Free Publicity For All-American Muslim; That's All-American Muslim, Sundays At 10 PM Eastern On TLC

TLC, in the days since they got rid of shows like Junkyard Wars and Robotica and Full Metal Challenge in favor of shows like Jon and Kate Plus Eight and A Baby Story and, really, anything you could think of relating to pregnancy, giving birth or the product thereof, utterly and completely lost me as a viewer.

Which means I completely missed the part where they introduced something requiring actual thought to the airwaves for the first time in who-knows-when, All-American Muslim, which follows the lives of five Muslim families in Dearborn, Michigan, a Muslim population center in the United States. The idea is to show these completely normal, benign families and their struggles with lingering post-9/11 anti-Muslim bigotry from people that just automatically think that every Muslim in the world is by definition a terrorist.

A noble concept. But it still really didn't register much on my radar... until Lowe's pulled their advertising from the show in response to protests from anti-Muslim bigots that just automatically think that every Muslim in the world is by definition a terrorist.

Oh, wait. I meant the Florida Family Association. Sorry I got their name wrong. The FFA called the show "propaganda" and demanded that it contrast the lives of the normal Muslim families with reminders of Muslim terrorism. They have claimed some 60 companies that have pulled ads alongside Lowe's; however, one of those companies, Home Depot, noted that you can't really pull ads from a show that you never bought ad time on in the first place.

Now, snide jokes about Detroit aside, correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen Michigan get blown up lately. But I can't make the comprehensive beatdown of the FFA that I would normally be inclined to do, because again, haven't seen the show.

James Poniewozik, however, has seen the show, and so I'm going to toss you to his comprehensive beatdown of the FFA, and while he's at it, Lowe's as well, which has found itself under more fire for pulling the ads than they could possibly have been getting for running them.