I'm really amazed at AOL's articles these past few days. Usually AOL is filled with crap, but this recent stuff is really good. Anyway:

Here's the article.

Key Quotes:

When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly…Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver's licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. “What good is identifying them?” he asked. “You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans.”

Scary. But then:

At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual identification of “the threat in our midst” would alleviate the public's fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. It drew out reactions that are not uncommon in post-9/11 America.

“I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,” he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL, which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland.

“For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people's bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver's license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It's beyond disgusting.

”Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen … We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous."

What do you guys think? Personally I think this was ingenious.

i say hell yea!
props to the man for showing how ignorant people are

That is such a brilliant scheme. Fuck with people and expose their idiocy. Sorta like what Borat does with anti-semitism, only less rofltastic.

ridiculous. It just goes to show how short-minded a lot of Americans are. We choose to forget errors instead of remembering them and learning from them. Ignorant pigs

I hadn't heard of this, but personally I think it's brilliant. I would've loved to have heard it. I'm quite interested in the ways people seem to ignore WWII, and anybody else who finds this as interesting as me might want to check out a book called The Wave. Love that book. Seriously.

let's not jump to conclusion and say that most amercians feel that way. it probably shows how uneducated his listers are…or people who listen to talk radio, personally i rather listen to music. so who listens to talk radio? people who rather be fed information than actually obtain it themselves through different sources.

Whoa. Crazy. Weird, though…I've never heard of that guy, and my parents keep WMAL on in the car most of the time. You'd think I would at least hear an ad for his show like most of the others have. Maybe he's one of those massively early shows that plays at like, 4am, and gets all the weird people -anyway-. I'll check it out. I could just be ignorant :p

Apparently he's Sunday afternoon. Interesting. There goes my “hey, maybe it's just whackos in the wee hours of the morning – America's not that fucked up!” theory. This is why I shouldn't even pretend to be an optimist :/

http://wmal.com/showdj.asp?DJID=19978

Here's a link to his site about it, with a recording of the show. I haven't listened yet, but I want to.

subcultured
let's not jump to conclusion and say that most amercians feel that way. it probably shows how uneducated his listers are…or people who listen to talk radio, personally i rather listen to music. so who listens to talk radio? people who rather be fed information than actually obtain it themselves through different sources.

In the same way that we shouldn't jump to conclusions about the reactions of most americans to this, I don't think we should jump to conclusions about people who listen to talk radio. Honestly, how are people supposed to ‘obtain’ information, without it being ‘fed’ to us, apart from being at the scene of something? Wither it is radio, television , magazine, or internet, we are always being fed information and always through different sources. Think of September 11th - the first many people would have heard of it would have been on the radio. The truth is that radio is a good medium for getting information, and talk radio is even better if you want to hear others opinions.

I just popped back, and wanted to add to my initial reaction that this was a great experiment, it must have been quite risky for the radio host. He's probably lost at least a few listeners, such as the people that called in. But apart from that, even people who were against what he was saying might feel ‘betrayed’ and change stations. Especially with his comment “I can't believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,”. Is it a big station in america? I haven't heard of it before, but I doubt I've heard of any american radio stations.

No way, Talk radio is always for morons. :)

-not an entriely serious opinion there, I just HATE “Talk” radio if it's got some monkey on there expressing opionins on news events. I don't mind intelligent interviews, or panels where they have a range of selected people who who are experts in certain fields discussing the issues, but not some single idiot DJ who just has an opinion on everything.
(Phone-ins are MUCH, MUCH worse).

If I want that I'll just listen to myself, friends, or family. I turn on the radio for entertainment and knowledge, not opinion.

If a talk radio show is popular enough - and I think Joe Klein is nationwide - then they can select the calls they want to air.

If you start talking anti-muslim stuff, you'll get a bunch of people agreeing and a bunch of people disagreeing. Who makes it to air is up to the call screener/host.

What I'm saying is that a radio talk show isn't designed to display a good cross-section of America. It's as real as reality tv.

looking for information from different sources from differnt point of views and making up your own mind would be a more intellegent way to do it.

Ronson
If a talk radio show is popular enough - and I think Joe Klein is nationwide - then they can select the calls they want to air.

If you start talking anti-muslim stuff, you'll get a bunch of people agreeing and a bunch of people disagreeing. Who makes it to air is up to the call screener/host.

