I apologise if this has been diaried already. And, for what it's worth, I'm not an Arab or a Muslim.
Faux Noise has a video up that consists of a paranoid-drenched interview with a retired Colonel talking about the Fort Hood shooter's "outlandish comments." The video mentions Muslims many, many times.
The Faux Noise home page, like other news organisations, has a big Fort Hood-related picture. Unlike other news organisations, though, the Faux News picture caption is:
Authorities search apartment of Fort Hood suspect Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who reportedly gave away his furniture and copies of the Koran to neighbors before the shooting. [my bold]
I'm worried about Americans. No, I'm not worried that we'll be immediately attacked by hordes of ebil Ay-rabs. I'm worried that Arab-Americans, Arabs living in the US, and Muslims living in the US will be attacked by hordes of Americans who think that the best way to express sorrow over the killings at Fort Hood is to kill, injure, threaten, or damage the lives, homes, and mosques of Muslims, Arabs, or anyone who looks darkish.
CBS News has reported that there's already been an anti-Arab backlash.
His name had barely been released, his heritage and history not immediately known, but the reaction was fast and furious.
...
"The name tells us a lot, does it not, senator?" Fox News's Shep Smith said while interviewing Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas senator.
When I went in to work last night, the first thing one of my co-workers said was something about the shooter's name. He got the name entirely wrong except for one thing - it sounded Arab-y. And we're not in Texas. We're in Kentucky.
The wingnuts are already spewing froth from their collective mouths, and Faux News, together with Rush Limbaugh and other Wingnut Hall of Flamers Famers, will have their listeners whipped up into a righteous fury in no time flat. Mosques may be burned - it's happened here before - and Arab-Americans and Muslims may have their lives and livelihoods threatened.
We progressives must act as the brakes, the calming influence, the Valium, for our new national pastime of Arab-bashing as a response to this incident. We must speak to our families, our friends, our co-workers, our fellow students, and the people we run into on the street, in the stores, and in the offices of our country.
We must gently remind them that even though the man held in the shootings seems to be a Muslim Arab(-American), not all Arabs or all Muslims are murderers. We must quietly remind them that not all Muslims want to destroy us. We must calmly remind them that the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims in this country are as appalled as we are at the horror of Fort Hood. We must be the adults here.
We cannot count on the so-called "patriots" to refrain from starting up good old vigilante "justice" - on anybody dark or Arabic-looking or non-Christian. We'll have to be the ones to truly serve our country by waiting for the FBI and the Army to do their jobs, followed by the (Army) justice system doing its job.
Talk to your winger friends. Be kind, but firm. Remember that no one in the US is guilty until proven guilty - and that doesn't happen in one day.
Please.
Very Minor Update: Drudge has this as the upper part of their web page. Frist story? "Allahu Akbar."On the other hand, they've got Daily Kos listed on their blogroll (or is it a hate list? Fox News is on it, it must not be a hate list) and they're now showing themselves to be the Wave of the Future (the FireFox tab says DRUDGE REPORT 2010).