Grievance Theater
“Grievance theater” is when someone files a grievance (and gets lots of media publicity, like a “theater” performance) of something that allegedly grieved a person’s sex, sexual orientation, color, religious beliefs, and so on. In reality, the issue involved could have nothing to do with a person’s status; the grievance could falsely exaggerate the circumstances.
The “grievance theater” term was popularized by the December 6, 2006 Wall Street Journal opinion by Debra Burlingame, “On a Wing and a Prayer: Grievance theater at Minneapolis International Airport.” In what has become known as the flying imams incident, imams boarding an airplane at the Minneapolis International Airport were heard to be shouting “Allahu Akbar!”—similar to the terrorists who hijacked airplanes on September 11, 2001. They were detained on terrorism fears, then claimed that their civil rights had been violated by not allowing them to fly on their scheduled flight.
Other “theater” terms include “security theater,” “enforcement theater” and “shutdown theater.”
Wikipedia: Flying imams incident
On November 20, 2006, 6:30pm, six Muslim imams were removed from US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix, Arizona, at Minneapolis airport, because several passengers and crew members became alarmed by what they felt was suspicious behavior. The airline has stated that the captain delayed takeoff and called airport security workers to ask the imams to leave the plane; the men refused, and that the captain then called police. The plane left without the imams on board about three hours later. The imams were detained, questioned, and then released.
The imams, along with the Muslim American Society and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, have brought high-profile complaints and demonstrations against the airline, saying they were removed from the airplane solely due to religious discrimination. Investigations by the airline and police reported that the airline and ground crews responded to security concerns properly in removing the men from the plane.
(...)
Criticism of the imams
An editorial in Investor’s Business Daily questioned whether the imams were “victims or provocateurs”, and suggested that it is possible the incident was planned in advance to gain publicity for planned congressional legislation against profiling. The Muslim American Society also backed this legislation expected to be introduced by Representative John Conyers of Detroit. Denouncing “the provocative agenda of these imams,” Debra Burlingame opined that “it is nothing short of obscene that these six religious leaders (…) chose to turn that airport into a stage and that airplane into a prop in the service of their need for grievance theater.”
Free Republic
On a Wing and a Prayer Grievance theater at Minneapolis International Airport.
The Wall Street Journal (Opinionjournal.com) ^ | 12/6/2006 | Debra Burlingame
Posted on Wednesday, December 06, 2006 6:00:54 AM by rlmorel
On a Wing and a Prayer Grievance theater at Minneapolis International Airport.
BY DEBRA BURLINGAME Wednesday, December 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Those are the words that started it all. Six bearded imams are said to have shouted them out while offering evening prayers as they and 141 other passengers waited at the gate for their flight out of Minneapolis International Airport. It was three days before Thanksgiving. Allahu Akbar: God is great.
Initial media reports of the incident did not include the disturbing details about what happened after they boarded US Airways flight 300, but the story quickly went national with provocative headlines: “Six Muslims Ejected from US Air Flight for Praying.” Yes, they were praying—but let’s be clear about this. The very last human sound on the cockpit voice recorder of United flight 93 before it screamed into the ground at 580 miles per hour is the sound of male voices shouting “Allahu Akbar” in a moment of religious ecstasy.
Washington (DC) Times
Muslim rhetoric
By The Washington Times
Thursday, December 7, 2006
(...)
What do I mean by visceral? For starters, bear in mind what Debra Burlingame reminded us of in an Op-Ed decrying the “grievance theater” of the so-called flying imams from the North American Imam Federation (NAIF) who were ejected from a US Airways flight for threatening behavior: The words “Allahu akbar” (Arabic for “Allah is Great”) were the last words heard by passengers plunging to their deaths on Flight 93 as they saved the U.S. Capitol from probable destruction on September 11.
Debbie Schlussel
June 19, 2008, - 12:02 pm
Muslim Grievance Theater: Hijab Women Dissed @ Obama Rally Are Muslim Terror Front-Group Activists, Top Islamic Proselytizer
By Debbie Schlussel
As soon as I heard about the Muslim women in hijabs being excluded from sitting behind Barack Obama at a Michigan rally, I knew what you probably knew: that CAIR and ADC and MPAC and ISNA, the alphabet soup of terrorist-sympathizing, pan-HAMAS/Hezbollah Islamofascist grievance theater, would milk the story like there’s no tomorrow. It was ripe fodder for their PR branch of the jihad against America and the West.
Front Page Magazine
CAIR’s Medical School Grievance Theater
By: Patrick Poole
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, July 17, 2008
When Iram Qureshi of Dublin, Ohio was dismissed from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine last month after having to repeat her first year and then failing two “systems” in her second year after she stopped attending classes, she did what any normal American Muslim woman would seem to do these days – she called the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and sued.
Right Side News
The Bankrupt Race Card
Thursday, 29 March 2012 05:09 Daniel Greenfield
The Trayvon Martin case is a wholly familiar one to residents of any major urban city. If you live in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles, then it’s only a matter of time until an incident between a law enforcement officer, or more rarely a civilian defending himself, and a member of a minority group flares up into a citywide grievance theater complete with angry reverends on the steps of City Hall, women with stony faces holding up banners calling for justice and a media driven debate about police tactics and racism.
(...)
The grievance theater is never really about the specific case, the specific shooting, it’s about the links between the social problems of the black community, the compromises of civil liberties necessary to keep entire cities from turning into Detroit and the inability of the media to address the sources of crime as anything but the phantoms of white racism. It’s about a black leadership that is more interested in posturing as angry activists and shaking loose some money, than in healing their own community’s problems. And so the same story repeats itself again and again without an honest dialogue or anything meaningful coming out of it.
But grievance theater has been going national.
The Blogmocracy
Grievance theater isn’t about race, it’s about power and money
by Speranza
Filed under Crime at March 30th, 2012 - 8:00 am
The Knish brilliantly dissects the Trayvon Martin case and writes that we have seen this movie (actually theater) before in the Jena 6, Howard Beach and Bensonhurst cases and so many others. The same actors – Sharpton, Jackson, Spike Lee aided by wannabes such as Jazzy X and the whole MSNBC crew i.e. the whole plethora of race hustlers and baiters – have the drill down pat. It is not “justice” that they want (that is a concept they have no idea about), but power and money.