagan, I think:
"Um...a couple of bear-claws. And are those croissants fresh?"
Jun '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
I've been googling around, searching for RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation) material lately, and I've yet to find "dangerous" Christians teaching "dangerous" things. It's actually pretty heartwarming stuff. A typical sample:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/4880959
Aug '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
While Kristof went as far as apologizing in the name of "I", this sort of faux-excuse usually begins with "we". With liberal presidents like Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, it becomes almost a verbal tic.
I don't think grammarians have quite gotten round to classifying this as a distinct grammatical person, but it ought to be, given that the speaker is really never apologizing for himself. It should be called "first person exclusive", where "we" really means "we-except-for-me". It's just a smarmy way of saying "you" or "they", a way to accuse others of some sin while elevating oneself for being enlightened enough to have noticed the sin and to apologize for it.
Aug '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
I can't help wondering what's wrong with the other 51%.
Whether anyone likes it or not, Islam is on probation within Western Civilization, or at least in America. While we take freedom of religion seriously, and while no one so far seems to be arguing that Muslims should be denied theirs, it takes an extraordinary act of will--willful blindness, I would argue--not to notice some sort of correlation between the Islam and an ever-expanding catalog of crimes and misdemeanors around the world, committed expressly in the name of that religion. This ranges from the mass-murder of non-Muslims, or the wrong kind of Muslims, down to barbaric cultural practices like forced cousin-marriage, female genital mutilation, and eye-for-an-eye justice. I don't think the 49% need to apologize for anything, and certainly don't need Kristof to apologize on their behalf.
Jul '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Before islamophobia it was Backlash.
In any normal distribution there are always 4 percent on the extremes.
4 percent of three hundred million is twelve million.
So statistically twelve million incidents of anti islam are the baseline, which has to be exceeded in order to amount to a backlash. The point is that the Jewish community suffers more incidents than the Islamic community in the U.S.
Simply put, the numbers aren’t there. Liberalus Overmuchus keeps hurling the invective while having nothing to show for it.
In the end, Christianophobia is a much bigger problem in the U.S.
P.S. Being afraid of acts of violence, from people who have demonstrated a tendency towards violence is discernment, not a phobia or prejudice.
Edited on Sep 19, 2010 at 10:56pmMay '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Mollie & Pat,
I appreciate you guys continuing to read people like Kristof and keeping us informed of the garbage they are spewing, without having to read them ourselves. I do not just read things I agree with, but there are a number (growing) of writers who I put in the "life is to short" group. Kristof is in that group - those who I will read only when I am in a truly masochistic mood.
May '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
This is what I call the Liberal first-person plural. "We" = You Idiots.
Jul '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Day after my (then) Presbyterian Church in NY lost 7 members in the WTC bombing, the church established emergency committees to safeguard Muslim women from the violence Manhattanites were sure to commit against them. Leave aside the logistics of how one was to find these women or why their first instinct would be to seek out some prissy Christian church. What was so preposterous in this first reaction to 9/11, was the assumption that everyone else, but us, was a vicious bigot. This is, of course, the same delusion that afflicts Mr Kristoff. It must be hell to live among such people.
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Great post, Molly.
Reading Kristof's apology gives me the same gut wrench as listeing to Imam Rauf preach in interviews about American religious intolerance as he seeks to build in the ashes of Americans who died because of Islamio-fascist religious intolerence.
I'm all for separating the violent Muslims from the non-violent. But...
There is a burden to fight violent Muslims I'm willing to put on non-violent Muslims due to the size of the terrorists - this isn't "lone nuts" or a Florida congregation of 30 people misreading their holy book.
The amount violent Jihadists are huge - big enough to win elections and run countries. That's not a few lone crazies for whom the majority has no responsibility.
Numbers that large put the responsibility on the non-violent Muslims to do something about the violient ones. The culture war needs to be good vs bad Muslim before anyone Muslim looks to non-Muslim behavior.
I just don't see any storng, wide-ranging effort by non-violent Muslims to change the violent ones.
Kristof complaining about the people whe aren't the problem is thoughtless.
Jun '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Jaydee #11 "P.S. Being afraid of acts of violence, from people who have demonstrated a tendency towards violence is discernment, not a phobia or prejudice."
As Paul at #10 says, look around the world and see, in Africa, in the Middle East, in Indonesia and Asia, and in Eurpoe where does the predominance of violence come from? It is Muslims. It is the same with illegal immigration. 90% of illegal immigrants in Arizona, for example, are Hispanic. If the police ask an Hispanic for an ID, that is profiling. Well, yea!!
Us stupid yokels are just not to believe our lying eyes.
May '10
Re: I humbly apologize for Kristof's silliness
Kristof's article seems to stem from the common confusion of tolerance with approval.