By now I hope you’ve read David Sirota’s masterfully idiotic piece entitled, “Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American” from over in the Web Briefing.
He’s writing about “white privilege” and how the “identity” of the bomber somehow has policy implications:
Because of these undeniable and pervasive double standards, the specific identity of the Boston Marathon bomber (or bombers) is not some minor detail — it will almost certainly dictate what kind of governmental, political and societal response we see in the coming weeks. That means regardless of your particular party affiliation, if you care about everything from stopping war to reducing the defense budget to protecting civil liberties to passing immigration reform, you should hope the bomber was a white domestic terrorist. Why? Because only in that case will privilege work to prevent the Boston attack from potentially undermining progress on those other issues.
Not to burst Sirota’s bubble, but the bomber could be white, American, and . . . an Islamic terrorist. Like the two Americans President Obama’s drones offed in Yemen without a trial. Maybe Sirota will get real lucky and the bomber is a whitey with an assault weapon. Then the Left can use him as a prop to pass more gun laws.
Alas, we don’t have any clues yet about the bomber(s) or the motives behind the attack. Sirota will just have sit patiently to see if his progressive dreams are shattered — or not.
But I digress. If Sirota really wants to start a discussion on white privilege, however, might I suggest he bring the subject up at the next Salon editorial meeting? Check out the vanilla faces from Salon’s homepage under their “Voices” section: