How typical.
The right, but not so bright, are blaming Newsweek for provoking riots in Afghanstand and elsewhere, with a poorly sourced blurb about Koran-desecrations at the Guantanamo prison. How stupid.
As OrthoMom says, "Instead of accusing Newsweek magazine of "causing" this unrest, maybe we should all stop being apologists for this out-of-proportion response in Afghanistan to the alleged offense."
Yes, but this won't happen. Not in my shul anyway. The right prefers to condecend to the Arab world. It's easier to blame Newsweek, than to admit that it isn't rational or logical for a community to respond with rioting to some bad press. But for the right condecending to the Arab world isn't anything new.
After all, haven't they spent the better part of 10 years insisting that Arabs are biologically incapable of anything but violence? Oslo won't work, they hollered, because Arabs are violent. Even today, there are whole entire blogs dedicated to the proposition that the road map must fail because those blood-thirsty Arabs want violence and nothing but violence.
So of course today's rioting is all Newsweek's fault. According to the right-wing view of the world, Arabs are brutal savages, and by taunting them, Newsweek, irresponsible Newsweek, was tempting fate.