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

[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. :/