I agree with Michelle Malkin when she points out that most people would have come under serious scrutiny and some criticism for making such statements as Miss Michigan Rima Fakih made in the Miss USA Pageant to the effect that birth control is a controlled substance, and that it should be covered by insurance because it is expensive. It would be hard to imagine anybody giving such incomprehensible answers like that winning such a high-profile beauty pageant, especially when she almost fell on her ass during the evening gown competition.
I can even agree with Malkin in that there is at least a good possibility that Miss Oklahoma, Morgan Elizabeth Woolard, lost the title (though she did come in as first runner up) because of her answer to judge Oscar Nunez's question about the illegal immigration law recently passed by Arizona. Although stating that she is against racial profiling, she supports the law in principle as a matter of states rights.
We can quibble about all of that, but its really going several bridges too far, and in fact clear over the edge, to accuse Miss Fakih of being a terrorist supporter of Hezbollah, and its veering into the territory of the bat-shit insane to suggest that her triumph at the pageant was somehow instigated as a plot to help these violent Islamic extremists, who according to this theory actually funded and supported her through the auspices of a relative with connections to the radical terrorist group.
The genius who dreamed up this delusion is a self-styled reporter of some stripe named Debbie Schlussel, who for some strange reason thinks this is an example of an Islamic terrorist group trying to fit into American society in an effort to one day destroy it. She actually compared it to 9/11 terrorist Mohammed Atta going to strip clubs and drinking alcohol. That's all very interesting. There must be something about those strip clubs, seeing as how Rima has danced at one at some point prior to the contest. There are even photos currently circulating of her-one of her doing a pole dance, one with bills shoved down her top, etc.
Never mind that most of the Islamic radicals Miss Fakih is supposedly sympathetic to would gladly gang-rape her brutally prior to removing her head. Or perhaps they would be merely content to savagely carve up her legs and breasts and douse her face in a good acid bath and leave her alive as an example of what might happen to a woman who violates their precious religious tenets. The woman might well be a target as we speak. Nor would it help her cause in the least that after coming to the US from Lebanon, she attended a Catholic school.
Speaking personally, and honestly, I don't trust any Muslim any further than I could throw one, and I certainly don't trust them nearly as far as I would dearly love to throw a good damn many of them. But that's beside the point. I don't live with them, nor are they a part of my circle or my family. Miss Fakih would do well to adopt my level of mistrust towards them from this point forward. However we might feel about the legitimacy of her win of the Pageant, which is these days more of a monument to the ego of Donald Trump than anything else, we should certainly recognize that it took a certain level of courage for this woman from Dearborn, Michigan, home to probably the largest Muslim community in the US, to even enter this damn contest to begin with. We should wish her well and hope that she keeps her head attached, and without any lifetime scars for what might actually prove to be a foolhardy move on her part.
Yet, for all Miss Schlussel's assurances that Rima Fakih's run for the title was funded by terrorists, that close family members are members of that terrorist group, and have killed Israeli citizens, and that Donald Trump is a dhimmi who allowed her uncle to more or less buy the title, every link she provides in her post to "prove" her points seems to link to her own earlier posts on the subject. Not to say there aren't other blogs making these accusations. Here is one billing itself as a Jewish Internet Defense League. So what are their sources, you ask? Thaaat's right, Miss Schlussel, of course.
I was shocked when I first read this insanity on Popehat, but I was relieved as well as amused when I read the Jawa's Report's Howie sarcastically relate how, in reality, it's all a Zionist plot to subvert unsuspecting Muslims. Evidently never one to pass up an opportunity to excoriate the right, Jonathon Turley pointed to Howie's post as evidence of how unhinged the right is. Or at least he did until I pointed out to him that it was obviously sarcasm. I assume that's why he removed the link. (Sorry about that, guys. You know what they say about no bad publicity). As if that's not bad enough, to further make his point about how bad the right is, Turley links to yet another post that turns out to have been made, on another blog, by the same Debbie Schlussel who got this insanity started. And now, in another amazing development, since I further pointed this out to him, Jonathon has removed that link as well. You could at least say thank you, Jonathon.
Nor is Jonathon Turley the sole offender. Below The Beltway also seems to imply that Debbie Schlussel is typical of the right, and that the accusations of Islamic terrorism funding a run for the Miss USA pageant is widely believed by conservatives.
The most amusing irony of all of this is that, in excoriating the right as bat-shit insane, the left through these leftist bloggers do what it always manages to do best-prove that they are, in fact, the ones who are bat-shit insane.
I think the Anchoress said it best of all. Our society is degenerating to the point that we might be in the throes of a psychotic breakdown. A good first clue to that is the fact that you can't escape the poisonous political atmosphere of the current times anywhere. It's even infested beauty pageants. What kind of judge asks contestants to answer such loaded questions, aiming at obvious answers. And note how, thus far, it is progressive advocates who are asking the questions aiming to promote leftist causes. First Perez Hilton with Carrie Prejean over gay marriage, and now Oscar Nunez with Rima Fakih over immigration law, of all things.
What the hell is next? I can just see it now. "Do you think Barak Obama's detractors are basically racists?" "Do you think George W. Bush should be tried for war crimes?"
Hell, make me a judge, I know what I would ask. "Do you agree with me that Democrats should be encouraged to get abortions as often as possible?"
