Perhaps they will start working hard on Fareed Zakaria in a
desperate attempt to turn him into another Fouad Ajami, but my instinct tells
me they will fail for several reasons, one of them being that these are
different times. Ajami grew in his profession at a time when there was no
“political correctness,” and the non-stop barrage of venom pouring over the
heads of Arabs day and night made it clear that you either adapt and live well,
or stay put and lead a life of constant struggle with no promise that you'll
get anywhere anytime. Like a friend who was an editor at the Globe and Mail put
it to me once: “How long do you plan to stay a Don Quixote?”
I do not fault Ajami for choosing the path that he did; I
only criticized him two or three times for things he wrote which I deemed to be
too damaging to the causes that were dear to me. And when I thought of him, I
associated him with advice that another friend gave me: “Why don't you write
what they ask of you? And after you gain fame and fortune, you turn around and
write what you want.” Perhaps Fouad Ajami had something like that in mind, but
then got too comfortable being what they made of him, and never bothered
writing what he truly felt about the events of the day. In fact, I sensed at
times that he did not believe in the echo he was repeating, and I said so in
black and white on one occasion. In any case, may he rest in peace.
Although I believe that Fareed Zakaria must have gone
through a period during which he was pressured to write and say things he
believed were false or misleading, the pressure on him could not have come
close to what Ajami and I experienced two or three decades earlier. Another
reason why I believe Zakaria will not easily succumb to the pressure that will
seek to turn him into a carbon copy of Ajami is that Zakaria is a more
accomplished scholar; one that is endowed with a rigorous intellect … above
that of Ajami.
But the man works for CNN which is a clone of Fox News when
it comes to Jewish and Israeli matters, with the difference that one of the
clones is right-handed while the other is left-handed. Now that Ajami, who also
used to work for CNN, is no longer with us, I fear that the network will put
enormous pressure on Zakaria to fill the shoes of the departed.
I have visions of someone like Wolf Blitzer, who strikes me
as being a fanatic Jew, surrounding himself in the studio – or rather, the
situation room – with half a dozen Jews to discuss Arab matters they haven't a
clue what they are about. Blitzer or the producer of the show calls Zakaria for
an interview and pulls on him a Fox News specialty which is to begin a question
with a 200 word preamble laying out the talking points pertaining to the
subject, and then asking: Don't you think so?
A nightmare scenario would be to the effect that after a few
interviews like that one, Zakaria will realize he was made to agree with things
he never meant to. But he cannot deny them because they are on video that can
be played back at him. So now, having the choice of agreeing that this was his
opinion at the time, or protesting that he was ambushed, he will choose to
agree with what's in the video. And to prove the sincerity of his newly
acquired disposition, he will double down on its premise, thus follow in the
footsteps of Ajami.
This is the routine they developed at Fox News to get around
the restrictions that were placed on everyone by the phenomenon of political
correctness. The host answers the question by asking it, leaving no room for the
interviewee to disagree or offer an alternative point of view.