5 Signs of Madness in the Media This Week—Tom Friedman Compares Gaza Disaster to Broadway Edition

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http://www.alternet.org/media/4-signs-madness-media-week-can-any-crisis-stop-right-pausing-their-war-clintons



TOM FRIEDMAN'S CLUMSY ANALOGY -- OFF-BROADWAY IS TO BROADWAY AS The ARAB WORLD IS TO...

Last week, New York Times' Tom Friedman road-tested themes that he will either use in his next book or his next Davos speech, maybe both. In a column called " Order Versus Disorder, Part 2", he put Gaza in global context. Clearly, Israel is on the side of order according to Friedman. But he also claimed that Israel’s action is original and a sign of things to come.

“I’ve argued for a while now that it is always useful to study the Israeli-Arab conflict because it is to the wider war of civilizations what Off Broadway is to Broadway. A lot of stuff starts there and then goes to Broadway. So what’s playing Off Broadway these days? The Israeli-Arab conflict has become a miniature of the most relevant divide in the world today: the divide between the “world of order” and the “world of disorder.”

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NYT CONT. — THE LONE LOST ISRAELI SOLDIER

Traditionally, its coverage of Israel has been sympathetic, to say the least, and when the Times is even slightly off message on that nation, staunchly pro-Israel New Yorkers beat up on it. As the body count approached 32 dead Israelis and 718 dead Palestinians (do the math, 1 Israeli = 22.4 Palestinians), the paper of record decided to go in-depth on Page One on how Israeli society might react to a single missing Israeli soldier.

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ANTI-IMMIGRANT HYSTERIA

Down in Fortress Texas, Prince Ricky, camo-clad on a speedboat on the Rio Grande, pulled a demonstrably untrue “fact” about murderous illegal aliens out of his hat a few weeks ago. He said of 203,000 “illegal aliens” who had crossed the border in the last five years, they committed 3,000 homicides and 8,000 sexual assaults.

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RIGHT-WING SCHOOL PROPOGANDA Republican Florida state senator Alan Hayes plans to introduce a bill that would make Dinesh D'Souza's soon to be released "docudrama", America: Imagine a World Without Her, required viewing for students in the state’s 1,700 Florida public high schools and middle schools. The Hollywood Reporter broke that story here. Among the stunts in the film, which proposes that Americans are under attack by their own government, the former conservative whiz kid turned dingbat interviews the President’s Kenyan half-brother George Obama, but insists he’s not a wink-wink, Birther.