Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

The End of the Jill Carroll Jihad

From bloomers to jilbab, women know your place.

In a video recorded before she was freed, and posted
by her captors on an Islamist website, Carroll spoke out against the US military
presence in Iraq.

But in a weekend statement the freelance journalist, a hostage since January,
said the video was made under threat.

Her editor, Richard Bergenheim of the Christian Science
Monitor, said three men were pointing guns at her.

“During my last night in captivity, my captors
forced me to participate in a propaganda video,” Carroll, 28, said in
a statement read by Bergenheim.

“They told me I would be released if I co-operated.

“I was living in a threatening environment and
wanted to go home alive so I agreed.

“Things I was forced to say while captive are
now being taken by some as an accurate reflection of my personal views.

“They are not.”

Hostage
lied at gunpoint

It seems Republicans don't like the free press unless they're
bound, gagged and garroted. God forbid you're held hostage and want to save
your own neck. You'd be better off dead than coming home alive.

Just ask Debbie Schlussel, the most rabid of all the right-wing
reactionaries on all things Jill.

It seems clothing really does enrage women against one another,
which is just the latest twist on a very old tradition.

Women hate strippers because they don't have any clothes. Other
women don't like women who wear pants. Cleavage shouldn't be shown. Bikinis
are verboten. Sexuality should be buried. But God forbid you're an American
woman caught wearing a jilbab.

This is nothing new in America. Conservatives have been attacking
women for what we wear for centuries, propriety more important than anything.
It goes back to bloomers, corsets and bustles.

However, this is a first. That a conservative Republican woman
would attack a female hostage who said what she had to in order to save her
own life is beyond all sanity. But does anyone believe that what set Ms. Schlussel
off was what Jill Carroll was wearing? Jill's costume was an affront. It touched
off the furor and was the foundation for everyone's fulmination.

Image is all in America, especially for conservatives, and especially
for women. Wear the wrong thing and you're an immediate outcast, not taken seriously,
castigated for your political incorrectness.

I've watched with utter amazement the furor spewing out of right-wing
bloggers over Jill Carroll being alive, instead of found gang raped, mutilated
and beheaded. Thank God at least some Republicans, like my C-SPAN cohort yesterday,
Rick
Moran, have shown a sense of perspective and common decency.

Joe Gandelman has been the best read on this free press soap opera
saga, egged on by the likes of Debbie Schlussel. His post yesterday
has all you need to make a judgment on just how badly the right-wing blogosphere
over-reacted on this one, as they finally turned fire on one another. More from
Joe here.

But Debbie Schlussel's jihad against Jill Carroll harkens back
to days of old. Women attacking women is nothing new. For a long time females
fought over everything, never having a kind word to say to one another, always
distrusting, mainly because we were fighting for men who were our only means
of having a roof over our head, not to mention acceptance in society. Thankfully,
the era of sisterhood has changed, except in Ms. Schlussel's neighborhood.

Jill Carroll wearing a jilbab, looking Arab-like or Islamic, while spouting
lies to save her soul, was seen as affront to Ms. Schlussel, the starting point of Schlussel's cascading conservative screeds. That Ms.
Carroll has a deep respect for Arab and Islamic culture was the final nail. How dare any
American journalist understand the plight of another, especially if that other is Arab.

If you're a female journalist reporting the news, without the
proper respect for the Republican proclivity of all things, well, Republican,
you'd be better off dead.

Jill Carroll reports on things Republicans don't want to hear
about in Iraq. She's independent. She's unbiased, which means she reports the
truth about Arabs and Islam, including things that piss the president's party off. That's
the rub. Arabs and anything Islamic are evil to Republicans. They try to sound inclusive, but at
the bottom lies, not only their hatred
for the free press, but their distrust for Arabs and all things ethnic and
other. (Look at the immigration issue.)

That an American woman would wear Arab or Islamic dress and say whatever
she needed to stay alive is a double insult. Rhetorical firing squad, shoot!

One can only hope the proof that Carroll lied to save her own neck
at gunpoint will end this sorry saga. But I doubt it will end the Republicans's
hatred for the free press, or the right-wing's racism towards all things Arab or Islamic,
or the right's hatred for modern women stepping out into the world to bring
back truth that doesn't fit their party line. Propaganda is all Republicans
understand now. Woe to any reporter who chooses a different path. To tell the
truth to power is now high treason.

Ms. Schlussel and her ilk should be ashamed, that is if they had any conscience
at all.

Next stop for conservatives, women fighting in combat. Know your place, missy, or
die.