All-American Muslim

While the Florida Family Association has won national attention for its successful campaign to convince advertisers like Lowe’s and Kayak to pull their ads from TLC’s All-American Muslim, the reality show about Muslim families living in Michigan was far from the first show the group attacked, as the FFA previously went after programs like Degrassi, Modern Family, Family Guy and Dancing With the Stars, among others.

As Samuel G. Freedman explains in The New York Times, the FFA is the one-man operation of David Caton, who for decades has been using the FFA as a shell organization for his attacks against not only television programs but also public schools, Disney World and government officials. “What makes the attack on ‘All-American Muslim’ more disturbing — and very revealing — is that it was prosecuted by just one person,” Freedman notes, “a person unaffiliated with any established organization on the Christian right, a person who effectively tapped into a groundswell of anti-Muslim bigotry”:

During the mid-1990s, after hearing about the harassment of gay students, the principal of Largo High School in Florida created a support group for them. Over the next year or two, the meetings also drew sympathetic friends, evolving into a club called the Gay Straight Alliance. For a while, it operated in comfortable obscurity.

Then, in 1998, the principal, Barbara Thornton, began receiving postcards, many bearing the identical message bizarrely denouncing the alliance as a “government-funded witch hunt.” The local school board felt compelled to take up the issue, with 400 parents attending a meeting at which one speaker compared the gay students to murderers.

During that session, Ms. Thornton finally encountered the man who had manufactured the entire controversy: David Caton. An accountant turned rock-club owner, the author of a book about his pornography addiction, Mr. Caton had become a born-again Christian and the founder and sole employee of a fundamentalist activist group called the Florida Family Association.

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It would be upsetting enough if a well-financed, well-organized mass campaign had misrepresented a television show, insulted an entire religious community and intimidated a national corporation. What makes the attack on “All-American Muslim” more disturbing — and very revealing — is that it was prosecuted by just one person, a person unaffiliated with any established organization on the Christian right, a person who effectively tapped into a groundswell of anti-Muslim bigotry.

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The question is why anybody, especially a major company like Lowe’s, would be swayed by Mr. Caton’s campaign. (Lowe’s did not respond to several requests for comment.) Just to put him in perspective, the 2010 federal tax forms for the Florida Family Association list Mr. Caton as its only paid employee, earning $55,200. The association took in $172,133 in donations and closed out the calendar year with precisely $8,868.76 on hand.

As the backlash against Lowe’s decision to pull ads from the TLC reality show All-American Muslim grows, right-wing activists are rallying to the company’s defense.

Brigitte Gabriel’s ACT! for America launched a petition to boost Lowe’s that ironically defends the right of businesses to “be free to make advertising decisions” even though Lowe’s withdrew their ads after a pressure campaign from the extremist Florida Family Association:

We the undersigned join to stand with Lowe's Home Improvement stores in their decision to cease the flow of their advertising dollars to The Learning Channel's (TLC) television show "All-American Muslim."

We believe that American businesses should be free to make advertising decisions without fear of repercussion from radical Islamist groups.

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Therefore, we the undersigned, join with others across America, to let Lowe's Home Improvement know that:

• We support Lowe's Home Improvement's decision to end paid advertising on TLC's "All-American Muslim."

• We thank Lowe's Home Improvement for their position in the face of unwarranted and unfair criticism.

Religious Right radio host Janet Mefferd railed against the company’s critics on her show yesterday, where she hosted FFA president David Caton, arguing Lowe’s decision has absolutely nothing at all to do with anti-Muslim sentiments! According to Mefferd the show was plainly “controversial,” because apparently filming the lives of real Muslim families is controversial: “This has nothing to do with bigotry against Muslims, it has to do with the fact that the company didn’t want to advertise on this particular show because it was so controversial. So what! Get over it! Not everything is religious bigotry!”

The leader of the California Republican Assembly also defended Lowe’s in response to a California State Seantor Ted Lieu’s criticism of the company:

Lieu criticized the chain store, calling their action "un-American" and "naked religious bigotry," adding that he plans political action if the store does not apologize to Muslims and re-broadcast the ads.

