Damage Control! Damage Control!

So Ben Adler over at Newsweek is now trying to establish some critical distance between himself and the rather damning conversation over whether or not "terrorists live in caves", as his colleague Dan Stone asserted last week.

According to Adler, it's not as if Stark or Michael Isikoff or Kathy Jones or whoever believe this sort of thing. Oh no. They're just talking about how the media looks at it.

To which I can only respond: "pull the other one. It's got bells on it."

I'll give you credit for having made some of the more sensible comments. But they ARE the media, Ben. In a situation like that, being in that position, your colleagues (especially Daniel!) should have taken great pains to point out that these are not their beliefs, but the ones that they see floating in the aether. (Or however that works.)

If your group HAD done so, then it wouldn't look utterly self-serving for you to claim as much now. Your colleague Jan Interlandi might also not look quite so bad for saying that "we reserve the label 'terrorist' for foreign attackers". And Isikoff wouldn't have looked like an idiot for thinking that a terrorist must be "equipped and dispatched by a foreign power": an assumption which is not only ahistorical but shows how deeply the media has internalized Republican post-9/11 talking points.

Come on. It's pretty transparent that you're leading the defense here because you were one of the very few to come out of this looking like anything but a schmuck. You are taking one for the team. Good on 'ya. It still doesn't change a damned thing; even if Stone was being facetious, there's no way that Isikoff was.

It wouldn't do them any favors to claim that they were being facetious, either. This is a deadly serious issue. Why the hell WOULD Stone be joking around about it? Why would he be busting out the sarcasm, knowing that it doesn't come across well in text and that the discussion was going to be published? Why the hell would anybody have thought it was appropriate? Sure, maybe if the discussion was happening on Fark or 4chan or something, but you people are professionals working at NEWSWEEK. Get it together.

Here's Glenn's Greenwald's reaction:

Time constraints prevent me from addressing this, except to say that it's hard for me to believe that Adler actually read what I wrote, since the points he claims I overlooked were ones I expressly addressed, and the aspects of their discussion which he claims I omitted were ones I explicitly included. Moreover, Adler's denial that Newsweek was reluctant to use the term Terrorism for Joseph Stack is strange, given that the whole point of their deliberations, as the magazine's editor defined it, was to have "a discussion over here about the aversion so far to calling the Austin Tax Wacko a terrorist," and the very first response, from Managing Editor Kathy Jones, was to explain what she called her "rule of thumb" "handy guide" that the word is only for foreigners protesting "the American government," but not used for Americans. Adler's response is one of those which negates itself, and I'm content to allow readers here and elsewhere to compare what Newsweek actually said to what Adler now claims they said and decide for yourself (see also: this insightful objection to Newsweek's discussion from The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates).

That Jones bit is really the crux of it. Newsweek had already decided that it was going to equate the word "terrorist" with "foreigner". That wasn't humor or hyperbole; it was a simple statement of policy. Hirsh stating that "Al Qaeda co-opted terrorism after 9/11" wasn't humor either. It was denial of Newsweek's own culpability for equating "terrorist" with "foreigner".

What I find truly amusing, though, is that it feels like Adler was more responding to my outrage than Glenn's. Glenn is right. This doesn't really respond to his points at all. Perhaps I'm not the only one who thought that Stone et al deserved to have scorn poured on to them, but Glenn really did have a broader critique of agency in media that went ignored.

Ah well. It's Newsweek. Perhaps I shouldn't have expected any better. The last decent thing I read there was N'Gai Croal's old gaming blog. It's just too bad that Adler was trotted out to try to cover for 'em.

Edit: Kathy Jones also whines "it's not my opinion, it's just how people in the media describe things!" Well, guess what? YOU ARE THE MEDIA. You're a managing editor at one of the biggest newsweeklies in the country. You know damned well how important an issue this is, and you know how likely it is that such a comment will get misconstrued. You know that the ugly mood in America makes it quite likely that this sort of violence may become more commonplace if it is not roundly condemned, and you did not write word one to condemn it.

Indeed, the best Kathy could do is say that it was "a loaded term". That's true. It is. Your magazine uses it anyway. Your choices about whether and when to do so are therefore fair game, and you don't get to assert critical distance to try to save yourself.

Re-Edit: Case in point for how terrible Newsweek is: one of their articles blaming the public for all of America's ills. It's the sort of lovely, contrarian "I can't get in trouble for blaming everybody because I'm blaming everybody" articles that journalists adore because it won't get them in trouble or threaten their access to the Big Cheeses that ARE largely responsible for America's current plight. The kind that always includes paeans to bipartisanship that never actually existed, and which only encourages the Dems to hand the store over to the Republicans that much faster.

It includes the sentence (quoted verbatim) " Grade inflation is so out of control in the nation's high schools that 43 percent of college-bound seniors taking the SATs have A averages—even though SAT scores have remained flat or drifted slowly downward for years."

That SAT scores may have been renormalized did not even occur to them. That the biggest issue is actually that too many kids are getting perfect scores would probably blow their fool heads off.

Worthless.

"Terrorists have beards in live in caves."

So says Dan Stone at Newsweek.

Comes down to ID. This guy was a regular guy-next-door Joe Schmo. Terrorists have beards in live in caves. He was also an American, so targeting the IRS seems more a political statement – albeit a crazy one – whereas Abdulmutallab was an attack on our freedom. Kind of the idea that an American can talk smack about America, but when it comes from someone foreign, we rally together. Or in the case of the Christmas bomber, vie for self-righteousness.

Yes, this is THAT Newsweek. Where, apparently, they're struggling to find reasons to call a guy who flew a plane into an IRS building anything but a terrorist. Why? Because he's white:

Kathy Jones, Managing Editor (Multimedia)

Did the label terrorist ever successfully stick to McVeigh? Or the Unabomber? Or any of the IRS bombers in

Here is my handy guide:
Lone wolfish American attacker who sees gov't as threat to personal freedom: bomber, tax protester, survivalist, separatist

Group of Americans bombing/kidnapping to protest U.S. policies on war/poverty/personal freedom/ - radical left-wing movement, right-wing separatists

All foreign groups or foreign individuals bombing/shooting to protest American gov't: terrorists...

...Patrick Enright, Senior Articles Editor

Yeah, maybe the distinction depends too on whom you're attacking — if it's the people you think wronged you (like the IRS), you're a protester/separatist/etc., and if it's indiscriminate killing of clearly innocent people, you're a terrorist.

Jeneen Interlandi, Reporter
I agree with Kathy. Right or wrong, we definitely reserve the label 'terrorist' for foreign attackers. Even the anthrax guy (not that we ever found him) wasn't consistently referred to as terrorist.

Here is Michael Isikof, one of their chief correspondents:

Michael Isikoff ,Investigative Correspondent
ok, just to weigh in on this — I think some of the comments miss what I take to be the fundamental distinction. The underpants bomber, for all his ineptitude, was equipped and dispatched by a foreign enemy — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula— whose ultimate leader (bin Laden) has declared war on the United States and who has demonstrated his willingness and intent to inflict mass casualties on our civilian population. That makes underpants man a terrorist and had he been captured overseas, would have made himan enemy combatant— and why the Obama administration dispatches the U.S. military and Predator drones to destroy the people who sent him here. Similarly, the Fort Hood shooter may have been a disturbed "lone wolf" but he was in ideological alignment and in communication with a member of the same foreign enemy.

That makes them both terrorists.

The Austin tax protestor, the anthrax scientist wacko, the Unabomber— all did heinous things that we can describe any way we want — certainly what they did were terrorist acts— but they all remain a very different kettle of fish, which is why Mr. underpants man gets more attention that Austin tax protestor flying plane into building.

It should be immediately obvious that this is all horseshit. (Sorry, no gentler word for it.) Domestic terrorists are so old as to be trite in any number of countries around the world, and especially in Europe, so there is no reason whatsoever to believe Isikoff's distinction is in any way accurate. (Isikoff goes on to do the "of course there can be domestic terrorists" line, but then qualifies his statements by talking about how this guy isn't "a bigger terrorist deal".

Let's be honest. That distinction has NOTHING to do with ideology, and it has NOTHING to do with foreign support. It's race. Pure and simple. If you're brown, you're a terrorist. If you're white, you can't be. And, of course, there is an ideological component. If conservatives hate something, and it's attacked, the attacker can't really be a terrorist. After all, conservatives are always right, and terrorists are always wrong, so they couldn't possibly agree! I mean, look at this:

Devin Gordon
I continue to be fascinated by the divergent reactions between Austin Wacko and Underpants Man, and I think it goes much deeper than the taxonomy of what is a "terrorist." (One simple reason: Tiger Woods didn't step on the Underpants saga the very next day. Sigh.)
Fundamentally, I'm with Dan: a Texan white guy named Joe Stack isn't as interesting / enraging / anxiety-inducing as a Nigerian Muslim named Abdulmutallab. I'm also with Eve: Stack's philosophy, unlike Abdulmutallab's, is pretty kosher with many — maybe even most — Americans. We're basically with him right up to the burn-down-your-house-and-fly-a-plane-into-a-building part of the story. Other than that part, right on, Joe Stack!

If they agree with you? You aren't a terrorist. If they don't? Terrorist.

I'm with Glenn. This says nothing good about Newsweek. Nothing good at all. That this is even up for debate is horrible; that people would make these sorts of statements even more so. Those that seriously argued in favor of this have discredited themselves as analysts and journalists; to the extent that a human being is an ethical being, they've discredited themselves as people.

Considering all the dehumanization going on here, that's somewhat appropriate, don't you think?

To be fair, not all did: Mark Hosenball was absolutely right in saying "I guess it's easier and more convenient — politically correct, even — to use that word to describe someone if they have a beard." I hope that he finds a better publication to work for.

But, well, here's Michael Hersh:

Michael Hirsh , Senior Editor, Washington Web Editor
Isikoff pretty much has it right. Al Qaeda and Islamist extremism co-opted the term "terrorist" after 9/11. No one had any problem calling Timothy McVeigh a domestic terrorist before 9/11.
And Stack is pretty isolated. There was the same fear after OK City. But it turns out there aren't as many copycat killings of this nature as there are, say, school shootings.

Apologies to Sam Jackson, but I DON'T REMEMBER AL QAEDA CO-OPTING A GOD-DAMNED THING. You did that, Hirsh. You did it then, and you're doing it now, and it's so much worse now because you clearly KNOW BETTER.

But here we are. With a pack of racist bastards unworthy of the label "sapiens".