By Joseph Picard: Subscribe to Joseph's RSS feed
September 8, 2010 2:05 PM EDT
The commentators at Fox have been waving the bloody shirt regarding the proposed mosque near Ground Zero and the imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, who heads the organization that wants to build it.
Sean Hannity, for example, on August 12 said Rauf aimed at "shredding our Constitution and putting in Sharia law as the law of the land." Bill O'Reilly has been demanding that Rauf reveal the proposal's financial backers.
Some of the project's backers have come to light. One is a wealthy businessman who, in 1999, gave money to a Muslim organization providing for orphans. This organization was later found to have donated to Hamas. This tidbit has set off more fire-breathing, with elected officials and people who wish they were elected officials calling for investigations.
But published reports of late, including some in publications owned by News Corp., which also owns Fox, have revealed that one of Iman Rauf's financial backers has for years been Al-Waleed bin Talal, a Saudi prince and one of the richest men in the world, 19th on Forbes latest list.
Prince Al-Waleed runs a charity organization called the Kingdom Foundation, which gives to causes and groups it deems worthy throughout the world. The foundation has given at least $300,000 to the American Society for Muslim Advancement, or ASMA, an organization headed by Rauf.
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Rauf has received financing from the U.S. government, under both Bush and Obama, for his goodwill and diplomatic travels abroad. Contributions to his nonprofit organizations have also come from American groups like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Ford Foundation and government agencies in Qatar and the Netherlands.
What makes the support coming from the prince's foundation interesting in the current context is that Al-Waleed is the second largest holder in News Corp. He owns a seven percent, $2.3 billion stake in the company. Only Rupert Murdoch, commonly called the owner of News Corp., owns a larger share. At the same time, News Corp. owns a nine percent, $70 million stake in Rotana, Al-Waleed's Saudi media conglomerate.
Here's the kind of guy Hannity, O'Reilly and the others are looking for, right under their noses. He also owns all sorts of other things, big things, and is the very fellow who offered Rudy Giuliani $10 million for rebuilding the WTC if Giuliani would admit that American foreign policy may have had something to do with provoking the attacks. This prince would be a great target for these finger-pointing demagogues.
But oh, of course, they can't. He's their boss. Hush hush on the prince. But keep the finger-pointing going. And don't think these guys at Fox don't know. They know. They can read. Someone must have calculated that the ratings from the rabble-rousing were worth the blatant hypocrisy in which they were bound to be caught.
But does anyone calculate the cost of the rabble-rousing?
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