30 July 2011 | Return of the Bad Muslim!

Passing by Fox News, I caught sight of airhead Dave Briggs asking some asshole why, and I quote, hasn't "the mainstream media" noted that Nasser Abdo is a Muslim?

Nasser Abdo is the AWOL soldier who was allegedly planning to attack other soliders at Fort Hood. That place, as you remember, is the site of an earlier attack that killed about one dozen soldiers at the hand of Major Nadal Hassan.

But the fact that a potentially horrible massacre was prevented by an alert gunshop owner was second to what Fox News wants to promote is the return of the Bad Muslim as public enemy number one. What airhead Dave Briggs was parroting is right-wing complaint that Anders Brievak, the Oslo murderer, has been identified as a "Christian." By the "mainstream media," of course. When Briggs said that, I laughed out loud because Fox News is a mainstream media corporation.

But anyway, can you imagine what kind of minds need to complain about such a ridiculous thing, and make sure they play up the Muslim angle to remind everybody who the true enemy is? It was bad enough that everyone assumed the massacre in Oslo was an Islamist terror attack, and really just as bad that people where trying to label Brievak a "Christian terrorist." But this kind of bullshit is just compounding people's fear. You can almost sense the relief that this story came along, to rescue the spectacle of extremist right-wing violence with the comfortable villain of the Muslim terrorist. And one in our own ranks, literally!

What a pathetic thing for an influential television channel to be playing *up* an alleged perpetrator's religion, much less complain that no one else is doing the same. But this is Fox, so being an asshole is part of the job.