Hayes is winning kudos on the Right for this, because he defended Pamela Geller’s freedom of speech. The Left has become so authoritarian that a Leftist defending the freedom of speech is a spectacle, like a monkey riding a bicycle. But he and his guests, the contemptible Michael Moynihan of the Daily Beast and the sinister Zahra Billoo of the Hamas-linked terror organization the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) agree that Geller, for holding various opinions they misrepresent and taking various actions they detest, is “odious.”
Another spectacle, but a far more common one in the mainstream media: Leftists trash a freedom fighter with the active aid of a representative of a group that was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case by the Justice Department. CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements. Zahra Billoo leads its California chapter that distributed a poster telling Muslims not to talk to the FBI. CAIR has opposed every anti-terror measure that has ever been proposed or implemented. It has itself been labeled a terror group by the United Arab Emirates.
Chris Hayes and Michael Moynihan sit with a representative of this odious pro-jihad group and agree that someone fighting for human rights and freedom against jihad terror and Islamic supremacism is “odious.” That’s what’s really odious. And that’s the mainstream media today.
Meanwhile, another unlikely defender, “Allahpundit” of HotAir, in praising Hayes for breaking ranks with the Left-fascists and coming out in defense of the freedom of speech, offers his own good explanation of why the contest was necessary and justified:
Hayes counters that with an analogy to editorial freedom. If MSNBC told him he couldn’t run a segment because it might reflect badly on an advertiser, he’d feel obliged to run it even if he thought initially that it was too weak to air. Once you’ve been extorted over something you have a right to say, it’s more important to resist the extortion than to worry about whether what you have to say is particularly interesting. It’s about incentives, and reducing the extorter’s incentive to extort is a valuable contribution to free speech even if airing your crappy segment isn’t. Geller’s cartoon contest, like Charlie Hebdo’s post-massacre cover, is an attempt to show jihadis that attacking blasphemers won’t end the blasphemy; if anything, by making martyrs and celebrities of them, it’ll encourage it. It’s a bid to reduce the incentive to kill. Whether it’s a smart strategy is hard to say — some jihadis may want to encourage public expressions of sympathy with Charlie Hebdo and Geller, to show western Muslims that the decadent infidel sides with those who insult the prophet — but it’s not, as many stupid media types have claimed this week, an attempt to get people at the event killed. On the contrary, it’s a way to show would-be killers that they need to try another tactic if they’re serious about ending blasphemy, or at least ending public interest in it. Take away the risk of bombs going off and Geller’s cartoon contest wouldn’t have gotten any press at all this week. That’s the lesson. Nice to know that one left-wing media personality got it.
“MSNBC’s Chris Hayes Defends Pamela Geller: She Has the ‘Right to Be Horrible,’” by Andrew Kirell, Mediaite, May 8, 2015:
While prominent Fox News stars Bill O’Reilly, Greta Van Susteren, and Geraldo Rivera have repeatedly slammed Pamela Geller and her “Draw Muhammed” contest that was the subject of a thwarted attack, the anti-Islam activist has gotten support from a seemingly unlikely place: Chris Hayes.
The MSNBC primetime host joined his Fox competitor Megyn Kelly in offering a stern defense of Geller’s speech rights, refusing to suggest that her bigoted speech somehow invites violence.
“This idea that this was a provocation — which, yes it was a provocation — but I don’t care if it was it was a provocation if what it’s provoking is attempted murder,” Hayes said Thursday evening, “because I want to live in a society that that is essentially not okay and not tolerated.”
Both Hayes and his guest, Daily Beast columnist Michael Moynihan made it abundantly clear they do not particularly care for Geller’s “odious and cretinous views,” but that such views should never be met with the threat of violence, nor should they ever be used as justification for murdering the views’ holders.
The MSNBC host related the threats against Geller’s speech to a quandary often discovered by media folk: “If we were going to do a segment that was about someone that was advertising on the network and I was kind of on the fence about it, or actually didn’t like the segment, right, I thought it was a little unfair maybe, but then someone came to us and said ‘you can’t do that segment because of an advertiser.’ I’d be like, ‘now we have to do the segment.’ Because I have to — it has to be the case that we can do that segment.”