Dr. Seuss didn’t just write brilliant children’s books. During World War ii he supported the American war effort through cartoons. One of his most memorable showed a line of eager businessmen queuing up to buy their “Ostrich bonnet”—the neck and head of an ostrich that fitted onto their heads (you can see the cartoon here). After queuing, the men put on their hats and buried their ostrich heads in the sand.

“Forget the terrible news you’ve read,” said a sign. “Your mind’s at ease in an ostrich head.”

Today, the liberal media are selling ostrich heads. Egypt has demonstrated this perhaps more quickly than anywhere else.

They trotted out a host of experts to assure us that the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic parties were not a threat. Their thoughts got most of the space and the last word in the discussion.

Men like former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency Mohamed ElBaradei were considered the foremost experts on the subject.

“For years the West has bought Mr. Mubarak’s demonization of the Muslim Brotherhood lock, stock and barrel, the idea that the only alternative here are these demons called the Muslim Brotherhood who are the equivalent of al Qaeda,” he told the New York Times (January 27). “I am pretty sure that any freely and fairly elected government in Egypt will be a moderate one ….”

As Hosni Mubarak was falling, McClatchy Newspapers informed its readers that “Political analysts say the [Muslim Brotherhood’s] support and influence is greatly exaggerated”—the line continually repeated by liberal media.

On February 3, a New York Times article with the title “Egypt’s Bumbling Brotherhood” assured readers that “The street, however, manifests little support for the Brotherhood.”

“There is little reason for the United States to fear a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood,” it said, arguing that the poor people who received charity from the Brotherhood would not bother to vote for it.

It even had a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s guidance council, Essam El-Errian, write an op-ed for it, where he assured the world that “We do not intend to take a dominant role in the forthcoming political transition.”

Even as recently as December 11, Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in the Times: “Our fears often reflect our own mental hobgoblins. For a generation, we were terrified of secular Arab nationalists, like Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Egypt in the ’60s. The fears of the secularists proved overblown, and I think the same is true of anxieties about Islamic parties in Egypt today.”

Even the usually solid Foreign Policy magazine got it wrong. “The main rationale for delaying elections comes from those who fear an Islamist-dominated transitional parliament, the government body in charge of pushing forward constitutional amendments for Egypt’s new political order,” wrote Dalia Mogahed in one of its features (November 28). “This view, however, shared by many in the West, is likely exaggerated. While the Muslim Brotherhood enjoy support from a significant segment of Egyptian society, more Egyptians see a parliament in which the group holds a strong, influential position as bad for the country.”

The less solid Huffington Post published an interview with former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. “[T]he power of the Muslim Brotherhood has been exaggerated,” he said. “It’s a European obsession more than an Arab reality.”

The overall message was Don’t worry about the Muslim Brotherhood, it’s not really that popular.

Now the results are in, it turns out that all of the above had their heads in the sand. Hardline Islamist parties have won nearly 70 percent of all available seats in the first two rounds of Egypt’s elections, according to results announced by the head of the election commission, Abdel-Moez Ibrahim, December 24.

The Muslim Brotherhood said it had won 47 percent of the seats in the second round of voting, based on Ibrahim’s announcement. The even more hard-line Salifist Islamist Al-Nour Party said it had won 20 percent.

The main alliance of secular parties won fewer than 10 percent of the seats.

Because of the complicated voting system, the exact number of seats won by each party will not be announced until all three rounds of voting. The Associated Press reports that the next round of voting “is not expected to alter the result and could strengthen the Islamists’ hand.”

Proved utterly wrong, the liberal media are looking for another way to bury their heads in the sand.

The new strategy is to argue that the Islamist parties aren’t so bad after all. Reporting on the elections, cnn wrote: “The relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won more than 4 million votes in the runoff for the second round of a three-part process.”

So no mention of the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is the parent party of Hamas. The article never mentions sharia law. The Anti-Defamation League says the Muslim Brotherhood “has influenced many terrorist leaders—including Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri—and many of its members have engaged in terrorist activities.” But to cnn, it is “relatively moderate.”

Al-Nour is described as “conservative.” So it’s an Egyptian version of the Republicans? Not exactly. It calls for sharia and strict punishments, including flogging and amputation. A member of its supreme committee, Shaaban Darwish, said: “We must obliterate the liberalism that was introduced by Sadat and Mubarak and reinstate the rule of Islam.” The party is new, so there are few fruits to judge by. But most of the newswires refer to al-Nour as “ultraconservative.”

The New York Times wrote, “Most races pit Islamists against Islamists, with the mainstream Muslim Brotherhood competing against the ultraconservatives known as Salafis.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is mainstream? Technically it is correct. In a nation rife with anti-Semitism, the Brotherhood’s views on Israel are mainstream.

But according to this new myth, the Muslim Brotherhood will get on fine with Israel. “Egyptian Islamists OK with Israeli peace treaty” was one headline on cbs News, as the media reported that al-Nour said it wouldn’t end Egypt’s historic treaty with Israel.

“The prevailing optimism in media reports concerning the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist party’s readiness to adhere to the peace treaty with Israel is based on general statements made by senior officials in both parties,” wrote Lt. Col. Jonathan D. Halevi (Ret.) for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a think tank led by former Israeli Ambassador to the UN Dr. Dore Gold. “These statements maintain that Egypt must honor the international treaties that it signed.”

“Yet a more rigorous examination of the two parties’ stances identifies a markedly different tendency,” he continues. “Both seek a way to cast off the Camp David agreement in a manner that will incur minimal diplomatic and economic damage to Egypt, and restore Egypt to its leading role in the circle of states confronting Israel.”

He lists a gamut of leaders from both parties, including leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Dr. Mohammed Badie, saying the treaty should be abandoned or key points amended.

“The optimism regarding a radical change in the positions of these extreme Egyptian Islamic movements regarding Israel grasps at the straws of general statements that do not attest to an ideological reversal, but convey the tactics for obtaining the strategic objective: casting off the Camp David agreement and transforming Egypt into a prime regional force that will lead the diplomatic and military battle against Israel,” he concludes.

The Islamists are simply trying to have their cake and eat it too—they’re looking for a way to end the peace treaty with Israel while hanging on to the money and arms from America for as long as possible. And meanwhile, they’re giving the American ostriches more excuses to keep their heads in the sand.

The liberal media were wrong about the election, and they are wrong in saying that democracy will moderate Egypt’s Islamists.

But those purveyors of ostrich head bonnets are just selling what people will buy. As Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote: “The media have a terrible history of being deceived by dangerous tyrants seeking to plunge the world into chaos.” And we, the readers, have a terrible history of buying it.

The world is a lot more dangerous than we want to think it is. Like it or not, we must stop buying the ostrich heads and take a good look at the world the way it is—not the way we want it to be.

For more information on our dangerous history of being duped by complacent media, read Mr. Flurry’s article “Churchill Versus the Media.”