Geller Pens Flimsy Hit Piece on Rick Perry

courtesy of Bare Naked Islam

 

I'm so terribly disappointed to see that my friend Pamela Geller seems to have gone completely off her rocker. In an article posted this morning at American Thinker, she concludes that

"Rick Perry must not be the Republican nominee.

Rick Perry must not be President."

 

Here are the two reasons she gives for this drastic assertion:

•  "He is a friend of the Aga Khan, the multimillionaire head of the Ismailis, a Shi'ite sect of Islam that today proclaims its nonviolence but in ages past [we're talking 11th century] was the sect that gave rise to the Assassins."

And "It gets worse" --

• Last March, Perry gave a speech in Dallas in the company of Grover Norquist ...

 

I am all for scrutiny of the candidates, but for anyone to jump from these two statements to the conclusion that "Rick Perry must not be President" seems incredible, incredibly unfortunate and ultimately, incredibly irresponsible.

The man has been governor of Texas for eleven years. Are we to expect that he should never have befriended a single Muslim, nor ever have given a speech "in the company of" Grover Norquist?  Maybe I am naive, but my gosh, how "pure" does a person's record have to be?

The reason that Obama's associations were (and still are) of such deep concern is not because of those associations in and of themselves, but rather because of the PATTERN of which they are part (as well as the total absence of any pattern in the opposite).  

Had Pamela also provided readers with a synopsis of Perry's longstanding support for Israel - including for example, his Defender of Jerusalem award in 2009 - it would have been at least more fair. But in this she has lost sight of fairness.

For my two cents, this is a really flimsy, hysterical hit piece, and to tell you the truth, I would have thought it beneath her.  

(And p.s.,  I'm not too thrilled, either, that this made it past the watchful eyes of her partner Robert Spencer and/or the editors at AT.)

Comments

[Mannie Sherberg]

I couldn't agree more, Yael. We all write silly stuff from time to time, but the Geller piece is both stridently and stupidly silly -- and it should, upon sober second thought, embarrass Pam Geller. The bit about the Assassins caught my eye, too. That was exactly comparable to writing "Benjamin Netanyahu is the leader of the Israelis, the same people who gave rise to the Sicarii" -- completely ignoring the fact that the Sicarii vanished from history 2,000 years ago. As for Perry being seen in public with Grover Norquist -- you'd have a hard time finding any Republican big-shot who hasn't. Like him or not, Norquist is a player in the GOP, and players get courted by politicians; that's just the way American politics works. If Pam Geller is searching for a candidate who's pure as the driven snow, she might as well stop looking; Rick Perry -- being a mere mortal -- surely has flaws, and those flaws, just as surely, will be exposed in the coming weeks. But let's not expect a GOP candidate who isn't a politician; even Ike, the archetypal "non-political" president, spent plenty of his time politicking -- and he was pretty damn good at it. There is nothing -- simply nothing -- in Geller's diatribe to make one suspect that Rick Perry is sympathetic to the jihad or fails to recognize the jihadi threat. This column is not extremism in defense of liberty -- this is extremism in defense of silliness. If we hear enough of this nonsense, we may yet hear the "news alert": "Barack Obama has just been re-elected president of the United States."

[Rick Richman]

Thank you, Yael and Mannie.

[Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish blog]

I'm afraid that I have to respectfully differ and suggest that Perry, like every candidate, deserves close scrutiny on this issue.

[Safti]

Oy gevalt. I'm back to Michelle...I think.

[Hope]

Although I appreciate much of Geller's work, I usually take what she says with more than a few grains of salt. Her article about Perry is an example of this, and a big disappointment to me. Her tactic actually reminds me a lot of how LGF smears its opponents, including Geller herself. One thing that I've noticed about her website is that all Muslims - men, women, and children - are evil until they have been killed in an honor killing. It's as if "the only good Muslim is a dead Muslim." I will take Rick Perry over that kind of attitude any day.