Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Dinesh D'Souza Is D'efinitely D'Looney

Well, to anyone who isn't familiar with Dinesh D'Souza, here's a brief intro. He's a Catholic from India who moved to America, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in English from Dartmouth University in 1983. He was a real prig, even at Dartmouth, because he thought he was doing everyone a favor, by publishing the names and personal correspondences of members of the Gay Student Aliance in The Dartmouth Review, which was editor of. The controversy was not that he outed gays who were in the closet, or that he frequently referred to gays as "Sodomites", but that he or people close to him spied on these students, and stole some of their notes to each other, some from their dorm rooms. D'Souza denied allegations that the notes were stolen. When The Nation published an article claiming that D'Souza had stolen the correspondence, D'Souza wrote asking for a retraction, calling the piece "lies from the loony left", and sending articles which he said would clear his name. But bizarrely, the articles he included showed that the claim was true - they included a piece written under his byline that featured excerpts from gay students' correspondence.

Though he probably thought that he was doing the community a favor by showing that these gay students were planing on doing something shockingly offensive and monstrous -- such as organizing to stand up for gay rights (oh, how terrible!) -- he was the one who was perceived by the Dartmouth Community as the shockingly offensive and monstrous one. What a dumbass!

If that wasn't bad enough, under his editorship, the Dartmouth Review also featured attacks on feminists and Women's Studies. One article, written by Keeney Jones, which D'Souza allowed to be published, said:

"The question is not whether women should be educated at Dartmouth, but whether they should be educated at all."

I guess D'Souza and his friends likes they women barefoot, pregnant, and illiterate. Give the man a white sheet and some corn-pone!

D'Souza criticized the minority admissions policy of the school, as well as printed racist cartoons and articles that were pretty much what one would expect from a KKK newspaper. They once published an article "for black students" that was written in "ebonics", and suggested that black students were illiterate. In another article, William S. Cole, a black music teacher at Dartmouth, was described as "looking like a used brillo pad". The school's vice president of public affairs, at the time, said of the paper, that it had become "outwardly destructive and irresponsible."

With a resume like that, he found his way into another right-wing rant-rag, The Prospect. Under his editorship of that publication, he was frequently criticized for making sexist comments about feminists and the field of Women's Studies, but his coup de grace came when he published an expose of a female student's sex life, who was identified in the article, without even asking her permission. Apparently, the world just had to know the identity of this one student who was practicing adultery, since everyone knows how rare adultery is among college students.

More on D'Souza at Campus Progress.

Even more on Dinesh D'Souza at Sourcewatch.

Still more on Dinesh D'Souza at Media Transparency.

The Creep's own website...

A detailed history of The Dartmouth Review's controversies that I touch on above...

But I digress...

D'Souza has written a new insane rant against the left, one of the many he has written. This time, D'Souza is being blasted by his own ultra-right-wing compatriots. Oddly enough, he's saying what many right-wing whackjobs have already tried to say or have alluded to --that the left in America is responsible for the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center.

Despite the fact that people, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, have already gone on the records as blaming the terrorist attcks on the "Liberals, Feminists, abortionists, and the ACLU", and were immediately criticized by the both left and the right for their idiotic comments, D'Souza seems to ignore this history, and pretty much repeat exactly the same thing, going as far as to write a whole book that elaborates on the notion. This is what this moron has to say:

The left is responsible for 9/11 in the following ways.First, the cultural left has fostered a decadent American culture that angers and repulses traditional societies, especially those in the Islamic world, that are being overwhelmed with this culture.

Hmmm... So let me see. American TV shows and movies, as well as our internet, and some commercial products, are being forced on "traditional societies" in the Islamic world, and overwealming them. You mean those dictatorships and kingdoms, where the media is largely controlled by the government, are allowing "decadent" American shows and commercialism to infect their people? Is that the fault of the left? I mean, who owns most of Hollywood and American mass-media? I believe if you do simple research, you will find that America's media and movie studios are largely owned by billionaires who are conservative.

In addition, the left is waging an aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family and to promote secular values in non-Western cultures. This campaign has provoked a violent reaction from Muslims who believe that their most cherished beliefs and institutions are under assault."

Oh, so the promotion of democracy and free enterprise, as well as giving people equal rights under the law is enraging the Islamic world, huh?

