23 July 2011 | Massacres as Teaching Moments

I write this with hesitation because I will be guilty of the same thing as the people I'm going to bitch about.

Despite everything I know about our Media Glitterati, I find it amazing (and not in a good way) that people can rush out columns about the massacre in Norway well before any information is out, before the toll of the dead is finalized that do nothing more than stake out ideological positions. Media fuck Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com quickly posted an article about the media's "blindness" when covering stories like this, particularly on identities and motives.

Fine, nice academic point but must it be done now? Must we read sanctimonious blog posts about How to Properly Interpret Bad Things? Must we have a lecture about a tragedy that's unfolding before our eyes? He's no better than asshole John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, who desperately wants to blame Islamic terrorism for the massacre, but could only settle for a not so veiled (get it?) complaint about being dubious of "political correctness" in identifying the killer. I can almost hear cries of frustration at Fox News or the National Review knowing the killer's name is not "Muhammed."

What a sorry spectacle to see, both in the media and online posts, how two identities were carved out for the killer: a Muslim or a Timothy McVeigh, as if either explains everything by the label alone. This is how it is in this world when it comes to acts of mass murder, along with the associated baggage of staking out your petty ideological identification game. It was so easy to believe this was a specifically Muslim act of terror that Islamic organizations in Norway quickly had to condemn the attacks, primed to believe the worst about their own communities. For those left of center, there is almost a perverse pleasure in knowing that the killer is a right-wing nationalist and denigrator of Islam. (Should any references to Christianity be made, it will only serve to push these folks to climax as proof of how horrible that religion is.)  It's disgusting, really, to ignore the growing stack of dead bodies in order to keep one's world view properly aligned. So pious frauds in the media use dead folks as an opportunity to flog their beliefs and scores of small-dicked commenters on news posts want to duke it with people they will never meet to accomplish the same.

It's beyond disgusting. And now that I've essentially done the same, I just want to wash my hands of this ideological filth and take note of something more important: the survivors.