(Getting laughs on Bill Maher's show while joking about dead Palestinian babies? You think that would have gotten a laugh back when the '40 beheaded Jewish babies' lie still had legs? People would have stormed the stage and attacked him. But ACTUAL dead Palestinian infants? That gets a laugh over on HBO. Tell me why.)
from al Jazeera
Last Friday, during an appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, CNN commentator and former Obama adviser Van Jones claimed that Iran and Qatar are running a disinformation campaign to manipulate young Americans into caring about Gaza. To make his point, he crudely imitated what he said appears on their social media feeds: “Dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby, Diddy, dead Gaza baby, dead Gaza baby.” The audience laughed.
The remark, a crass attempt at humour that juxtaposed mass death with celebrity scandal, laid bare the moral drift that has infected American commentary on Palestine. What should have prompted grief instead provoked laughter. A reality steeped in blood became a punchline. It was not merely a gaffe but a revelation of how far the conversation has strayed from moral awareness.
Jones’s apology came swiftly. He admitted the remark was “insensitive and hurtful”, insisting that his intent had been to highlight how foreign adversaries manipulate social media. Yet intent does not erase consequence. To repeat “dead Gaza baby” for rhetorical effect and to attribute the flood of such images to foreign manipulation campaigns is to trivialise authentic suffering. It transforms the murdered children of Gaza into props in a morality play about disinformation...
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