The Most Frightening Name in News

Fear-mongering NY Congressman Peter King has outdone himself. The same paranoid xenophobe who warned the nation about homegrown jihadists and the imminent application of Sharia Law at a Congressional hearing last year is back in the limelight, courtesy of CNN. He starred in the cable network's non-stop Fear Marathon yesterday, warning that hundreds, even thousands, of Mideastern types are in this country working in car dealerships and restaurants. They're not exactly doing anything wrong at the moment, but since they exist, they are susceptible to being convinced to attack New York City in the event that Israel bombs Iran. Some people simply can't graciously accept their relatives and friends overseas getting pulverized. And that should make Der Homeland very fearful.

 "This is a terrifying reason for us all to be very alarmed," intoned vacuous CNN host Wolf Blitzer in his signature monotone.

Blitzer's sonorous voice-over was accompanied by a video montage of goose-stepping and rappelling troops, ostensibly meant to illustrate what an Iranian occupation of the Big Apple would look like. When CNN does propaganda, it goes all in. Subtlety and subliminal imagery are just so 1984.

 There is an "A-Team" scarier than Al Qaeda just waiting to be inspired by an Israeli attack on Iran! The NYPD has caught Iranians taking photos of New York tourist attractions half a dozen times since 9/11!  They may look like innocuous car dealers, but they could be inspired to turn into terrorists any day now, warned King. He offered a lot of conjecture and no evidence. And the cable news stenographers asked not a single probing question. It was the lead story every hour.

King as much as admitted that his fear-mongering is just a PR campaign to defend the NYPD in the wake of the exposure of its draconian spying campaign against Muslims.

"Maybe this (the hearing and TV appearances) will deter the irrational and unbalanced attacks on the NYPD, who are trying to act pre-emptively," he told an unquestioning Soledad O'Brien. That clip is here. And to gin up our righteous patriotism even more, CNN unbelievably opened the King segment with Notre Dame's Fight Song. That was the personal choice of King himself, an ND alumnus.

Accompanying King's Congressional show hearing, which featured the testimony of an NYPD spy yammering about suspicious sightseeing by Iranian U.N. delegates, was a voluminous two-page report. It had obviously been hastily cobbled together in press release fashion. Here are a couple of representative examples of its overall vagueness:

There is general consensus among dozens of experts as well as current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials interviewed by the Majority Investigative Staff that Hezbollah – more than any other terror group – is the most capable of flipping a U.S.-based fundraising cell into a lethal terror force, should Iran decide that is in its interests.

Pinning down a reliable estimate of the number of Hezbollah operatives who now reside inside the U.S. is difficult because of their operational security expertise. But some officials estimate that, based on cases uncovered since 9/11, there are likely several thousand sympathetic donors, while operatives probably number in the hundreds.

This doesn't say a lot about the capability of our Homeland Security State, does it? The theory is that if Mitt Romney can flip-flop, then so can Lebanese car salesmen. Might, maybe, possibly may not constitute credible evidence. But it's better than just saying nothing, because saying nothing makes for a slow news day, and CNN always does its profitable best to act as the mouthpiece of the government/Wall Street complex. 

When Attorney General Eric Holder tried to justify presidential assassinations in a Chicago speech earlier this month and was almost universally lambasted, CNN stepped up and called his defense of the indefensible "expansive"and "unflinching" in a post on its Living With Terror blog. 

The network even has its very own National Security senior steno producer, named Suzanne Kelly. She inanely wondered how these "strings of Hezbollah in the US are going to play themselves out." (Will they stretch like rubber bands or bounce like yoyos or snap like bubble gum?) She quotes the usual unnamed source: "A federal law enforcement official would not provide CNN with an estimate of how many people affiliated with Hezbollah are believed to be in the U.S. The official would say only that the cases the U.S. has brought involving Hezbollah have involved areas such as fundraising and attempting to procure arms and have not involved plots."

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out last month in writing about Erin Burnett, its "worst of the worst" correspondent, CNN has become a parody of itself. Burnett was on the air again last night to pour gasoline on the flames of Peter King's bonfire. She actually referred to the United States as "The Homeland" as she showed an image of the flag-draped New York Stock Exchange. This illustrates just who she perceives the real potential victims will be. (hint: it's not the 99%). Who besides a government apparatchik talks like Erin Burnett? (I am still trying to locate a clip of her latest mile-a-minute harangue).

Burnett is so frenetically over the top, adds Greenwald, that she even makes psycho Peter King look normal and reasonable.

Blitzer and Burnett: Defenders of Corporate Amerika