You can relax now: “Barack and Michelle Obama have their Ramadan plans ready,” Esquire reported happily on Wednesday, so you don’t have to worry anymore that the Muslim holy month might catch the First Couple of the Media Elites unprepared. The Obama have “announced a new season of their Higher Ground podcast called “Tell Them, I Am,” which will feature a collection of narratives from Muslim voices.”
True to form for the left, the podcast will be loaded to the brim with “diversity,” except in any of the ways that it actually counts. The “Tell Them, I Am” podcast, which is set for release on Spotify, will “feature stories from activists, artists, actors, performers and athletes,” all of whom no doubt all think the same way. Esquire, out there working hard for a pat on the head from Barack and Michelle, says that it is “promising to be thought-provoking and reflect the best that human nature has to offer, according to the streamer.”
That best of human nature, however, will all be Muslims. It could be that at this point the left’s infatuation with Islam has advanced to the point that the Obamas and Spotify can’t conceive of anything showing the best of human nature not being Islamic. The host of the podcast, Misha Euceph, explained: “The stories are universal and the guests are all Muslim. The ultimate goal is for people to feel something, for them to fall in love with the people they’re listening to without ever thinking about who they are and what they look like.”
Wait, what? We’re supposed to fall in love with them without ever thinking about who they are, and yet they’re all Muslim. The clear subtext here is that Hey, Muslims are people just like you, you bigoted redneck, and so can’t you just stop the hate? This becomes clear when Euceph adds that we will fall in love with them without caring what they look like. The assumptions here are that Americans don’t like Muslims (a baseless generalization) and that they dislike them not only because they’re Muslims, but because they’re “brown.”
Muslims aren’t actually all “brown.” Some are. Some are as white as the racist “Islamophobes” the Obamas’ new podcast is targeting. In reality, there are Muslims of all races, and Islamic jihadis of all races. But it is a staple of the left’s propaganda that opposition to jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women is all about racism from beginning to end, and is not actually motivated by a desire to avoid being blown up and seeing others be blown up, and a desire for society to be based on the idea of equality of rights for all people.
Thus the Obamas, in their truly infinite wisdom, have decided that since we Americans are so persistent in our racism that we voted for Trump (twice), we need to be reminded that Muslims are lovable, even cuddly, despite being Muslim and brown. Trump 2024? Pah! By that time, the “Tell Them, I Am” podcast and the rest of the Left’s propaganda will have convinced us all to forsake our racist idols once and for all and worship the One True Barack. By then, thanks to the Obamas and Misha Euceph, we will all be woke enough to repeat “Islam is peace” as fanatically as the average North Korean sings the praises of Kim Jong-un on command.
The double standard of the left in allowing for itself what it would never allow to its ideological opponents has been noted ad infinitum, but it is on particular display here. Imagine what might have happened if Donald and Melania Trump had launched a podcast featuring Christians, and Christians only, from all walks of life, with the express purpose of compelling you to “fall in love” with them. Spotify would refuse to carry it. Esquire would run a piece about the Trumps’ “Christian nationalism” and “white supremacism,” even if many of the featured guests were non-white and non-American. The establishment media would excoriate Trump anew for “religious chauvinism” and “xenophobia.”
This double standard also proceeds from a core Leftist assumption: the idea that Muslims in the U.S. are uniquely subjected to discrimination and harassment, and so we need podcasts showing us how wonderful they are in order to try to change this climate of “hate.” In reality, FBI hate crime statistics show that attacks on Jews are many times more common than attacks on Muslims, which are decreasing overall. Considering how the leftist media has rushed to blame Christianity for the January 6 “insurrection,” arguably a podcast showcasing lovable Christians might be more needed than the Obamas’ new venture. But no one among the elites has any interest in defending Christians or Christianity. To do so would be just the opposite of woke.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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