Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, a key leader in the Roman Catholic community, is accusing the New York Times of “duplicity” for running an advertisement that bashes Catholics but stifles similar criticism of Islam.
The controversy developed after the newspaper recently ran an advertisement sponsored by the Freedom from Religion Foundation titled “It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church” and calling itself an “Open Letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics.”
The attack on the Catholic church asked, “Why put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, which excludes half of humanity. Why send your children to parochial schools to be indoctrinated into the next generation of obedient donors and voters? Can’t you see how misplaced your loyalty is after two decades of sex scandals involving preying priests, church complicity, collusion and coverup going all the way to the top. Apparently, you’re like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go.”
So Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com, who has written extensively on Islam’s influence in the U.S., including a bestselling “Stop the Islamization of America,” decided to expose the level of bias in the newspaper.
She created another ad in the same format, with the same message, only this one said, “It’s Time to Quit Islam.”
“Why put up with an institution that dehumanizes women and non-Muslims – fully 9/10ths of humanity? Ask your imam: Does he support Hamas? Hizb’Allah? The destruction of Israel? Does he condemn the slaughter of Christians in Egypt, Paksitan, Nigeria, Iraq, etc. Does he vocally denounce Islamic killings, FGM, forced marriages, child marriage, polygamy? As a ‘moderate” Muslim you tell yourself and the world that you have chucked out the violent doctrine and hateful, oppressive decrees of your religion, and yet you keep identifying with the ideology that threatens liberty for women and menaces freedom by slaughtering, oppressing and subjugating non-Muslims.
“The craven quislings at the New York Times rejected our ad,” Geller reported.
Then in an update, she said:
Bob Christie, senior vice president of corporate communications for the New York Times, just called me and advised me that they would be accepting my ad, but considering the situation on the ground in Afghanistan, now would not be a good time, as they did not want to enflame an already hot situation. They will be reconsidering it for publication in “a few months.”
So I said to Mr. Christie, “Isn’t this the very point of the ad? If you feared the Catholics were going to attack the New York Times building, would you have run that ad?”
Mr. Christie said, “I’m not here to discuss the anti-Catholic ad.”
I said, “But I am, it’s the exact same ad.”
He said, “No, it’s not.”
I said, “I can’t believe you’re bowing to this Islamic barbarity and thuggery. I can’t believe this is the narrative. You’re not accepting my ad. You’re rejecting my ad. You can’t even say it.”
Geller noted she used the “same language” as in the anti-Catholic ad.
“The only difference is, ours was true and what we describe is true. The anti-Catholic ad was written by fallacious feminazis,” she said.
Donohue said the anti-Catholic ad was “vile” and the decision to accept it was a “judgment call.” However, he told Fox News, the refusal to run Geller’s ad, at the standard $39,000 rate, reveals an agenda.
“It shows the disparate treatment and the duplicity of The New York Times,” he told Fox. “You can trash some religions, like Roman Catholicism, with impunity, but you cannot trash Islam?”
In a Catholic League statement, he said, “We need to have a national discussion on the way the elite media extend a privileged position to some sectors of our society, while failing to extend the same protections to other sectors.”
Susan Duclos at the WakeupAmericans blog wrote, “A look at the New York Times net revenue and net income over the last two years, via their Income Statement from Yahoo Finance, says it all.”
The line was linked to a posting showing the net income for the company at the end of 2010 was $108 million, while at the end of 2011 it was a negative $40 million.
The image submitted by Geller:
And the ad that bashed Catholics:
