By Erick Erickson -
A terrorist attack occurred in Nice, France, but you would never know it from the American media. The New York Times called it a “mass casualty event” before MSNBC called it a “truck attack,” as if a truck, on its own, attacked people. Perhaps it was named Carrie.
This is a peculiar trend in the American media. If a white guy in the United States shoots up any place other than the Family Research Center, the American media quickly pounces and calls it a terrorist attack. But if an Islamic radical does it, it is a mass shooting or work place violence.
This is why Donald Trump is actually right on the President’s inability to say “radical Islam.” The President is willing to blame the gun industry and right wing militias and conservative ideology, but he is never willing to blame radical Islamist ideology. Words actually do matter and if one cannot define an enemy, one cannot defeat an enemy.
The event in Nice was quickly called a terror attack by the French government. But because the American media could not confirm that the attacker was a white American evangelical who listens to Rush Limbaugh and is an NRA member, they were loathed to speculate lest they hurt a muslim’s feelings.
It has reached the point of predictable absurdity. And the most striking fact remains. Though the American media goes to great lengths to avoid calling terrorism “terrorism” if committed by any group other than white Christians, those terrorists will be perfectly happy to kill the very media that wishes to never offend them.
The America media cares far more about the feelings of the terrorists than the terrorists do for the American media’s feelings. Unfortunately, that will probably never change. The American media, burdened by white guilt, is convinced we really did deserve it because we were mean to muslims.
