SCOTT JOHNSON: Someone Is Putting Words In Jen Rubin’s Mouth. “The Washington Post management doesn’t seem to get it. One James Fallows — he who made light of earthquakes in China and never offered a word of apology for his screwy defamation of conservatives in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords — and a swarm of foul-mouthed and openly anti-Semitic tweeters have raised a ruckus over a Washington Post/Right Turn post in which Jennifer Rubin speculated that there might have been an al Qaeda connection in the Norwegian terrorist attacks.”
Related item here. I guess when Glenn Greenwald does it, it’s different.
And yeah, we’ve never seen much of an apology for the blood libels revolving around Jared Loughner, have we?
UPDATE: God and Oslo:
In the Arkansas army shootings and the Ft. Hood shooting and a host of others, the media and the left have sought to downplay any possible connection to Islam the attackers or would be attackers have had. And when those of us on the right have pointed it out, we’ve been accused of racism and those on the left have demanded to know why it even mattered.
Contrast that with the coverage of the Oslo shooter and already the New York Times is making sure in its first few paragraphs everyone knows the guy described himself on Facebook as a “conservative Christian.”
That’s because they don’t want to encourage prejudice against Muslims.
MORE: Kook Lefty Bloggers Say Sarah Palin, The Right, Caused the Norway Massacres. Well, to be fair, everything is Sarah Palin’s fault.
And some related thoughts here.
MORE STILL: Prof. Jacobson: My Challenge To Charles Lemos. Well, Jacobson, you did rely on the New York Times . . . .
STILL MORE: Ed Driscoll looks on the bright side: At last, one man’s terrorist is no longer another’s freedom fighter!
Plus, Jeffrey Goldberg:
The question arises, then, why did Jennifer Rubin make this outrageous assertion about jihadism and Norway?
Well, perhaps it was because she was reading the Atlantic. Shortly after the bombing in Oslo, the Atlantic re-posted on its home page a very interesting piece from last year by Thomas Hegghammer and Dominic Tierney entitled “Why Does al Qaeda Have a Problem With Norway?” You can read it here. In the piece, Hegghammer and Tierney discuss why Norway, against all odds, has become a favored target of al Qaeda. They give several reasons, among them fallout from the Danish cartoon crisis, and Norway’s participation in the war in Afghanistan. And then they bring up a third possibility: The presence in Norway of the aforementioned Mullah Krekar.
Read the whole thing, especially if you’re, say, James Fallows.
AND MORE STILL: Reader Bill McLane writes:
I noted the disparity between the FT. Hood killer and the current one in the Times’ coverage. Blaring headline level. And jumping right in to link the nut-case killer to the “right wing,” and we know who they are, both in Europe and at home.
There is a wonderful book, The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism, by Pascal Bruckner. He examines just about every ramification of this tendency (what Hitchens in a blurb to the book calls this “morbid addiction to self blame”) to condemn the West while glossing over the real, much more serious threats to civilization. And can you believe it?–The book was written first in French. The English translation came out last year.
Yes, I have a copy.