What If They Gave A Quran Burniing And Nobody Came

Just One Minute - President Obama follows Sarah Palin's lead in condemning the Quran burning slated for Sept 11.

Left unremarked in the Times coverage - just what is the culpability and responsibility of the media in covering this stunt? The church hosting the Quran bonfire has all of fifty members and is not anyone's idea of mainstream. Why are these Quran crackpots being given a platform to hold our national security hostage and endanger our troops?

OK, part of the answer is that this started as a lovely opportunity for the liberal media to bash some crazed righties. Fun's fun, but if the media is so worried about this, they might wonder why they feel obliged to cover it. Will CNN be broadcasting live from the bonfire? I bet they will. But if fifty people gathered to demand a look at Obama's birth certificate (or Kerry's military records!), they would be ignored as crazy but not incendiary. Or, closer to home, this is the same media that refused to publish the Mohammed cartoons that started riots in Europe. Deep-sixing stories that don't fit their narrative is what these people do for a living - why not bury this one?

Some crackpot dreamed up a stunt that the liberal media loved, and now they don't know how to get off the tiger. Well done.

FWIW, my recollection is that many sports broadcasters have a policy of cutting away from the field when some fool of a "fan" runs onto it, in order not to reward that misbehavior with attention. A similar judgment would be appropriate here.