"Duh of the Week" Media to Terry Jones: You used us!

 

The media has no business having hurt feelings over “being used” by whack job Terry Jones and his very small flock of 50 congregants. They ignored one of the most important rules of the internet age, don't feed the trolls. Terry Jones is too small of deal to garner this much attention, whether he is burning a Quran or burning a relative. But ever since last summer when the Gainesville  Sun published a picture of a sign outside Jones' Church which read "Islam is of the Devil," this has been all about grabbing attention from the media and like they usually do, the media was suckered. Now that Jones has decided to put off offending Muslims by burning their holy book, the media is acting like the crowd around a bridge disappointed that the despondent jumper was "talked down" by the police. 

Wapo is reporting things may be getting ugly, in a stupid sort of way :

....The appearances by K.A. Paul and Jones - son of the Rev. Terry Jones - just after 3:30 p.m. were the latest in a string of unexpected appearances church representatives made throughout the day. Terry Jones and Paul emerged shortly after 1 p.m. to say they were giving New York Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf two hours to agree to call off plans for a controversial Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero.

Two hours passed. Paul came out of the warehouse-like church, followed by Jones, 29. The men gave no clear answer to questions about whether the Koran-burning was off permanently, what the New York City project had to do with it, and whether there were behind-the-scenes talks going on that could change things.

"We're not going to tell you what's going on!" Jones finally yelled to a crowd of nearly 100 journalists and a few onlookers.

After having just had a similar, frustrating exchange with Paul, who had stood with Jones at the 1 p.m. news conference to issue the ultimatum, the hot and cranky media horde had had enough.

"Are you just toying with us to get attention?" asked a sweaty woman in a suit, crouching to keep out of the shot of multiple cameras over her head.

The crowd groaned.

"Why did you give this two-hour window?" came a shout from another side of the scrum.

"So will you say you're going to burn a Koran anytime you want press coverage?" snapped a reporter with a German accent.

"We're negotiating," said Jones, his maroon T-shirt soaked through with sweat -- but he refused to say what they were negotiating or with whom. And he kept repeating a tantalizingly ambiguous refrain: There will be no Koran-burning at 6 p.m. Saturday night.

"You're just using us! We should all leave!" someone yelled from deep in the media pack.

Silence - for a moment. "Yeah! Let's all leave!"

Jones's response: "Fine, we're not press hungry, go!"

But no one moved, until Jones turned and shuffled back to the church.

Two years ago the nuts at the Church who show up at the funerals that protests at the funerals of our fallen heroes burn a Quran in the middle of Washington DC and were totally ignored. 

"We did it a long time before this guy," Phelps-Roper said by telephone from a street corner in downtown Chicago, scene of the latest Westboro picket — against Jews this time, not gays.

The difference could be that in 2008 many news media outlets had decided to ignore the group's routine of spewing hatred at funerals of fallen American soldiers.

So when Fred Phelps, calling Muhammad a "pedophilic gigolo," went online and invited people to attend the burning, most stayed away.

The real truth about this entire incident was given to us by Chris Cumo of ABC News who tweeted today "I am in the media, but think media gave life to this Florida burning...and that was reckless"