What I'm saying is that a radio talk show isn't designed to display a good cross-section of America. It's as real as reality tv.

True, and we all know Reality TV is bullshit, but this was still a good way to show there is anti-Muslim sentiment.

ccs1989
but this was still a good way to show there is anti-Muslim sentiment.

What is really sad is you can take what you just said and take out Muslim then replace it with anything you want: minority, ethnicity, religious group, political party, etc and you'll get the same kind of responses from different people no matter what country you're in.

I listened to the radio show. Just want to point out a couple things.

While people called in and said they thought armbands for muslims or some sort of tattoo were a great idea, there were other people who called in and said he was off his rocker. So, its not a sign of most of America.

But, if you want to know what most of America can do, just look at the internment of Japanese Americans. Most of America *did* agree with that, but in all fairness stuff like that is the fear of the moment and people don't think through the consequences.

Just like you won't see Glenn Beck talk about Timothy McVeigh. Beck is a big fan of racial profiling, but seems to forget that before 9/11 the largest terrorist attack on American soil was done by McVeigh and friends.

I think distance makes us selfish. Its why the Phillipine Occupation, which was a pretty bloody occupation by the US (liberation from those evil Spaniards, don't you know) was seen as a good thing {TM}.

I visited Dachau, and the marketing that went on to make Dachau swallowable to the German public was … well, eerily echoing the things we hear today. Its all about safety and prosperity, while the stress positions, the torture, and the death are all hidden behind the curtain.

ccs1989

Ronson
If a talk radio show is popular enough - and I think Joe Klein is nationwide - then they can select the calls they want to air.

If you start talking anti-muslim stuff, you'll get a bunch of people agreeing and a bunch of people disagreeing. Who makes it to air is up to the call screener/host.

What I'm saying is that a radio talk show isn't designed to display a good cross-section of America. It's as real as reality tv.

True, and we all know Reality TV is bullshit, but this was still a good way to show there is anti-Muslim sentiment.

If he said the same about jews or blacks or even caucasians you would STILL have a bunch of people calling in to tell him he is right and that it doesn't go far enough… All over the world (including in america) there are people with such sentiments towards others. It especially makes sense they found such callers considering the size of his audience and their ability to screen calls.

Frankly, it is natural and reasonable that there is anti islam sentiment, because of the slew of islam extremist based terrorism happening all over the world, just as there was anti christian sentiment amoung non christians during the days of the inquisition.
You would be INSANE to call christianity a religion of peace and love during the days of the inquisition, just as you would to do so to islam today.
The trick is to distinguish amoung dangerous fanatics and average people. Could islam “get over it” so to speak like christianity did? yes. But don't let poltical correctness blind you to the danger it poses TODAY. just like most christians would burn you at the stake for being a witch (pagen) at one point…

The “solution” (sounds like the final solution doesn't it? thats cause the way some present it it IS the same) isn't to put identifying marks on muslims, concentration camps, and so on; its to infiltrate local houses of worship and identify imams (muslim clergy) that preaches “death to infidels”. Don't preach genocide, But don't for a moment assume that there is absolutely no threat whatsoever. The saddest part is that in most Muslim ruled countires anyone who speaks AGAINST the idea of jihad is executed by their peers for being an “Infidel Sympathizer”.

Which brings to the second part of controlling the violence. Providing better protection to Muslim public figures who speak out against jihad. They tend to get murdered.

Can you give a source about the anti-christian sentiment during the inquisition?

Christianity didn't get over it, actually. Its a bit more subtle, but there are plenty of Christianists to go around. You do remember Eric Rudolph, right? If not, Google is your friend.

taltamir
The saddest part is that in most Muslim ruled countires anyone who speaks AGAINST the idea of jihad is executed by their peers for being an “Infidel Sympathizer”.

I wonder where you get that? Jihad is a bit more complicated than “holy War”. Politics in the middle East specifically, (and NOT all Muslim nations by a LONG shot), are rather turbulent mainly because of things the West has done to them, not because of Islam. Britian, France and Italy have a lot to answer for what they did around the time of WW1 and after. The US, Britain and Germany could be said to be resposnible for the current problems through their roles in the creation of Israel. The US and Israel are major players in the current strife, but we only tend to name Syria and Iran… Islam isn't the problem, it's people who only care about their own narrow interests and only want to understand a tiny little part of the story. -that includes people from everywhere!