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October 24, 2002

Snipermania

Now that it looks as if the sniper(s) may have been apprehended, the real fun can begin, with InstaPundit demonstrating his usual flare for the commentless comment (and providing a few of our links below, so thanks to him for toiling away selflessly while I sat in class listening to the kids jabber about how Quentin Tarantino is "alternative"... even if he is a troll who knows better than some of what he posts.)

CNN, The Washington Post and AP have the most thorough "what we know so far" items, and the sort of biographical data you'd expect is beginning to appear. But that's boring compared to the real spectacle.

More interesting is going to be the avalanche of gleeful ideologues saying "I told you so". Clayton Cramer is the funniest: he's held for a while that our ex-Army machinist and his Jamaican friend are a rogue al Qaeda cell, and is now crowing because one of them is, indeed, not from the US and the other is a self-identified member of the Nation of Islam, which seems to be enough for him.

Envy him the simplicity of his world, and don't feel too bad for him: in his heart he knows he's right.

The New York Times is a little more careful to point out that most profiling experts were wrong for a variety of reasons, most overlooking the problem with crazy people, which is that they're nuts.

When my "battle buddy" in basic training called himself a "Black Muslim," we all knew to roll our eyes because it was Hudson being an idiot. If Hudson had been the one to go on a shooting rampage, I'd know better than to snap my fingers and say "Damn! Hudson was a rogue terrorist all along!" In fact, I'd know better than to say "Damn! I knew those Islamic types were a menace," because Hudson would have told you he was a horned toad if he would have thought it could get a reaction. I'd know, in fact, to say something like "Wow... Hudson finally snapped," because one of the benefits of separating people from their words is understanding that crazy people say all sorts of things, and frequently "shop around" for political/religious movements to belong to.

One last snark: blogdom is in an uproar tonight because "the media" is "downplaying" one of the arresetee's "Muslimness." How much can "the media" be downplaying it if these people know the arrestee's a self-identified Muslim in the first place? Oh... right... the bloggers have forced them to admit it... or something.

Comments

Posted by: figgy at April 22, 2004 3:07 AM