Terrorism is As Terrorism Does? by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #323 | @MDWorld

April 22, 2013 Mike Gold 5 Comments

When the bombs went off last week, former George Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer gave an interview saying this wasn’t the time for partisan posturing, it was a time for coming together as Americans. I was impressed; Fleischer has been one of the more political posturers, and it was refreshing to see him do the right thing.

I mentioned this to daughter Adriane, who texted “Oh, then you didn’t see Fox.” Well, no, I didn’t. The idea of watching Roger Ailes’ cable version of Heckle and Jeckle ranks just behind taking high-strychnine LSD and setting my nostril hairs on fire. She said Fox reported 10 deaths and an arrest of a Saudi terrorist. They were off by, well, seven deaths (eight at the time) and one arrest.

Without bothering to confirm, Fox’s fortune-losing fish-wrap sister The New York Post put it in print for those few of the Rapid Right who know how to read. This was a few days before they put a photo of two people, one wearing a white cap, both carrying backpacks, on their front page next to the headline: Bag Men – Feds Seek These Two Pictured At Boston Marathon. Two innocent people who were absolutely and totally not the two feds were seeking. So, no, I don’t pay attention to Rupert Murdoch’s lies and incompetence. Others make mistakes; Murdoch’s news empire maintains a reckless disdain for the truth and ethical reporting.

Having lost the timing argument, I speculated as to how the Rabid Right would try to turn this horror to their advantage, certain that they would try. On his worst day, Ari Fleischer is no Roger Ailes. This came several hours later, when the Rabid Right (and I apologize for choosing alliteration over redundancy) started taking President Obama to task for not using the word “terrorist” in his comments made at 6 PM Monday evening.

For the moment, let us put aside the absolute reality that you could call the whole event a strawberry malt and that wouldn’t change a damn thing. The Rabid Right will not be denied the opportunity to make asses of themselves at the ugliest possible time.

Obama – and he said as much in his comments – took a more methodical approach, encouraging a careful ad more efficacious approach in the investigations. Heaven forbid we should go out and invade Iraq again. But that wasn’t good enough for the Rapid Right. They demanded to know why Obama didn’t call them terrorists immediately. They wanted to know what he was hiding and why he was so incompetent for not calling a spade a spade.

What Obama was hiding was obvious. One of the winners of this year’s Boston Marathon was from Kenya.

But the Rabid Right promotes an overreaching question: What is an act of terrorism? If it is to inspire terror, then the guy who sticks a gun in your face and says “your money or your life” is a terrorist. If we define terrorism as having an international component – and let us remember “Islam” isn’t a nation, it’s a religion – then Timothy McVeigh, Jim David Adkisson and Professor Ted Kaczynski (to name but a few) are not terrorists.

The Boston Marathon bombings were an act of terrorism and were referred to as such by all but law and government officials from the outset, but generally speaking that term wasn’t tossed around nearby Newtown Connecticut.  Adam Lanza killed 26 people in an act that terrified the nation, particularly teachers, school children and their parents. If Adam wasn’t a terrorist, then if the Boston Bombers were Americans who used an assault rifle and 30 round magazines instead of ball-bearing packed pressure cookers, should they beat the terrorist rap? And, indeed, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev became an American citizen – ironically – on September 11, 2012.

If we use the term “terrorist” to mean a person who, through an act of violence and murder, inspires terror… then I’m not certain the Boston Bombers was were terrorists per se. I don’t see America being more terrorized by the Marathon bombings. I see America being more pissed, and I see Americans more inspired to help.

Either way, I’m sure the gaggle of the Rapid Right fools will continue to do what they do best: babble incredible lies about President Blackguy Omuslim over and over until they get a teensy-tiny bit of traction from a handful of imbecilic no-lives, thereby upping their Q-ratings all the way up to 2.

But I’ll tell you one thing: Obama not calling the Boston Bombers terrorists was a hell of a lot better than Rupert Murdoch callously reporting a phony arrest, a death count more than three times higher than reality, and identifying two innocents as bombing suspects.

Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking rock, blues and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, rebroadcast three times during the week – check the website above for times. Gold also joins MDW’s Marc Alan Fishman, Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com where he pontificates on matters of four-color. And Gold joins ComicMixers Marc Alan Fishman, Glenn Hauman and Adriane Nash at the massive C2E2 convention in Chicago this weekend; join us at Booth 1237 and, please, bring chocolate covered cake donuts.