Most organizations, when finding themselves in possession of an hot, controversial quote, would play up that quote.
If you’re CNSNews.com, and the quote is from one of your favorite fellow conservatives, you bury it.
An Oct. 28 CNS article by Pete Winn grousing about how a new Superman comic book series features a title character that is “dark and brooding with glowering – and eerily glowing – eyes” waits until the 10th paragraph to drop this quote by the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue:
“It looks like the new Superman should have great appeal to the Columbine crowd,” Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights told CNSNews.com.
“After all, he’s moody – not pensive, but moody – and he’s got that hood on him. I think people who want to shoot up innocents in high schools will look at him and say, ‘He is hip.’”
In addition to burying such a hot, offensive quote and not giving anyone a chance to respond to it (he does note that “DC Comics did not return calls from CNSNews.com”), Winn also obscures the right-wing slant of who he does talk to. He identifies one person as the “senior associate editor of the youth culture magazine Plugged In” (who complains that “it seems like ‘dark’ and ‘brooding’ – and everything that goes with that – sells”) without noting that Plugged In is a publication of Focus on the Family and, one can presume, is biased against anything dark and brooding that it can’t demonize.
Mind you, this is all about what the character looks like. There’s no evidence that Winn, Donohue, the guy from Plugged In or anyone else involved in this article — none of whom have any acknowledged awareness of the comic book culture — went much beyond the cover art or the provided synopsis of this particular story arc. Indeed, Winn goes on to write:
The creators also portray the new Superman as politically correct — refusing to become “an instrument of politics or policy” of the United States, saying things like: “I was raised in this country. I believe in this country. Does it have its flaws? Yes. Does it have its moments of greatness? Yes. Bottom line is, it’s my home and I’ll always carry those values around with me. But if I do what I can do just for the U.S., it’s going to destabilize the whole world. It could even lead to war.”
So saving the whole world, and not just the United States, is politically correct?