I Would Have Died!

Both Lindsay Beyerstein and Jon Swift have great responses to the furious response coming out of some quarters of the right that kidnapped Fox News journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig did not choose death instead of their televised gunpoint conversion to Islam.

Beyerstein asks why, since David Warren (one of the primary critics) "assume[s] they are not Christians" (since such "few journalists are"), he expects them to martyr themselves for a faith they don't believe in.

But it is Swift who has (true to his name) the truly breath-taking parody. A taste:

But conservatives were most troubled by a video that was released showing the men converting to Islam at gunpoint. David Warren, who writes for the Ottawa Citizen and Real Clear Politics, deplored their "cowardice" for converting with guns to their heads instead of dying as martyrs. "The two Fox journalists, whom I will not stoop to name, begged for their lives even though, in retrospect, their lives probably weren't in danger," wrote Warren, who risks his life everyday living in Canada, a place I must confess I am afraid even to visit. "They could see nothing wrong in serving the enemy, so long as it meant they'd be safe."

Hasn't anybody ever heard of a Marrano?