Gee, that's really funny, because I thought that incidents like the 1953 U.S. planned and financed coup of Iran, and the ousting of it's democratically elected government, in which the USA, under the conservative Eisenhower administration, placed the dictator, Shah Pahlavi, into power. I thought that the Shah had spent nearly 30 years opressing conservative Muslims in Iran, particularly the Wahabi sect, which is the sect that spawned both Ayatohlah Khomeni and Osama Bin Laden.

You mean there's no chance that America's financial and military support of Israel, who went to war with several Islamic nations, including Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, couldn't possibly have left some bad feelings towards America in Islamic nations?

I suppose that when Ronald Reagan decided that we should support Iraq in their war with Iran, then play both sides of the coin by selling arms to the Iranians in exchange for hostages, that it didn't create any sour feelings or animocity among Islamics, either.

So D'Souza is saying that despite all the military actions that conservative US administrations have engaged in or supported against various Islamic nations, despite supporting Israel and it's wars against Islamic states, and it's internal opression of Islamic people, and despite having a sort of two-faced policy like we had with the Iran-Iraq war, that what conservative Islamics really hate about America are the liberals and their filthy culture of free-wheeling, free-love, women's lib, abortion, wanton blasphemy. That may not be his exact words, but that's what it seems like he's saying!

D'souza continues:

Further, the cultural left has routinely affirmed the most vicious prejudices about American foreign policy held by radical factions in the Muslim world,

Huh? Did I read correctly? Various Bush administration officials calling terrorists "Islamofascists" is not a vicious prejudice against muslims? Our military and other conservatives routinely calling them "rag-heads" is not a prejudice? Various people on the religious right, making critical comments about Islam, doesn't count as a vicious prejudice? Pat Robertson, claiming that "Islam, at its core, teaches violence" isn't something that should bother Islamic people? If I said that about Christianity (that it teaches violence), Christians would scream bloody murder. What planet is D'Souza living on?

D'Souza continues:

and then it has emboldened those factions to attack the United States with the firm conviction that “America deserves it” and that they can do so with relative impunity.

Hold on a second -- Didn't Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell proclaim that the 9-11 destruction of the world trade center was God's judgement against America, for having The ACLU, liberals, pagans, and gays in our country?


Really? They thought they could do it with impunity, which is why they were in hiding, I suppose. Since they thought they could just attack with impunity, I suppose that's why they acted in secret, and why it took so long for them to plan, finance, and carry it out -- they were so secretive and always on the run, always hiding from us, because they thought they could just walk into the country and just get away with it. And this is allegedly the fault of liberals who criticized US Foreign policy that led to previous events like the 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, in which Ronald Reagan's response was to pull out of Lebanon altogether. I suppose it never occured to D'Sousa that pulling out all of our forces after getting bombed doesn't count as something that might embolden terrorists into thinking that they had us on the run, and that we'd run away again if attacked in a similar way.

So he continues:


Absent these conditions, Osama Bin Laden would never have contemplated the 9/11 attacks, nor would the United States today be the target of Islamic radicals throughout the world. Thus when leading figures on the left say, “We made them do this to us,” in a sense they are correct. They are not correct that “America” is to blame. But their statement is true in that their actions and their America are responsible for fostering Islamic anti-Americanism in general and 9/11 in particular.

Can you believe this guy? In spite of US Government actions against Islamic countries, in spite of supporting Iraq's war against Iran, and then selling weapons to Iran, in spite of supporting dictators who opressed Islamic people, in spite of supporting Israel in it's wars against Islamic countries, and opression of Palestinians, in spite of having conservative religious nut-jobs on television condemning Islam, and 50 years of foreign policy that has been two-faced and seemingly caring more about money than anything else, the people to blame are not the conservative administrations, military generals, policy makers, or those directly involved in those things. We have to blame the ACLU, Feminists, Abortionists, Atheists, and Liberals for promoting our "culture of secularism and free love"!

In spite of all the dead Muslims, including about 1.2 Million Iraqis, who owe their deaths to American-made weapons or governments financed by American administrations, the fault is allegedly hippies, pinkos, atheists, secularists, and the ACLU. I guess I missed something...

Dear Mr. D'Souza, if you ever read this, please seek professional psychiatric help before it's too late. This childish irrational rhetoric of yours, and your entire history since college, suggests to me that you're seriously delusional, and possibly chemically imbalanced.

Seek professional help, please....