A One-Off Event

The recent attempt to detonate a car bomb in mid-town New York City is deadly serious, but the media’s coverage of the event is almost comical (maybe “sad” is a more appropriate description). Immediately after the thwarted attack was reported, left leaning media outlets and government officials scurried in front of the cameras to suggest (with no information) that the attack was initiated by a “loner,” a disgruntled, government hating citizen, and that it was (in the words of homeland security director, Janet Napolitano, “a one-off event.”

Even New York Mayor Richard Bloomberg entered the fray suggesting to a very receptive Katy Couric: “If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health care bill or something. It could be anything.”That has to be one of the most ridiculous statements of his political career.

Roger Simon encapsulated this somewhat facitiously when he writes:

If you were listening to Geraldo on Sunday night (okay, I apologize), you would have thought the would-be Times Square bomber was either the illegitimate son of Timothy McVeigh or an evangelical minister overdosed on steroids looking for an abortion clinic. Geraldo was practically fulminating at the mouth — it’s a white man, it’s a white man — in nostalgia for the good old days when the true enemy was some evil Ku Kluxer waving his hangman’s noose.

And now that Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani and recently naturalized American citizen, was arrested on an airplane heading to Dubai, the meme has to change. This morning a talking head on CNN reported that Faisal lost his home in Shelton, CT to foreclosure in 2009 and then suggested that “the stress and anger” associated with the foreclosure may have driven him to bomb Times Square. Puleeze!

Why is it that the Left-leaning media and the entire Obama administration can’t seem to bring itself use phrases like Jihad or Islamic terrorism when describing possible perpetrators of the attack? Why has Faisal Shahzad’s ideology and religion not been identified?

At some level, it appears that the media and the administration believe that if the true danger and the people behind it are not identified, our response can be more muted, more politically correct, more benign. The fact that Islamists are trying to kill us must be subordinated to the delusion that the real danger is right-wing fringe groups (including Tea party advocates). The meme just feels better for the media and the administration. When facts invade their through-the-looking-glass world, they suffer cognitive dissonance and make fools of themselves. But more importantly, they treat the American people like children, shielding them from harsh realities and at the same time, absolving themselves from taking harsh and necessary actions.

I wonder whether the underwear bomber, major Hassan (the killer of 13 people at Fort Hood), and Faisal Shahzad met at a Tea Party Rally. After all, they were all “loners,” they were all “deranged,” they were all “disgruntled,” and they were all … oops, can’t go there … not politically correct.