Loose Ends (139)

Does anyone think that in the entire NFL over the last decade Jon Gruden is the only senior person who expressed impure thoughts on email or other internet media? As usual, the Babylon Bee has this covered accurately:

Speaking of the Bee, its latest scoop is exposing that The Atlantic magazine’s Emma Green really is as vapid as most everyone else in the mainstream media. Green interviewed Bee impresario Kyle Mann, and the exchange includes these impossible-to-top bits:

Green: You guys wrote an article in January 2020 that was shared roughly 3 million times, claiming that Democrats called for the American flag to be flown at half-staff when the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in an American strike. What makes this funny? I know that’s the worst question to ask somebody who writes jokes.

Mann: It’s funny because General Soleimani died and then they called for flags to be flown at half-mast. Get it?

Green: But that’s what I’m saying. Besides just saying the joke again, what makes it funny?

Mann: Do you want me to explain the joke to you? Because the joke is that General Soleimani died and Democrats were sad. If you don’t know why that’s funny, then you’re not the audience for the joke. The funniest part is that it got fact-checked because it was so believable that Democrats would do that. That’s a real honor. . .

Green: I want to talk about one of the drawings in your new book—one at the beginning of Chapter 2, which is about race. It has three little stick figures: one that’s peach-colored that says “bad”; one next to it that’s gray that says “better”; and one to the right that says “best.” That one is black. Why do you think that is funny?

Mann: Well, it’s because being peach is not good. Being gray is better. And being black is best.

Green: Right, but you’re not just talking about stick figures. You’re making a joke about how progressives think about the hierarchy of race.

Mann: I’m not going to sit here and deconstruct and explain every joke to you. We’re taking this ridiculous position in order to mock something—to make fun of this idea that your skin color matters in setting up a hierarchy of the oppressed versus oppressor class. If you really don’t get the joke, I can’t help you.

Give up, Kyle. There is indeed no stopping people like Green from making fools of themselves, and providing you with more material.

I noticed Friday when the news broke of the stabbing murder of British MP David Amess that initial news reports omitted any detail about the suspect arrested for the attack. The longer authorities and the media were silent about this, the more you suspected what was sure to come. A major clue came when authorities said the attack was likely “terror-related.”

And guess what? The BBC couldn’t conceal the news forever:

Whitehall officials told the BBC the man being held was Ali Harbi Ali, a British man of Somali heritage. The 25-year-old is being held under the Terrorism Act and officers have until Friday to question him. The BBC understands Mr Ali was referred to the counter-terrorist Prevent scheme some years ago, but was never a formal subject of interest to MI5.

So another lone “known wolf.” At least there isn’t the usual “we don’t know what his motive might have been” nonsense.

Early investigations revealed a potential motivation linked to Islamic extremism, police said on Friday.

Chaser—A reminder from earlier in the week:

A 37-year-old man was charged on Thursday in connection with a bow-and-arrow rampage in a small town in Norway that killed five people and wounded three others, in what the authorities said was an apparent act of terrorism.

The police identified the suspect in the grisly assault in the town of Kongsberg, about 50 miles southwest of Oslo, as Espen Andersen Brathen. . .

Officials said Thursday that the assailant was a Danish citizen who lived in the town and who had converted to Islam, but did not say when that happened, why his conversion had raised concerns or what action the authorities had taken.

“We have previously been in contact with him regarding worries about radicalization,” Ole Bredrup Saeverud, the regional police chief, said at a news conference before the suspect was named. Asked whether the assailant might have been motivated by extreme religious ideology, he added, “We don’t know that, but it’s natural to ask the question.”

“Natural to ask the question.” You don’t say.

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