J.D. Prose – 8/13/10

This page was last updated on August 15, 2010.

Fringe politics: Right wing ratchets up fearmongering; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; August 13, 2010.

As you read this opinion column, keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the Times. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.

You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.

Here are a few points before I begin. First, Mr. Prose’s definition of “right wing” appears to be anyone to the right of his fellow travelers at PA4 PDA/BC Peace Links. Second, in Mr. Prose’s world, “fearmongering” is fear mongering only when the other guy does it. For an example, go to the PA4 PDA website and you’ll read about Rep. Jason Altmire’s “Plan to Steal Social[ist] Security.” Even President Obama got into the election year “Republicans want to destroy Socialist Security” act. Third, we’re “treated” to Mr. Prose’s SOP of name-calling.

Did you catch Mr. Prose’s solution for our illegal alien and border violence problem? Whether he recognized what he was writing or not, the Prose solution appears to be a bad U.S. economy. Good plan.

Next, Mr. Prose cites a Yahoo! news article citing PolitiFact.com. There would be nothing wrong with that except Yahoo! is an Internet news service (in this case citing another Internet source) and Mr. Prose’s employer routinely tells us we can’t trust those sources. In any case, you likely won’t be surprised to learn Mr. Prose didn’t tell us everything in the PolitiFact article. For example, the article said “According to a report by the Pew Hispanic Center, a think tank that has done extensive research on immigration policy, 3.8 million undocumented immigrants have at least one child who is a citizen. ‘Most children of unauthorized immigrants -- 73 percent in 2008 -- are U.S. citizens by birth,’ the center says. That’s up from 63 percent in 2003. These statistics suggest not only that the number is large, but is also growing.” Funny how that little tidbit escaped mention by Mr. Prose, isn’t it? In any case, read the entire PolitiFact article and make up your own mind.

As for Mr. Prose’s comments about the proposed Ground Zero mosque (also mentioned in Times editorials twice in the last week here and here), what must he think of the “Giddy haters” at the Muslim Canadian Congress? On its website, the MCC says, “Many Muslims suspect that the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation, to thumb our noses at the ‘infidel.’ We believe the proposal has been made in bad faith and, in Islamic parlance, is creating ‘fitna,’ meaning ‘mischief-making,’ an act clearly forbidden in the Qur’an.” You can find my detailed comments on this topic in my critique of “No reason to stop mosque construction.”

Mr. Prose referred to the folks who want to build the mosque as “a moderate Islamic group.” You may recall this is exactly how the press referred to the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virginia and its former imam, Anwar al-Awlaki (a U.S. citizen). At least three of the 9/11 hijackers and the Fort Hood killer attended this “moderate” mosque. Mr. Awlaki (now believed to be hiding in Yemen) went on the U.S. capture/kill list in April 2010 for his links to terrorist attacks in the U.S. (Fort Hood and attempted Christmas Day bombing) and his position within al-Qaida. According to Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), Mr. Awlaki is “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.”

When did amending the Constitution become “trampling” the Constitution? I sure wish I could get a peek at Mr. Prose’s dictionary. <g> As with the proposed Ground Zero mosque, Times editorials mentioned the 14th Amendment (a “trampling” of the Constitution?) twice in the last week here and here. My comments are in my critique of “Nothing new.”