The American Spectator

A recent item in the New York Times (January 23) highly critical of the NYPD’s use of a documentary film, “The Third Jihad,” produced in large measure thanks to Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes, did not, evidently, receive the usual Bronx cheers in the conservative press. This may be an argument to put an end to the undemocratic primary system with its gotchas and sound bites caricaturing serious debates and discussions of ideas and public issues, which hogs all our attention. Or it may be that finally Republicans in general and conservatives in particular are fed up with calling out the Times and the rest of the unconscious media for their sins of commission and omission and sheer stupidity.

The Times got exercised over “The Third Jihad,” which documents the Islamist fighting style and discusses the overall aims of this radical movement, already in January 2011; but the Great Grey Lady let the matter rest when the NYPD assured her it was merely testing different teaching materials. A year later, the Times discovers that, actually, New York’s Finest continued to use the doc film. The paper of record assures its readers that it is a nasty and Islamophobic film. It shows terrorists killing children, as well as grownups. 

Perhaps to assure its readers of the terrible effect “the Third Jihad” is bound to have on policemen charged with foiling attacks on New York and its residents — including its many Muslim residents — the Times mentions that the board of the sponsoring foundation, the Clarion Fund, includes a former deputy defense secretary in the Reagan administration and a wealthy supporter of Israel who supports Newt Gingrich. QED, in Timesland. 

Not a word in the Times piece about NYPD’s success in preventing a repeat of 9/11. However, it quotes someone at the Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank associated with the New York University School of law which promotes such causes as democracy and which got the poop on the Department’s use of the film through a FOIA request, as saying, “The training of the world’s largest city police force is an important question.”