Twelve years later, our news media still can’t report the plainest truth about the 9/11 attacks.
We’re still being told that nearly 3,000 people “died” — as if they may have “died” from old age or the bubonic plague.
We’re still being told that nearly 3,000 were “killed” — as if they were “killed” in an accident, perhaps a train wreck or a nuclear plant explosion. We’re still being told that nearly 3,000 “perished”—as if they may have “perished” in a grease fire that began in the kitchen, or after a volcano erupted.
And we’re still being told that nearly 3,000 were “lost” — as if they were “lost” at sea, beneath an avalanche or, of their own accord, made the wrong turn.
What we’re rarely told is the unadorned, unambiguous truth: On 9/11, nearly 3,000 mostly American citizens were murdered.
Our news media, as if extending all polite cordialities to the perpetrators—the murderers— can’t seem to muster the nerve to accurately identify the dead as murder victims.
On the other hand, late last month at an Army Air Force base near Tacoma, Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was sentenced to life for the murders of 16 Afghan civilians.
In the news reports of his trial, conviction and sentencing, I can’t recall hearing that Bales was accused of “killing” these people or that he was responsible for the “death” of 16 people.
The operative, repeatedly reported word was what it was: Murder.
Bales was accused of mass murder, convicted of mass murder and sentenced for mass murder.
It’s as if we want the world to know that we in America don’t easily suffer the murders of civilians by American military, not even in war zones.
But the mass murder of Americans in America by terrorists?Well, we’ll cut the assailants and their backers a break and report it as if it were just one big, two city, same morning accident.
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In 2005, during a multi-network music fundraiser for Hurricane Katrina victims, Kanye West, who remains a stage hog and scene-stealer, seized the opportunity to condemn President Bush as a racist, claiming that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
In many media quarters, West’s remarks led to examination and discussion, as if West, in addition to being a vulgar, violence-promoting, women-objectifying rapper who refers to black men as the N-word, was a credible social activist with a legitimate point of view.
Good grief.
And this month, it was revealed that West recently accepted a $3 million fee to perform at the wedding of the grandson of Kazakhstan’s brutally oppressive dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
Two years ago, on Nazarbayev’s watch, 17 striking oil workers were killed and more than 100 injured—believed tobe the work of government thugs. Human and religious rights agencies, as well as the U.S. State Department, rate Kazakhstan as an oil-enriched slice of hell.
But, given that West is a noted political commentator, it must’ve been the money that blinded him to Kazakhstan’s growing crackdowns against Kazakhs—especially those who exercise freedom of speech in criticizing their government’s leaders.
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Some of these “real life,” ostensibly unrehearsed and unscripted testimonies seen and heard in commercials for everything from companies that will make your debt vanish to products that will do the same for your wrinkles are downright comical.
Tough-talking “Terry” is identified as a retired Baltimore street cop in a TV commercial for Lyrica, a medicine that treats nerve and muscle pain caused by diabetes, shingles and fibromyalgia. He sounds legit until he hits us with this: “When I went back to my health care professional. . .”
Wait a second. His health care professional? Does that mean his doctor? Shrink? Pharmacist? Masseuse? Mechanic? Who says “health care professional”?