It was not my intention to write about Newsweek. After all, as we all know, it’s not news when a dog bites a man. So, none of us should be too surprised to find out once again that the major news media has cooked up a story that simultaneously gets headlines around the world and gives America a black eye. Even if it had been true, it didn’t have the pazazz of Abu Ghraib with its naked bodies and snarling dogs. But if you can’t have steak, sometimes you have to make do with hamburger. Just so long as it’s red meat, the leftist media is happy.

Getting miffed because the folks at Newsweek behaved in typical fashion -- exactly the same way that Time, the three networks and the three major newspapers would behave if they had the “scoop” – makes as much sense as going ballistic if your new puppy makes a mess on the carpet. That’s what puppies do. And that’s what our journalists have done ever since they turned the fourth estate into the fifth column. It’s what happened even after Newsweek came clean that got my dander up.

Even after we all learned that it was fiction, everybody referred to the desecration of the Koran. Nobody, including America’s Muslims, pointed out that it’s the Islamo fascists who desecrate the Koran every hour of every day. It was as if people were saying that if the book had really been flushed down the toilet, it would not have been unreasonable for the mobs to have run amok and murdered a bunch of innocent human beings. The same folks who were outraged at the mere thought that a book had been destroyed don’t say boo when Muslims in Kosovo burn down a score of Christian churches and their cousins in the Middle East vow to turn Israel into dust.

It’s odd how the same secular crowd that is deeply offended by public symbols of Judaism and Christianity can get all weepy-eyed over the trashing of a book they can’t even read.

Finally, I’d like to know how it is that nobody at Newsweek was even slightly suspicious that they were running a cock-and-bull story. Really, can you picture somebody flushing a Koran down the chute? I mean, I don’t know about your toilet, but mine can barely handle double-ply Charmin!

Burt Prelutsky

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©2004 Burt Prelutsky

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