Staff writers Robert E. Pierre and Hamil Harris report today in the Metro section of the Washington Post on Louis "Farrakhan's Message of Defiance and Unity"* in his march planned for tomorrow in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March.
Pierre and Harris bury Farrakhan's conspiracy theory rhetoric about the government bombing the levees in New Orleans deep into the article, and they completely ignore Farrakhan's charge that the federal government was involved in 9/11. As reported by CNSNews.com's Marc Morano yesterday:
At a National Press Club news conference Thursday, Farrakhan said his weekend Millions More Movement was intended to put a stop to the "lies, to thieves, to murderers in the name of government.
"When you have people who politically feel that they get their advantage by killing people and blaming it on somebody else, then it makes us wonder what really happened to the Twin Towers (in New York City)," a reference to the terrorist strikes against the U.S. four years ago that brought down the World Trade Center.
"Was the heat from fuel from two airplanes sufficient to compromise the steel in that building? (sic) People had said they heard explosions and the buildings came down like we see old buildings in Vegas or in Florida or in other places, implode," Farrakhan said. "So who was the victor there? Who got the advantage there? It wasn't the American people.
An audio link of Farrakhan's 9/11 comments from the CNSNews.com website can be found here.
As for the levee-bombing comments, Pierre and Harris didn't allude to them in the lede or the few paragraphs on the Metro front page following that, they were buried in the story, briefly mentioned, not fully quoted in the third-from-last paragraph in the story.
In the fourth paragraph of the article, Harris and Pierre characterized the Farrkhan news conference at the National Press Club yesterday as one "in which he touched on police brutality, the state of the education system and his own personal growth over the decades." Indeed, liberal Post readers may especially take heart at Pierre and Harris reporting that gay and lesbian black Americans, shunned at the 1995 Million Man March, were included in this go-around:
Farrakhan moved this week to soothe a rift within his movement over attitudes toward gay men and lesbians... this week, Farrakhan offered Keith Boykin, president of the National Black Justice Coalition, which advocates for gay rights, a speaking slot on tomorrow's program. There was no gay representation among speakers 10 years ago, and that has been a source of estrangement in the black gay, lesbian and bisexual community ever since.
* The title of the story in the hard copy edition I have delivered to my home. The website headline reads: "Farrakhan Offers Anniversary Message of Defiance, Unity: Leader Urges Blacks to Share Strength"
