NY Times Duped Again

A group of elderly men dressed in poorly fitted hollywood outfits managed to convince the NY Times that they represented the World's Great Religions, and thus were able to completely dupe reporters Laurie Goodstein and Greg Myre into a front page story in the Thursday, March 31 edition of the paper. "We were just horrified when we realized that these men were not who they said they were," said Ms. Goodstein.

This is not the first time that the paper of record for the geographic state of the United States has been plagued by errors of judgement.

You may remember that the Times also reported that WMD existed in Iraq, and that had all the votes been counted in Florida, the results of the 2000 election would not have changed.

It is understandable how the Times got those little details wrong, but this time, it is as clear as a west Texas summer sky that these men could not possibly be religious leaders.

In response to an event which is to be held in Jerusalem in August in which the organizers have said that they "will gather people from all over the world to bring a message that is needed throughout the Middle East and beyond: that human rights transcend cultural and ethnic boundaries, that our differences can be respected peacefully, and that love knows no borders",

these fakers responded,

"They are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable," Shlomo Amar, Israel's Sephardic chief rabbi, said yesterday at a news conference in Jerusalem attended by Israel's two chief rabbis, the patriarchs of the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian churches, and three senior Muslim prayer leaders. "It hurts all of the religions. We are all against it."

Another one of the pranksters, Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a dressed up Sufi sheik, added: "We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty. This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem."

The organizers state in their literature that "Jerusalem is one of the cradles of Western and Middle Eastern civilization, but its glittering history has been overshadowed by its contemporary strife. In a city – and indeed, a world – where ethnic and religious tensions have become commonplace, it is easy for people to forget their common humanity, to neglect the basic human rights to dignity and freedom."

Another faker from America who helped bring together the opposition to the event called "Love without Borders" was a so called Rabbi Yehuda Levin, of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, which says it represents more than 1,000 American Orthodox rabbis. At the news conference in Jerusalem, he called the festival "the spiritual rape of the Holy City."

He said, "This is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land."

Had the reporters done a little home work, they would have realized that the leaders of the world's great religions would not gather together to practice HATE. And if they did, they would not have their picture taken for Christ sake. I mean, I've seen pictures of hate meetings before where guys had hoods on, but they didn't exactly want their God and the whole NY Times world to see them practicing their work.

The real leaders of the World's Great Religions would gather together to help end war and violence and famine.

They would work together to end poverty and disease.

They would work together to steer the earthfamily away from destruction.

They would work together to teach their flocks about nonviolence.

They would teach peace and they would perfect their love.

They wouldn't care if some peculiar bunch of people wanted to parade down the street in their own funny outfits.

Besides, look at their outfits.

Besides the totally unbelievable Unity through Hate theme of these religious impersonators, the reporters should have known that the guy in the black hood got his outfit straight out of the Star War III wardrobe, and that the guy to the right was the greedy king in the seventh Voyage of Sinbad movie. The guy to his left is clearly reaching into his pocket to sell the King impersonator guy a watch, or erecta or whatever.

And come on, even the reporters could not identify the guy to the far right.

I guess it is true that the far right is not knowable these days.

A retraction from the Times is pending.




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