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PrintJanuary 4, 2010
'Youths' in France torch cars to welcome New Year
We really should start to wonder if the automobile has the same status in Islamic teaching as pigs and dogs - and as that of truthful language in journalism. In an event that was largely ignored by the Lamestream Media, Reuters reports that "youths" in France burned, according to its headline, "hundreds" of cars on New Year's Eve. But when you read the very short article, you learn that the headline certainly understates the matter. Writes Reuters:
The number of vehicles torched was only 10 short of the record 1,147 burned this time last year, even though the Interior Ministry mobilized 45,000 police during the night - 10,000 more than 12 months ago.
Now, putting "hundreds" in the headline is probably just a nod to brevity, as the much more sensational number is revealed in the piece's body. What is not divulged, of course, is the nature of the "youths."
Ah, those mysterious, generic youths are at it again. A lot of trouble those youths are. Call me crazy, but I suspect that if the "youths" were evangelical Christians, the adjectives used to describe them would, uh . . . well, just be a tad more specific.
I suppose you could say it's much as how a conservative public figure is always identified in a news piece as something such as a "right-wing commentator" or a "conservative congressman," while such ideological specificity seldom is used with liberal figures. Except, in those cases, part (not all) of the motivation for the double standard is that being liberal is just viewed as the default mode by Lamestream reporters. It thus warrants mention no more than pointing out that the individual is "human" or a carbon-based life form. But are we to conclude that these reporters believe the default classification for those who burn cars is the little detail they omitted?
Reuters also says that car burnings are "regular occurrences" in poor areas - not that they have become regular occurrences. My, is this an old Gallic tradition dating back to the Carolingian dynasty? Channeling Charles Martel.
Speaking of which, Martel would've had no trouble naming the culprits, as he is the man who stopped the Umayyad Caliphate's advance into Europe at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D. And the culprits are . . . ready?
Muslim youths!
But at least the French police are on top of matters. We're told that they detained 549 "people" overnight, which surely will put the fear of God into them. So I can see the Lamestream's point of view. Since the "youths" have already suffered so grievously, why intensify their travails by placing them in the pillory of accurate reportage? Yet, complete sensitivity still eludes us.
Why do we impugn the young by identifying the jolly New Year's revelers as "youths"? Why place the onus on humanity by calling them "people"? Why inspire revulsion for them by saying they destroyed autos? I mean, a lot of people are really attached to their cars. So here is how I would frame the story:
"Carbon-based, bipedal sentient organisms fight global warming by inducing chemical and physical changes in more than one smog-creating automated conveyance through the application of heat energy."
Then again, we could just be a goodthinker and say: A few days ago, something doubleplusungood happened in western Eurasia.
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