Quoted at length from Yahoo Groups because it is superb…
After weeks of assurances that the sniper was an “angry white male”, it turns out the only angry white males connected to this story are the ones in America’s newsrooms.On Thursday, after being informed that the two suspects were a black Muslim called Muhammad and his illegal-immigrant Jamaican sidekick, The New York Times nevertheless reported in its early editions that the pair were being sought for “possible ties to ’skinhead militia’ groups”. The Feds had already released a photo of Muhammad looking like one of the less goofy members of the Jackson Five and, though one should never rush to stereotype, it seems unlikely that a black Muslim with big hair would have many “ties” to skinhead militias.
…the Times wasn’t ready to give in: C’mon, there’s gotta be some angry white male National Rifle Association Right-wing redneck Second Amendment gun-nut neo-Nazi militia types in here somewhere, preferably living in a compound Janet Reno can come out of retirement to surround and torch.
Sadly not. Instead, we have a [black] Muslim convert. (…)
What are we expert profilers to make of such bewilderingly contradictory signs? Well, obviously, those of us in the media should not to be too hasty in connecting the dots. Instead, we should rush to disconnect them. So CNN’s Aaron Brown found it easier to call Mr Muhammad “Mr Williams”, a formulation likely to be encouraged by the guy’s lawyers, once they’re in place. And my local radio news described him as “an ex-soldier” and “an African-American male”.
Anyone spot the missing category? You can discern the preferred narrative: an African-American male from a deprived background driven psycho by military culture. But he left the army years ago and his transformation into a killer seems to be more or less coincidental with his transformation into Mr Muhammad.
The media behaved much the same way the last time a 40-year old radical Muslim called Mohamed opened fire on US soil. July the Fourth, Los Angeles Airport, the El Al counter, two dead. CNN and the Associated Press all but stampeded to report a “witness” who described the shooter as a fat white guy in a ponytail who kept yelling, “Artie took my job.” But, alas, this promising account proved to be a prank. Instead, it was a Muslim called Hesham Mohamed Hadayet.
Mohamed! What are the odds of that? As with last Thursday’s arrests, no one could make head or tail of this strange turn of events. As The New York Times put it, “Officials Puzzled About Motive Of Airport Gunman”. Hmm. Egyptian Muslim kills Jews on American national holiday. Best not to jump to conclusions. Denial really is a river in Egypt.
Broadly speaking, in these interesting times, when something unusual and unprecedented happens, there are those who think on balance it’s more likely to be a fellow called Mohammed than, say, Bud, and there are those who climb into the metaphorical burqa, close up the grille and insist, despite all the evidence, that we should be looking for some angry white male.
…I’m beginning to think the media would be better off turning their psychological profilers loose on America’s newsrooms. Take, for example, the Times’s star columnist Frank Rich. Within a few weeks of September 11, he was berating John Ashcroft, the Attorney-General, for not rounding up America’s “home-grown Talibans” - the religious Right, members of “the Second Amendment cult” and “the anti-abortion terrorist movement”. In a column entitled “How to Lose a War” last October he mocked the administration for not consulting with abortion clinics, who had a lot of experience dealing with “terrorists”.
You get the picture: sure, Muslim fundamentalists can be pretty extreme, but what about all our Christian fundamentalists? Unfortunately, for the old moral equivalence to hold up, the Christians really need to get off their fundamentalist butts and start killing more people.
At the moment, the brilliantly versatile Muslim fundamentalists are gunning down Maryland schoolkids and bus drivers, hijacking Moscow theatres, self-detonating in Israeli pizza parlours, blowing up French oil tankers in Yemen, and slaughtering nightclubbers in Bali, while Christian fundamentalists are, er, sounding extremely strident in their calls for the return of prayer in school.
MORE
Also see: With the Sniper, TV Profilers Missed Their Mark
{ 0 comments… add one now }