Pity the poor folks at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press.
The Obama administration, usually hyper-reluctant to characterize a domestic terrorist attack on U.S. soil as, well, a domestic terrorist attack, has actually had to admit in the face of overwhelming evidence that the San Bernardino massacre on December 2, during which 14 were killed and two dozen injured, was indeed a terrorist attack. Failing to adapt at sufficient speed, the headline writers, tweeters and Obama fans disguised as journalists at the AP, so used to avoiding the T-word at all costs, have made fools of themselves.
Here are the headline and opening paragraphs at longtime Obama cheerleader Darlene Superville's Wednesday afternoon story:
The fact that Superville quoted White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest referring to "the families of the victims of the terror attack" in her next paragraph hardly makes up for the nonsense in the headline and her opening paragraphs. I especially want to see how President Obama is able to "meet" with any of the 14 who died. He's presumably meeting with some of the families of those who died in the terrorist attack and some of that attack's survivors and their families. Why is that so difficult to communicate properly?
In later paragraphs, Superville cooperated with the Obama administration's insistence on co-opting the San Bernardino terrorist massacre to promote the President's gun-control agenda while also sticking to the script in describing past terrorist attacks:
... Obama has vowed to call for new gun-control measures after every mass shooting. The White House is considering acting to expand gun background checks without congressional approval.
Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said last week that the president has asked his team for a proposal soon. She said the recommendations will include measures to expand background checks.
Friday's stop will be the latest in a grim ritual Obama has performed since taking office seven years ago: visiting communities stricken by deadly mass shootings to offer solace to grieving relatives, beginning with the shooting at Fort Hood in Texas near the end of his first year.
The Fort Hood massacre, during which 13 Americans, mostly U.S. soldiers, were killed, was a terrorist attack carried out by a man who "was involved in ... communication with foreign terrorists before carrying out the attack." The Obama administration still insists on officially characterizing this terrorist massacre as "workplace violence."
Consistent with the reluctance to recognize reality, the AP promoted Superville's story with the following tweet (HT Twitchy):
Several responses to the tweet referred to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in their accurate criticisms (minor edits made to original responses):
- "Sure, and 9/11 was a mass airplane collision, right?"
- "It was a terrorist attack. or do you also refer to 9/11 a 'that plane crash'"?
- "and 9/11 was just multiple plane crashes."
Each of the three appearances of a form of the T-word in Superville's story involved someone else saying the word in quotes or referred to someone else having said the word. That is, Superville utterly refused to use any form of the T-word herself — nor did she make any direct reference to the San Bernardino terrorists' undisputed Islamic influences, again making sure that someone else was quoted making that connection.
Given those treatments in this AP story and tweet, one would be wise not to bet against the AP whitewashing a future terrorist attack with a triple-digit or higher death toll using phrases similar to the ones the wire service's Twitter critics sarcastically used.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
