Timing is everything.

[randomness]

From http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10media.html:

A renegade pastor and his tiny flock set fire to a Koran on a street corner, and made sure to capture it on film. And they were ignored.

That stunt took place in 2008, involving members of the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kan., an almost universally condemned group of fundamentalists who also protest at military funerals.

But plans for a similar stunt by another fringe pastor, Terry Jones, have garnered worldwide news media attention this summer, attention that peaked Thursday when he announced he was canceling — and later, that he had only “suspended” — what he had dubbed International Burn a Koran Day. It had been scheduled for Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Unlike the Koran-burning by Westboro Baptist, Mr. Jones’s planned event in Gainesville, Fla., coincided with the controversy over the proposed building of a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan near ground zero and a simmering summerlong debate about the freedoms of speech and religion.

Mr. Jones was able to put himself at the center of those issues by using the news lull of summer and the demands of a 24-hour news cycle to promote his anti-Islam cause.

Fred Phelps must be ripshit.

Comments

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

Fred Phelps must be ripshit.

One can only hope that it leads to that long-delayed heart attack.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Srsly.

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed.

And then we can all go protest at his funeral. Whee!

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

I think you misspelled "rejoice" up there...

"God hates religious fanatics who wave signs around saying he hates fags."

[apintrix.livejournal.com]

Oh, he's getting in on it in the eleventh hour; he's now saying that if Jones doesn't go through with the burning, Westboro Baptist will do it instead. Which is just kind of pathetic, really.

[gee-tar.livejournal.com]

That's what I think is the truly interesting part of this story: Terry Jones' PR coup. I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone is paying any attention to this guy, but he's got the whole media and several important leaders on a string. If he was a leader of a mega-church or a bishop or a congressman or major media figure, I'd understand why this story got so big, but his congregation is only 50 people.. We've been somewhat effective in marginalizing Fred Phelps by ignoring him and now this guy comes from nowhere and gets us all flustered.

In some ways in parallels the "mosque at ground zero" or more accurately, "the cultural center in the Burlington Coat Factory" story. It was a complete non-event that no one cared about until a few conservative talking heads whipped us into a lather about it. I want to investigate how certain key figures manipulated us into caring.

Studying how this event became a media sensation is the only useful thing to do here. Because I really want to know the secret into getting the press to pay any sort of attention to me (or alternatively, figure out a way to counter-act us worrying about morons).

[dpolicar]

Yes. This.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

And the other thing is that he seems completely unprepared to operate on a national level, with 24/7 coverage. He's so totally in over his head. :/

[ulfhirtha.livejournal.com]

"...I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone is paying any attention to this guy..." Well, As the original post notes, the timing has been superb, at least as far as bringing it to attention and there's the usual stuff about the "24 hour news cycle" and indeed how it gloms on well with the inane flap over Cordoba House. However, it isn't the size of his congregation or the like (Gainesville has a ton of these kinds of "churches" - I've seen 'em visiting my brother there) which lends him any stature. Think of how a solitary monk burning themselves in protest garnered attention in the 60s. Rather it is the deed itself: here it is the colossal level of the insult he knowingly plans to administer coupled with 9/11 rememberences. (both to Islam by targeting their holy text, but also to American mores, where book-burning in general is another of those things Countries We Oppose Do But We Don't).

It would indeed be nice if people ignored this clown. But since that won't happen for even if he doesn't do it, the damage is already done. I can very well sympathize with both the Administration and General Petraeus thinking "aw crap...here's just what we DON'T need!" and seeking to at least put it on record that this isn't America's position but just some looney tune's in Florida. There are already reports of this being used in Afghanistan to convince the wavering that the US really is at war with Islam and not just "terror", so their fears are not unfounded.

It does seem like an occasion to remember that the 1st Amendment gives people a right to "speak" by various means but doesn't mean people can't speak out against them in turn.

[gee-tar.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the difficulty in choosing to remain silent on an issue and thus appearing to give tacit approval versus loudly denouncing it thus giving the issue more credence. General Petraeus is essentially in a lose-lose situation. Nevertheless, I'm not convinced his decision to issue a statement was the better one. I'm not sure if anyone in Afghanistan is actually going to listen to him, or if they do, believe him. But he did capture the attention of American media transforming the story from a minor thing buried in a paragraph on page 23 to front-page, above-the-fold news.

It'd be nice if the moderate Islamic world learned to ignore American extremists, though to be fair, American media does a terrible job of ignoring any extremists. However, as a consumer of one and not the other, I'm in a slightly better position to tell the American press on what we should focus on.

[nathanjw]

The thing that comes to mind for me is the way that sports broadcasts have decided to not show anybody who jumps onto the field. Clearly the mass-media incentives aren't right for that to happen, but it makes it clear that it's possible.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

The professional leagues are broadcast under a contract with the leagues, and so what the networks can show is constrained by what the leagues are willing to have shown (consonant with still getting the networks to pay them lots of money). Since people jumping onto the field is inconvenient for the leagues, I suspect that networks are just forbidden to show them.

Unfortunately, an event like this attracts viewers, so the incentives are exactly wrong.