An open letter to the media

Dear Network News Channels,

It really looks like you guys are having a lot of fun with this Qur'an burning Pastor in Florida. I realize, weather cataclysms aside, that there isn't much going on around the planet at the moment (I mean that's sell able news, of course). Let me see if I've got this right. Some two-bit man of the cloth, with a very small following plants a few signs in the yard of his church and announces he's going to do something silly, yet potentially inflammatory and symbolically offensive to a whole sector of the planet's humanity. Newsworthy in the first place? I don't know. People do silly, offensive things all day long. However, because of the initial coverage, and the resulting input from armed service across the world, and all of the flap this has created, this man has been given an absurd amount of power.

If my neighbor (not the one who happens to be Muslim, but the one on the other side who does not) happened to walk out his front door one day, and set the Qur'an on fire in his driveway, no one would be any the wiser. Maybe the book had been sitting in a box in his basement, and had become moldy with water damage. Rather than give it away and send the mold to someone else's house, he decided he would just destroy the book. Maybe it was a whole box of religious books, maybe there was even an old bible in there, too. Or, maybe he just wasn't a big fan of Islam, and burning the book was something he felt like he needed to do. Whatever. I would take a quick peep outside to make sure no one's house was on fire, and then I wouldn't give it a second thought.

I have an idea, a way to diffuse this whole ridiculous issue, and just make this whole thing stop right now. Let's just not cover any more of this. Let's just turn off the lights. Pull the plug. Drive the trucks back to the stations. Call it a day. If he and his faithful want to start a little bonfire tomorrow, have at it. I don't care what he's burning. I do hope he singes his eyebrows in the process, however, so that he learns a lesson about playing with fire.

Some wise man said once "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." While I can apply this to Pastor Bob or whatever his name is, should there end up being global retribution for his idiocy, I hold you, the media, responsible.