American media distortion chamber

Occurred to me today that you never really see someone in distinctly Arabic or Pakistani wear on American television, except when discussing terrorism or some other sort of violence (or oil prices, I guess). I don’t have anything terribly original to say about this. It was just a jarring reminder of how limited one’s view of certain parts of the world can be if you depend on American news media. Basically, the networks treat the swath of land between Algeria and Pakistan as a landscape dotted with nothing but guns, bombs, and oil wells, and people bent on using those three things against us.

And that’s why you end up with people talking about the “muslim smear”.