It was a real race to the bottom between CNN and The New York Times on Wednesday to see which could have the most God-awful hot take on the eighteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I’m going to give the edge to the Times because its awfulness was presented as journalism, while CNN at least offered its idiocy as an opinion piece.
The Times will be dealt with in Thursday’s Morning Briefing. I’ll handle CNN here.
CNN senior political analyst John Avlon wrote an opinion piece that began well enough but then went off the rails:
And here’s a startling statistic: since the 9/11 attacks, right-wing terrorists have killed more people in America than jihadist terrorists, according to the
New America think tank.There are some folks who, for their own political purposes, would like to keep the focus on one form of political violence over another.
The New America study cited is a bit problematic. It takes every white guy nut job who’s committed violence in the last eighteen years and lumps them into an amorphous ideological blob. Many were “reportedly” tied to this or that fringe group.
I’m not intending to trivialize any deaths, but the body count numbers cited in the study are 107 and 104. So, basically the same. The only big difference is that one side represents a disparate group of lunatics motivated by a variety of things, and the other all by the same thing. That means that the latter group is still by far the biggest danger.
Lumping every racist and anti-Semite in America into the “right-wing” is also a bit of a stretch, but you do you, CNN.
While Avlon used the phrase “right-wing terrorists” in the op-ed post, he and the CNN folks became a little more economical with their words when he was talking about it on-air:
(cnn.com screenshot)
“Right-wingers.”
By almost any interpretation of the phrase, I am a “right-winger,” as are many of you reading this. We’re all terrorists according to CNN!
This is the kind of media sleight of hand that is frequently used to demonize anyone who doesn’t subscribe to leftist hive mind orthodoxy. Avlon likes to tout his credentials as a speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani as proof that he isn’t out on a left limb, but he is working for CNN in the Trump era, so that notion can be dispensed with rather quickly.
That Avlon and CNN looked at 9/11 as a golden opportunity to advance a garbage political narrative says enough about how awful they are. That the narrative is only supportable if we ignore the almost 3000 people murdered by jihadists on the date being commemorated makes them complete and utter scum.
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PJ Media Associate Editor Stephen Kruiser is the author of “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower” and “Straight Outta Feelings: Political Zen in the Age of Outrage,” both of which address serious subjects in a humorous way. Monday through Friday he edits PJ Media’s “Morning Briefing.”