Media invoked ethnic Muslim taint only for critics of US policy

Evidence

When former Senator James Abourezk went to Teheran, the announcement on ABC and CBS was made with a reminder that Abourezk was “of Lebanese origin.” No reference was ever made to Representative George Hansen’s Danish background, or to Ramsey Clark’s WASP ancestry. Somehow it was considered important to touch on the vaguely Islamic taint in Abourezk’s past, although he happens to be of Christian Lebanese stock. — Edward W. Said, Covering Islam, 235

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Said’s broader thesis in Covering Islam and to the general mechanism of delegitimizing dissenters by ethnic association, echoing patterns in post-9/11 coverage.
• SEED: An essay angle: how media gatekeepers selectively foreground the ethnicity of dissenters while ignoring it for establishment figures — a pattern that persists in contemporary coverage of war critics.