Debbie Schlussel - Professional Life and Views

Professional Life and Views

Schlussel's columns have been published in the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, The Jerusalem Post, amongst others. Her film reviews are posted on Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood website. She hosted The Debbie Schlussel Show between 2002 and 2003.

The main focus of Schlussel's journalism is targeting what she regards as negative elements of American Islamic society. In 1998, she reported undercover from the Islamic Center of America for The Detroit News. According to her account, invited speaker Louis Farrakhan made an incendiary and anti-American speech at the mosque and was greeted by 'frenzied applause and wild cheering'. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee criticized her work in its 2002 Hate Crime report, citing Schlussel's criticism of Darrell Issa after he met with Hezbollah in Syria. Schlussel has also been cited by liberal media watchdog Media Matters for spreading misinformation. Schlussel responded to the latter by calling Media Matters "far-left".

During and following the captivity of American journalist Jill Carroll, Schlussel alleged that Carroll hated Israel and America, and implied that she sympathized with her captors. When objections were raised, she derided her critics as "blind worshippers of Jill Carroll" in need of "LASIK."

Schlussel achieved some notoriety because of an editorial in the Wall Street Journal accusing Morgan Spurlock (who produced the documentary series 30 Days and film Super Size Me) of unbalanced and faulty methods in achieving the results for the television show.

In 2007, Schlussel opined that WNBA player Anna DeForge is a bad role model because she is a lesbian. She was criticized for this statement by player Kayte Christensen in an Arizona Republic column.

When the Virginia Tech Massacre occurred on April 16, 2007, the police told the press that the shooter was an “Asian male.” Schlussel was quick to tie it to Muslims, saying in that "Pakis are considered ‘Asian,’” and that it could be “part of a co-ordinated terrorist plot by Pakistanis.”

In 2011, Schlussel provoked controversy by her comments after CBS reporter Lara Logan's sexual assault suffered while covering the Egyptian protests. Schlussel stated, "Lara Logan was among the chief cheerleaders of this 'revolution' by animals. Now she knows what Islamic revolution is really all about. So sad, too bad, Lara."

After the killing of Osama bin Laden, Schlussel wrote on her blog "1 down, 1.8 billion more to go". Schlussel wrote about the 2011 Norway attacks that while she doesn't "condone violent massacres on innocent civilians" and condemned their killer, she thought that "I’m not sad for either side... Now these kids’ families know what it feels like to be victims of the Islamic terrorists whose Judenrein boycotts and terrorist flotillas against Israel they support." She also stated, "I don’t get too upset when they face the karma that is their fate."

In 2012, Schlussel wrote an article in which she made a comment regarding Barack Obama apology for mistake he made in his speech regarding using the phrase "Polish Death Camps" for Nazi Germany Death Camps, which were located in occupied Poland. Schlussel described apology as "the feigned shock and fake moralizing over his comments, yesterday, about German Nazi death camps in Poland being a Polish death camp." Moreover, Schlussel blamed Polish nation as responsible for Holocaust: "Poles murdered millions of Jews, they maintained several death camps, and they wiped out almost all of both sides of my family, as well as those in hundreds of thousands of other Jewish families", although there is no real evidence to support this. Her commentary, publicised by, among others, the Polish Press Agency, met with wide-scale protests in Poland. Chairman of Polish Parliament's Foreign Affairs Commission Grzegorz Schetyna called it a "pack of lies". During the 72nd anniversary of the first deportation of inmates to the Auschwitz concentration camp numerous Holocaust survivors referred to Schlussel's commentary as "slanderous" and appealed to president of Poland Bronisław Komorowski to prosecute Schlussel for the "Auschwitz lie", which is a criminal offence in Poland. In its' daily news release, the Institute of National Remembrance dubbed Schlussel's commentary as "defamatory".