Robert Bidinotto has published an article called “High Noon” at Borders which provides an interesting perspective on Borders Bookstores’ recent public relations fiasco.
He is particularly interested in the media’s excuses for not standing up to bullies:
These people proclaim that standing up to Islamists isn’t their responsibility — that it’s the job of the U.S. military or FBI. Yet many of these same media representatives have made careers out of denouncing and opposing the U.S. military and the FBI. They oh-so-bravely expose and denounce military abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo; they very-very-courageously take editorial stands against Bushitler and the CIA, NSA, and Patriot Act, in defense of Our Threatened Civil Liberties; they ever-so-valiantly demand the sacred Constitutional right to publish photos of returning coffins of U.S. troops or degrading images of abused Iraqi prisoners.
And:
Thanks to these traitors to the First Amendment, America is fast becoming Will Kane’s Hadleyville. They more and more resemble the cringing, “civilized” town fathers in that corrupt fictional crossroads: prostrate in spineless supplication before the town bullies, projecting shameful resentment against the Will Kanes whose bravery shows them up for the cowards that they are.
See the full article for more (including an ending that’s fit for Hollywood).