Five years ago, Katie Couric exemplified our secular media's Islamophilia when on an online show at CBS, she proclaimed, "Maybe we need a Muslim version of 'The Cosby Show.' I know that sounds crazy, but 'The Cosby Show' did so much to change attitudes about African-Americans in this country, and I think sometimes people are afraid of what they don't understand."
Given what's come to light about Cosby, she probably wishes she'd suggested "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air" or maybe "Diff'rent Strokes." No matter. What must Osama bin Laden have thought when briefed that America was preparing a new weapon to defeat him -- sitcoms?
Now online at Yahoo, Couric is still singing from the same songbook, hosting two Muslim comedians in a discussion headlined "Fighting Islamophobia, one joke at a time." Couric asked, "What ultimately do you think will have to be done to make people more educated, more tolerant, more accepting?"
One of them, Maysoon Zayid, quipped, "I think we need a Muslim 'Bachelor' or 'Bachelorette.' I think that's what would be the great equalizer, and that would change everything." Deep in the bowels of some dark circle of hell, bin Laden would be smirking, had his face not been shot off.
Couric is on a mission, except this example is as bizarre as her proposal. Contestants on "The Bachelor" never audition for that show to improve their image, but instead cry and fight and gossip and get drunk. The other comedian, Dean Obeidallah, added they could use a Muslim boy band or a Muslim James Bond. Put together, it's a cocktail sure to bring ISIS to its knees.
Americans are endlessly lectured that we don't appreciate that Muslims are just like us and that this "Islamophobia" is much like racism, a blight on what it means to be American. This pose against "ignorance" is never applied to other faiths, especially in the way the left in this country radiates bigotry toward Christianity. Couric's industry, both news and entertainment, has spent decades attacking, insulting, and blaspheming Christianity. It would be hard to offset this bigotry with the Couric Sit-Com Solution when so many of them have anti-Christian bigotry as their driving impulse.
How hypocritical is Couric? In her own video, she praises comedy for building understanding -- and then shows a clip of the late George Carlin mocking Christians, who shouldn't be against homosexuals since they never have abortions.
Once a year or so the media come around to Muslim comedians or Muslim reality-show makers bedazzled about their brave efforts to - quoting Couric here -- "open hearts and minds" and correct "misconceptions."
"Comedy has the ability to let people who normally hate you relate to you. I really feel like it's a great equalizer," Zayid told Couric. "Because if you can get people laughing, they stop thinking of you as an 'other.'"
"With comedy, you can reach people who will never go to a lecture on Muslims," says Obeidallah. "They would never read a book on Muslims. But they'll come to a comedy show. And while they're there, they're gonna laugh. And you hope maybe they learn something while they're laughing. It's sort of like this subtle stealth type of mission of using comedy to inform people."
These sermons so often arrive after acts of Islamic terrorism. This latest plug came shortly after Muhammad Abdulazeez shot and killed four Marines and a sailor at a recruiting center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Obeidallah complained, "A guy in Chattanooga shoots five people. He'll define Muslims to our fellow Americans much more than any of the rest of us who are doing really good work." Couric sympathized that's it's still "a challenging time" for prejudice.
When militant extremist Islamist terrorists attack and murder innocent Americans in cold blood, the left reacts with lectures -- or in this case, the clarion call for sitcoms -- demanding uncultured Americans be more tolerant of their fellow man. Moreover, as Obeidallah proclaimed on MSNBC after Chattanooga, "There is no such thing as radical Islam. ... There are radical Muslims. There are Muslim terrorists who commit things. There's only one Islam."
Now who's selling a misconception?
Not every Muslim is a terrorist. There are millions of peaceful Muslim Americans. Yes, yes, Katie, we get it -- and we don't need lectures from religious hypocrites. When we see you condemn the vicious bigotry coming from your peers, and when we hear you denounce your own industry's disgusting attitude toward Christians -- and in particular, Catholics -- then and only then do you have the right to deliver sermons we didn't need anyway.