To be sure, Sylvain Cypel does not call Pamela Geller "a" racist upfront (he is not using the noun for a person, i.e., for Pam), he calls the Defeat Jihad ads that the Atlas Shrugs blogger has put up in New York's subway "racist" (using the adjective for a thing, i.e., for Pam's ad campaign), which, when you think about it, amounts to just about the same thing. Indeed, that is certainly the idea when the title of his Le Monde article reads How It Came About That Racist Ads Could Appear on New York's Subway (something the heading itself suggests is outrageous, with the article indeed adding that her rhetoric "goes beyond the outrageous" and pointing out — with approval — that such a thing could never occur in France).
Interestingly enough, the title of the dead tree edition is Anti-Muslim Ads in the New York Subway (subscription needed), which also happens to be reflected in the html address of the article with the longer ("racist"-in-the) title (http://www.lemonde.fr/ameriques/article/2012/09/25/des-pubs-antimusulmans-dans-le-metro-de-new-york_1765359_3222.html). But what can that mean if only that the la(te)st update made to the article was to change the word "anti-Muslim" in the dead tree version to "racist" on the internet? Actually, my own hunch is that the main problem for the Le Monde editors was space, in that Sylvain Cypel's title was too long, for pure printing purposes (one of his two mid-article headings was also left out of the paper version), and so they had to write a shorter version. (It would be interesting to find out from Pam if Sylvain Cypel or another Le Monde journalist actually contacted her or if — my hunch — they just wrote the story from news reports.)
In any case: we know what's coming… don't we? "Mrs. Geller" will be identified as someone whose "specialty" is "exacerbating passions"; a person who was "previously a great admirer of the Serb criminal Radovan Karadzic"; and someone who is, "with David Horowitz and Robert Spencer, of the Jihad Watch website, one of the leaders in the United States of the anti-Muslim (and/or of the anti-Arab, according to the circumstances) movement". Needless to say, Sylvain Cypel mentions that "by the way, Mr. Spencer was named by Anders Behring Breivik, the author of the Oslo massacre in July 2011, as one of his sources of inspiration." And the article ends with perhaps the most damning information of all: Pamela Geller was once a regular guest on (horrors) Fox News!
As for the news that anti-Israel posters exist all around New York and that (unlike those ads) Pam's anti-jihad ads are being defaced and destroyed, Sylvain Cypel, in typical MSM fashion, omits that entirely. Indeed, the reactions of his Le Monde readers, like the the love letters that Pam gets, seems to bear out Pam's conclusion:
The media is fetishizing the destruction and defacement of our anti-jihad ads. The media calls our accurate ads "controversial" or "inflammatory." But they offer no such criticism of the criminals who are destroying them. This is the morally inverted state of the world. Truth is inflammatory. Destroying private property? Not so much.
The vandalism, of course, validates my ad, yet again.
The destroying of our ads is nothing more than criminal activity. In a rational society, it would be looked down upon, but more importantly, the defacement is a metaphor for this entire conversation. Hundreds and hundreds of anti-Israel posters ran all over the country. Not one was defaced. One anti-jihad poster goes up, and it's defaced within an hour, while its creator faces defamation, smears and libel. Islamic supremacists and leftist thugs criminally defaced these ads within an hour. This is a physical manifestation of the entire conversation, or lack thereof. Anyone who speaks about jihad and sharia is attacked, defamed, destroyed -- just like these ads. This is exactly what’s happening in the media regarding jihad coverage in general. Anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-sharia hate is all over the airwaves, but anyone who dares to speak the truth about Islam and jihad in the media is immediately smeared and defamed. You can't have this conversation in the media, any more than I can present these pro-Israel ads, and receive any semblance of fair treatment.
