Actual Salon Headline: 'I Still Hope the Bomber Is a White American'

April 17th, 2013 5:15 PM

As NewsBusters reported earlier, unabashedly liberal commentator David Sirota published an article at Salon Tuesday with the disgusting title, "Let’s Hope the Boston Marathon Bomber Is a White American."

As a result of all the negative attention he's gotten due to this piece, rather than doing the right thing by apologizing, Sirota on Wednesday actually doubled down with a new article titled "I Still Hope the Bomber Is a White American."

Sirota began by claiming that Fox News's Bill O'Reilly "effectively agreed" with his Tuesday article.

"As O’Reilly put it," he wrote, "'If this is an international terror attack, the repercussions will be severe,' but, he added, 'if it’s home-grown' that will just 'be another stain on American history.'”

Please notice that nowhere in the link Sirota provided did the Fox News transcript reflect O'Reilly saying, "Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a White American."

Instead, O'Reilly was pointing out the obvious: if it turns out the bomber is an Islamic terrorist, the repercussions will be more severe than if it ends up being a domestic, non-Islamic terrorist.

Why don't Sirota and others in the liberal media not understand that we are indeed at war with Islamic extremists and have been for decades?

On top of this, the Obama administration has been claiming since bin Laden's assassination that al Qaeda has been decimated.

If the events in Boston Monday are tied to al Qaeda, such statements were clearly premature, and there darn well should be a change in American foreign policy to prevent more such attacks.

By contrast, there are no American organizations that have declared war on the United States and have been systematically attacking us for years.

As such, no matter how horrific Monday was, there's likely no policy changes other than increased security at such events that will be enacted if the bomber ends up being domestic.


Obviously oblivious to such logic, after saying much the same things he did Tuesday, Sirota concluded, "The reason to hope that the bomber is a white American is because in a country where white privilege and double standards so obviously affect our national security reactions, that outcome will better guarantee that the reaction to Boston is a bit more measured."

Again, the response will be "a bit more measured" because America isn't at war with an extremist white American group.

In addition, as I noted in my first condemnation of Sirota's comments, why does the American assailant have to be white?

Wouldn't the response to this bombing be "a bit more measured" if a black or Asian American ended up being the attacker rather than an Islamic extremist?

Why must he or she be white for the repercussions to be more to Sirota's liking? In fact, why must he or she necessarily be American let alone white?

Wouldn't a lone wolf European for example with some beef against America who didn't belong to some anti-American group also have sufficed?

With all that in mind, maybe Sirota rather than sticking to his guns could have acknowledged his biases by correcting himself with an article titled "Actually, I Just Hope The Bomber Isn't An Islamic Extremist."

He might still have gotten pushback from some, but his point would have been significantly more pallatable to others.