Wednesday, February 14, 2007

UTAH AUTHORITIES FEAR ANTI-BOSNIAN BACKLASH

I am coming around to Dude's way of thinking, that the government withholds information that it does not trust me to know. A few minutes ago it occurred to me, "Hey, didn't someone shoot five people in a Utah mall the other day? Whatever happened to that story?" So I checked foxnews.com - no story. CNN.com - no story. MSNBC.com - nothing. ABCnews.com - nothing. Then I went to the Salt Lake Tribune's site and found dozens of stories but almost no references to the killer and no meaningful profile of him. In these random-gunman stories, aren't we typically bombarded for weeks with First Middle Lastname of the killer and his photo at every turn? Dozens of stories on the tragedy in the Salt Lake Trib but none specifically about the killer. In a story titled "Emotionless killer gunned down victims randomly," just this:
The expression on his face never changed. Not as he walked into the crowded mall. Not as he began to fire. "He wasn't yelling or saying anything. He was just loading his gun and blasting away," said Trolley Square mall employee Jaron Dansie.

An article titled "Trolley Square: Suspect rarely seen by his neighbors" names the killer, Sulejman Talovic (somehow not your standard Utah name), and provides this account:

Police say the gunman met his first two victims in the parking lot, firing off two rounds as they fell.

"Die, motherf-----," Talovic said to them, according to one witness.


Don't we typically look for a motive when someone says, "Die, motherf-----" and starts shooting at strangers?

This important article urges Utahns "not to turn against Bosnians." Against Bosnians? Is there an American somewhere with a beef against Bosnians?

Eventually at fark.com I found a link to some local news site with this sentence buried in the 8th paragraph.
A family friend, who didn't want to be identified, told us Talovic's upbringing may have played a role. He was a Muslim-Bosnian, born in war-torn Bosnia.

Now that is a totally new invention as far as I can tell, a religion-hyphen-countryman. I don't recall seeing news references to Presbyterian-Americans or Buddhist-Chinese. Is the intent to make the Muslim element blend into the Bosnian element and somehow disappear or get diluted? I would guess that the reason the family friend "didn't want to be identified" has more to do with the Muslim part than the war-torn Bosnia part, and why the family friend didn't want to be identified may be the more interesting angle.

Somebody doesn't want me to know that the guy who emotionlessly shot down as many Americans as he could manage is a Muslim. That last article and all the other reporting I skimmed played up the Bosnian angle and in most cases did not even mention the Muslim angle, or even the killer's name, lest you draw your own inference. Now I ask you - if it had been a white Mormon kid who shot up a mall, would we or would we not be subject to round-the-clock coverage of this Big Story? And hmm, what would be the reason why this story is not getting that kind of treatment?

1 comment:

Tom said...

Right On, E. There is no seriel Muslim problem unless we tell you there is one.

Remember that Arab that shot who he thought was a Jew at the LAX terminal?

What about the Sniper In Virginia that they always referred to by his non Muslim name he hadn't used in 20 years?

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