Huffington Post Columnist Fondly Remembers the Time She Profiled Muslims
Pundit Juan Williams got a $2 million contract from Fox News for telling the world he was scared of Muslims. Now this Huffington Post columnist wants in on the action. She's really scared of Muslims! Give her money and fame.
Actually, she's already pretty rich. In 2004, Danielle Crittenden took a European vacation with her three kids and husband, former Bush speechwriter David Frum. They were heading back to the U.S. after basking in the relative whiteness of Europe when they stopped in Paris for a layover.
At the gate waiting for their flight, Crittenden saw two Arab men whom she describes ominously in the Huffington Post:
Both looked to be about 25 or 26, of Arab descent, beards, dressed in the modern Atta traveling fashion of jeans and t-shirts. Neither had any carry-on bags for an eight-hour flight. One of the men was reading an Arabic newspaper while the other seemed twitchy — he kept looking around, and repeatedly kept pulling out his documents from a small bag to check them over again. I became fixated on them for the next two hours: I had books and magazines but my eyes kept straying to watch what they were up to. After a little bit, both men took to pacing nervously — when they weren't looking over their documents again.
She became suspicious, because "they matched almost every profile of a terrorist I'd ever read." (Where is this woman reading so many profiles of terrorists and their fashion habits? The New York Times Sunday Terrorist Styles section? Jeans and T-shirt: It's this season's baggy camouflage jacket!)
Then, the final straw: "Promptly at three o'clock, the two men went over to a large window, fell to their knees and began elaborately praying to Mecca." At this point, Crittenden made her husband talk to some airline employees and, I guess, inform them that his wife was irrationally terrified of two brown people. They assured them that there was nothing to worry about, but Crittenden refused to board the plane. She made the airline remove their luggage and the family spent the night in Paris.
The next day, they turned on the television and saw the flight they were supposed to have taken was blown up by Muslim terrorists and everyone aboard died! Wait, no: nothing happened. The family took the next flight to America. However, instead of realizing how absurd her fear was, Crittenden revels in her "terrorist profiling":
Now, nearly seven years later, and in the wake of the Juan Williams incident, I ask myself: Would I make that same decision again?
Without question. And I hope I would still have the guts to report a troubling passenger to an airline clerk without fear that I might be branded racist.
Guts? Lady, you are so afraid of Arabs (or is it Muslims? Unclear!) that you literally ran away from two people who were probably a couple of ATM repair guys in town for a conference. Has cowardice somehow become courage? Are we now labeling heroes anyone who has deep, fear-based prejudices against entire groups of people as long as they write articles about them for the Huffington Post?
Alright, Arab men: The only way to respond to this development is to walk around airports in jeans and t-shirts with no luggage and freak out white ladies so they'll miss their flights.