Extremist Pamela Geller appeared yet again on the Hannity show tonight. But this time, she faced a real challenge from Fox’s Juan Williams. And Geller lost it.
All this week, Geller has been on the Hannity show where she has been presented as some kind of free speech champion for her anti-Muslim “Draw the Prophet” stunt. This time, Hannity’s goal seemed to be using her to attack the Obama administration for not protecting her from the threats she’s been getting since.
“Neither the FBI nor the Department of Homeland Security has reached out to investigate this threat, much less offer protection for her in any way,” Hannity complained. I have yet to hear him utter a peep of concern about how Geller deliberately endangered the safety and well-being of the residents of Garland, Texas, where her event was held, nor that of the security guard who was shot before the gunmen were killed by a police officer.
But Hannity's plan for the segment went by the wayside as Williams said, early on, that while he unequivocally stands behind free speech, Geller is no free speech heroine.
WILLIAMS: Journalists – legitimate journalists – cannot function, even people who are satirical like Charlie Hebdo, in a world in which you are threatened with death for what you have to say.
I will say this, though. I think if you want to have a serious conversation here about Ms. Geller, that she’s like a pyromaniac who goes before the judge and says, “Oh, yeah, we’re setting those fires just to see how fast the fire department could respond.”
That was not the kind of free speech Hannity was looking for. He interrupted to accuse Williams of blaming the victim. But Williams retorted that the victim was the security officer who got shot (whom Williams erroneously said had died).
Williams went on to distinguish Geller from authors like Salman Rushdie “who was doing literature.” Geller, on the other hand, “was doing nothing but intentionally trying to provoke this reaction,” Williams said.
Geller fumed. “The idea that I’m provocative,” she laughably protested. “No. Murdering cartoonists is provocative.” She then began ranting about what she thinks of as her noble work “opposing sharia and jihad.” Here’s some of that work, via Southern Poverty Law Center:
Geller uses her website to publish her most revolting insults of Muslims: She posted (and later removed) a video implying that Muslims practiced bestiality with goats and a cartoon depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammad with a pig’s face (observant Muslims do not eat pork). Geller also has denied the genocide of Bosnian Muslims by Serbian forces in Srebrenica – calling it the “Srebrenica Genocide Myth,” even though the Serbian government itself issued a state apology for the massacre. She wrote, “Westerners are admitting to their role in something that didn’t happen, and digging their own graves.”
… In February 2011, she spoke favorably of Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s forced relocation and genocide of Chechen Muslims after World War II, arguing – wrongly – that they were allied with Adolf Hitler. Historians say Chechens were fighting to preserve their own freedom and culture.
“It’s the media that has created these myths about me,” Geller insisted.
“I think you are about self-promotion, Pam Geller. You’re not about the real cause of free speech!” Williams replied.
Geller retaliated by accusing Williams of “appeasing jihad terror” and “enforcing sharia law… by making me the bad guy.”
But Williams got the last word: “You are hurting our cause, is what you are doing. You are hurting people who say sharia law is wrong by generating sympathy for these people who are so crazy.”
Well done, Mr. Williams. Well done.
By the way, I have yet to see “free speech” Hannity hold up any of the Muhammad cartoons he thinks are so terrific and important.
Watch the false bravado above, from the May 7 Hannity.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
We watch Fox so you don't have to!
