The Spine Award

 
Fox must be doing something right: feathers are being ruffled again. This time it is protestations from American Muslims that the drama "24" portrays Muslims in a bad light. In one episode

Muslim terrorists gain control of a nuclear plant, causing it to melt down.... One of the leaders of the plot shot his own wife and tried to shoot his son, fearing they would thwart his plans (And this was after kidnapping the U.S. defense secretary and trying to behead him live on the Internet).

So what is the problem here? One Muslim viewer finds the show "disgusting." He doesn't say that it's inaccurate, simply that it's the Muslims 'turn,' just as it had been the Italians and the Russians before them. He's got the reality pegged accurately; it's his reaction that could use some reality-testing.

Italian mobsters have carved a large swathe through American jurisprudence. Their contempt for the law, which they brought to the US, is widely acknowledged; only the over-sensitive could complain that this is the sole image of Italian Americans, though it is an image that has fueled a lot of good film. The funds that have had to be diverted to combat teh Mob could well have been spent elsewhere. And the Russians were the bad guys; their scofflaw attitude deserves our attention. Some of them who have moved here are indeed as lawless as they were at home. That goes, too, for the illegal Mexicans who cross the borders in droves and end up wards of the penal system.

A large so-what is due to American Muslim high dudgeon about the dramatic portrayal of Islamofascists on television dramas. Their lack of co-ordinated, vehement, enthusiastic and muscular support for the mores of their adopted country -- both before and after 9/11 -- leaves them little room to complain about a tame portrayal when the reality of terrorism is so much worse than what takes place within a television drama.

Let's start showing the reality: the butchered young woman in London, killed by relatives because she was marrying a divorced man; the drive-by shooting of the Muslim mother in Germany who had the audacity to leave her husband; the vicious slaying of Theo van Gogh Or how about the melodrama of Mukhtar Mai, survivor of both an officially-mandated gang rape and the scorn of her village. How about the scene where she overcomes her own illiteracy and begins to open schools for girls? Even schools for boys, since she thinks they have to start somewhere.

Then CAIR can come to us and complain. And then they can explain to us the huge influx of Saudi money to American mosques, money used to promulgate the Wahhabi view of life, a view in total opposition to American history, law, and custom. They can explain away the dhimmi laws of their own history and theology.

Either the Muslims stand with us or they stand against us. They can't have it both ways.

And good for Fox for refusing to cave. Read the whole article: they met with CAIR, they listened, they put in the p.c. clauses, and they have continued with the show. Finally, a network that doesn't cave.

Perhaps there should be some sort of annual network award for this kind of response. Call it the "SPINE" award. Because obviously they have one.