{"id":611,"date":"2010-03-16T08:28:34","date_gmt":"2010-03-16T08:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/cityofbrass\/2010\/03\/health-care-jihadists.html"},"modified":"2010-03-16T08:28:34","modified_gmt":"2010-03-16T08:28:34","slug":"health-care-jihadists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/2010\/03\/health-care-jihadists.html","title":{"rendered":"“health care jihadists”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest salvo in the Republicans’ War on Muslims comes as a two-fer – simultaneously an attempt to delegitimize the health care debate and the use of a cheap stereotype of radical Islam, in the form of a cartoon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Islamophobic<\/a><\/p>\n

There seems to be an affinity for cartoons among Islamophobes. And that’s exactly what the cartoon represents, pure unadulteraded JAFI<\/a>-ism. The imagery of a suicide bomber is intended to evoke a visceral response – it’s a cheap way of scoring a political point by trotting out a scarecrow of something recognizably EVIL, and then equating it to whatever happens to be the target of the GOP’s latest 5-Minute Hate. It even manages a sly allusion to the Obama muslim smear<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It’s about as honest a commentary on the health reform debate as Sarah Palin’s “Death Panels”<\/a> remark (which earned her a “Pants on Fire” designation<\/a> from Politifact). The real threat to the American people is if the bill does not pass, and another 40-50,000 Americans die every year<\/a> for lack of health insurance coverage, and the poorest of us on Medicaid – which pays for half of all childbirths! – are dropped by their doctors<\/a> due to continual budget cuts on reimbursement rates. And the real health care jihadists are the conservatives who are so desperate to kill the bill that they employ the language of fear – fear of muslims, fear of tyranny, fear of immigrants – to try and argue against the basic moral principles of social justice, central to Christianity<\/a> and Islam. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest salvo in the Republicans’ War on Muslims comes as a two-fer – simultaneously an attempt to delegitimize the health care debate and the use of a cheap stereotype of radical Islam, in the form of a cartoon: There seems to be an affinity for cartoons among Islamophobes. And that’s exactly what the cartoon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[107,320,100,25,26,32],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-republican-fitna","tag-conservatism","tag-health-reform","tag-islamophobia","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-republicans"],"yoast_head":"\n“health care jihadists” - City of Brass<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"“health care jihadists” - City of Brass\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The latest salvo in the Republicans’ War on Muslims comes as a two-fer – simultaneously an attempt to delegitimize the health care debate and the use of a cheap stereotype of radical Islam, in the form of a cartoon: There seems to be an affinity for cartoons among Islamophobes. 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City of Brass is his weblog, which was founded in 2002 under the name UNMEDIA. He is a co-founder of the annual Brass Crescent Awards. The name City of Brass refers to the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights, and the poem by Rudyard Kipling of the same name: Here was a people whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion; And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust. -- Thousand and One Nights, Story of the City of Brass IN A land that the sand overlays, the ways to her gates are untrod, A multitude ended their days whose fates were made splendid by God, Till they grew drunk and were smitten with madness and went to their fall, And of these is a story written: but Allah Alone knoweth all! -- Rudyard Kipling, The City of Brass (1909)"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/165"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/cityofbrass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}