Cathy Carlson of the California Republican Assembly points out Lowe's was just one of several companies that made the same decision. "Lowe's is a business -- and yes, it's the right business decision," she tells OneNewsNow. "And they're not the only ones -- there were dozens of advertisers who pulled their sponsorship."

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"He is a lawyer -- and what he said to cover himself was that he was going to look into seeing if any laws have been broken; and he knows there aren't any laws that are broken," says Carlson. "So I just think he's posturing. I think he is playing to his base so he gets re-elected. This is typical California politics."

Even after Lowe’s and other companies succumbed to the demands of the ultraconservative Florida Family Association, which routinely launches pressure campaigns against advertisers on shows like Modern Family, Dancing With the Stars, and Degrassi, to drop their ads on TLC’s reality show All-American Muslim, the FFA has ramped up its attacks on the Muslim community. While defending his group’s efforts, David Caton of the FFA likened American Muslims to snakes:

The show was not an accurate portrayal American Muslims, he said, because it doesn't disclose that "99.9 percent of Muslims agree with the principles of Sharia law," the restrictive religious code that Caton and others warn leads to the spread of Islamic extremism.

"This has all to do with the way this program was constructed to deliberately present Muslims in America as one flavor," he told The Associated Press. "It would be similar to the Learning Channel doing a report on 'snakes are good family pets' without reporting that there are four in Florida that are venomous. ....For TLC to choose to profile five people as an aberration of the Islamic faith is propaganda."

Pamela Geller, whose diatribe against the show helped spark the FFA’s campaign, pleaded with readers to shop at Lowe’s, blasting a California lawmaker who criticized Lowe’s and Russell Simmons for placing ads on the show to push back against FFA’s pressure campaign:

Advertisers like Lowes are choosing not run their ads on this propaganda. Good for them. The idea that Russel Simmons is threatening and intimidating is indicative of how little Simmons knows of sharia and Islam. Islamic racism is monstrous and is rampant today.

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A craven lawmaker seeks to exploit this non-story. Lowes chose not to advertise. That's it. Are we going to force advertisers to finance propaganda or taqiyya?

PLEASE SHOP LOWES. And send a word of thanks to Lowe's Corporate for their decision to drop the show's sponsorship.

The FFA is also finding support from Religious Right groups such as the American Decency Association, which called All-American Muslim “dangerous” because the people featured on the reality show don’t talk about jihad, which if you believe anti-Muslim stereotypes is what all Muslims talk about all the time! The group’s president also knocked the Council on American-Islamic Relations for criticizing Lowe’s, arguing that CAIR wants to “overcome our very own Constitution”:

Bill Johnson, president of American Decency Association, argues that the show is a complete whitewash designed to make the Muslim community appear attractive.

"And that's what makes it so dangerous," he tells OneNewsNow. "We've been watching it over these several weeks that it's been broadcast, and they stay very conveniently away from [mentioning] jihad or anything of that nature."

Johnson says their campaign has brought on the ire of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has described the efforts as "bigoted" and "pander[ing] to those who promote religious and ethnic hatred." But CAIR, he says, must be exposed for what it truly is.

"They are not [in the] mainstream," he alleges. "They're operating behind the scenes, propagandizing it [Islam] to influence the young and the old so that one day they can incorporate sharia law in our country and overcome our very own Constitution."

The ADA said it would join the FFA in pressuring TLC to drop the show “because it is merely trying to make us dumb and dumber”:

For that is what TLC is doing with “All American Muslim” – trying to show a small set of people as representing a movement that has evil intentions not only upon America but upon the world.

There is so much at stake in just playing dumb or actually being dumb and silent. There is already enough evidence in Europe and throughout the world to see the handwriting on the wall as we study radical Islam’s strategy and observe it being unfolded around the world. Therefore we monitor this seemingly innocuous show because it is merely trying to make us dumb and dumber. We are to accept the show and it’s one-sided portrayal of Islam at face value but that truly is unwise.

We monitor the show and comment because we believe there is more than ample evidence to conclude that America is targeted!