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Mark Tapson

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Political Correctness, Ft. Hood, and Hollywood

Almost before the echo of gunfire from the massacre at Ft. Hood had faded, the news media launched a pre-emptive rationalization for the slaughter committed by Muslim traitor Nidal Malik Hasan. To divert attention from the shooter’s inconvenient name (“I

'The Simpsons', Islamophobia and CAIR: The Price of Freedom

This past January, London’s Daily Star tabloid announced urgently that an upcoming episode – “the most controversial episode ever”! – of The Simpsons on the Sky1 network “pokes fun at Islam” and “is certain to enrage Muslim fanatics.” As anyone

Honoring September 11th: They Want Us to Forget

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner “We will write our own future, and the future will be what we want it to be.” – Barack Obama In a quiet and seemingly innocuous gesture, President

NBC's Reality TV: To Catch a Terrorist

When I learned of a new NBC-TV series called “The Wanted,” about an elite investigative team tracking down terrorists-at-large, I naturally assumed the terrorists in question would be Homeland Security priorities: white Christian conservatives building abortion clinic bombs in church

Troopathon 2009: In Praise of American Warriors

My father Roger E. Tapson, a former United States Army Staff Sergeant and veteran of World War II, died five years ago and was buried near a small lake in the rolling, pastoral grounds of the Dallas-Ft. Worth National Cemetery

The Whitewashing of Soraya M.

While Iranian-American protesters packed streetcorners in Westwood last Saturday afternoon in support of the revolution currently playing out in the streets of Tehran, an historical drama about stoning in Iran got underway at the Los Angeles Film Festival mere blocks

Getting Real About Torture

Since our country’s having a heated conversation about torture, and especially since that conversation seems certain to devolve into a parade of politicized, self-flagellating show trials that will broadcast our divided weakness to the world, it’s time to get some

The Post-American President

As President Obama takes his victory lap abroad, the cheerleading media line up to shake their pompoms. The Huffington Post says “this is what real diplomacy looks like.” Slate calls it “the return of statecraft.” Here’s another way to describe

Mr. President: War Is Not A 'Struggle' Or 'Situation'

First, President Obama jettisoned the admittedly empty and useless phrase “war on terror,” a label which pleased pretty much no one, primarily because it didn’t specify an enemy; it’s often been pointed out that the phrase was like calling World

Hollywood Goes to Iran

Inspired perhaps by President Obama’s “unclenched hand” approach to reaching out to “countries that don’t like us very much,” as his former opponent John McCain tepidly used to put it, an unofficial delegation from Hollywood’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts

The Worst Form of Terrorism

Valentine’s Day was the 20th anniversary of the death fatwa issued against The Satanic Verses novelist Salman Rushdie by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, whose stern expression glowered down from many a wall-sized banner throughout his country, and whose declaration, “There is