In an age of heightened sensitivity over slurs involving race, religion, sexual orientation and so forth, why is anti-American bigotry considered soci

Blogger Jeff Couba notes an appalling exchange on Bob Edwards's XM satellite radio show:

[Edwards] was talking to someone named Tom Miller, who has been to Cuba as a journalist. Miller was describing a visit where he was just sitting on a park bench talking to someone when a policeman came by and asked for their papers. After going to his police car and checking something, Miller was arrested and taken to some government building where he was questioned for a couple of hours. They asked if he had been handing out copies of a 1948 declaration on human rights. Apparently someone matching Miller's description had been handing them out.
Miller said "I wasn't mistreated per se, but it wasn't a happy experience." And Edwards says (may not be exact quote) "At least you were treated better than people over in Guantanamo."

It's a "joke," we guess, but what a distasteful bit of anti-American attitudinizing. Does Edwards really mean to suggest that one ought to treat terrorists captured on the battlefield the same way as people sitting on a park bench, minding their own business--or for that matter than people who actually were doing what Miller was "suspected" of, namely handing out copies of human-rights literature?

In an age of heightened sensitivity over slurs involving race, religion, sexual orientation and so forth, why is anti-American bigotry considered socially acceptable?