I know I’m a day late to this story but I wanted to give it some room to develop before I went off.
And so it has.
Yesterday it came out that NBC’s Dateline show was recruiting Muslim Arab men here in America to do some “decoy” work for them. They’d go to various places – a NASCAR race was mentioned as the “most urgent” need – wearing a hidden camera and hope to catch some “discriminatory” activity. Then they’d get into the studio and tell the show all about their experiences and impressions.
Basically, NBC wants to do a story on what a bunch of racist horrors we Americans are, especially Red State (which would be the point behind the NASCAR race) in this post-9/11 world. The network does say that they “will be visiting a number of locations across the country and are confident that our reporting team is pursuing this story in a fair manner” but, folks, I don’t trust the folks at NBC news to do a fair job on this story. Not as far as I can throw them. They have far too much invested in the notion that Americans are tettering on the edge of burning Muslims in the streets to let this story play out fairly.
That said, it’s wise to take the initial e-mail and its author with a grain of salt. After all, there are a couple things in it that I would hope are factual errors. First, as a reader to Michelle’s pointed out (but as I’d hope most folks would already know), it’s going to be tough for them to lead off an anti-Muslim or anti-Arab investigation by using two Sikhs, which are neither Muslim nor Arab. It’s also going to be tough to film a NASCAR race on April 8 in Virginia because they won’t be there. They’ll be in Richmond in early May.
It could be that the e-mailer was confused about the dates and locations. NASCAR was in Martinsville this past weekend (and it was a pretty good race, I don’t mind telling you) and in Bristol the week before (another entertaining race. I love the short-track stuff) or it could be that NBC just doesn’t pay much attention to NASCAR. But all you have to do is to watch a race broadcast on NBC and one on Fox or FX to tell that NBC doesn’t seem to give two hoots about NASCAR racing or the folks who watch it.
Regardless, NBC’s would-be story is so much junk right now since the word has gotten out. I think it was a junk story before. After all, how often have you seen NBC, or any news network for that matter, take a Hasidic Jew into a Muslim mosque, an evangelical Christian wearing a “Jesus Saves” t-shirt into a Democratic National Committee meeting, or a woman wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top down the streets of Riyadh, Cairo, or Tehran?
That’s what I thought.
