Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Rachel Marsden: Taking journalism to a whole new low.


And just when you think you've reached the bottom of the barrel, someone comes along and lifts up the barrel. How else to describe right-wing pundit Rachel Marsden's debut in the National Post, the first paragraph of which you can read here?

(You need to actually cough up some cash to read the whole thing, although I can't imagine anyone with a functioning brain stem paying to read Marsden's swill. But, hey ... that's just me.)

Even without access to the entire piece, that first paragraph should tell you everything you need to know about where Marsden is coming from:

Some artist uses a crucifix as a swizzle stick in a vat full of urine, and Christians just roll their eyes. But suggest flushing the Koran -- or even dog-earing a copy of Fodor's Guide to the Islamic World -- and the folks who cheered in the Arab Street on 9/11 take it as a green light to riot and blow up more innocent women and children.

Ah, yes, that delightful myth that stories of Koran desecration inspired violence and death, despite the U.S. military's own beliefs to the contrary:

General [Richard] Myers also told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday that the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Carl Eichenberry, disagrees with the reports that protests in the city of Jalalabad were caused by anger over the alleged Koran incident.

"It is the judgment of our commander in Afghanistan, General Eichenberry, that in fact the violence that we saw in Jalalabad was not necessarily the result of the allegations about disrespect for the Koran, but more tied up in the political process and the reconciliation process that President Karzai and his cabinet are conducting in Afghanistan. He thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine," he explained.

So, who you gonna believe: U.S. General Richard Myers, or right-wing dingbat Rachel Marsden? Oooooooh ... tough decision there. Grapple, grapple ...

(If someone can find the entire article online somewhere, I'm sure we can have some fun eviscerating the rest of it. I have the entire thing in front of me and, oh baby, it is evisceration material.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Rachel Marsden inspired the movie Swim Coach. She accused a Simon Fraser University athletics coach of sexual harassment and nearly ruined the guy. The charge was proven to be a lie and greatly embarassed SFU. A few years later Marsden was charged with sexually harassing a former boyfriend. Marsden is a practised liar and evil piece of work. She worked in Grewel's office under another name before he became infamous in the Tapegate political scandal. Marsden is a very sleazy journalist, even by the National Post's standards

CC said...

Amusingly, I was just about to do another piece on Marsden. Stay tuned.