By Kevin Rogers
Opinion Assignment Editor
Tragedies can bring out the very best in people. Monday’s Boston Marathon bombings showed us that. We saw first responders running to help, civilians stepping up to support the wounded and remarkable leadership from law enforcement officials. In response to a cowardly act of terrorism, much of the country united to support the city.
Kind words and gestures across social media. Monday’s calls for prayers for the city of Boston and the victims were moving. They were mass-produced but meaningful on some level.
But tragedy also reminds us that we have far too many microphones and far too many self-gratifying, insensitive morons behind them. For every heartfelt prayer, for every heroic deed, there’s a pundit spitting nonsense on the camera or a wannabe pundit spewing vitriol on social media.
Within moments of the explosions, people on Twitter and Facebook were clamoring for someone to blame amid the chaos. An April 15 report from the New York Post of a Saudi national being questioned by law enforcement fueled verbal attacks against Muslims on social networks.
The Post’s report was correct, but law enforcement didn’t make an arrest. The “person of interest” cooperated and an apartment search didn’t yield anything of value.
Many of these posters weren’t signaling out a specific sect or Islamic terrorist group. They targeted the entire Muslim population. Give a few thousand ignorant tweeters and Facebookers a taste of blood, and the idiocy spews like sewage.
On a day like Monday, it would have been wise to voice solidarity with Boston or avoid posting altogether. At least it allowed me to do some much-needed social media purges.
Of course, the idiocy didn’t restrict itself to the vulgar masses of the social networks. Some professional pundits offered their own takes on the day’s event. Keeping with the anti-Muslim bent, Erik Rush, a Fox News contributor, tweeted about detaining and killing Muslims, The Daily Mail reported on April 16.
Rush deleted his tweets and said he intended to be sarcastic. That’s a vile stretch for sarcasm, and when victims are being rushed to the hospital it’s not helpful. We don’t need hateful garbage like this when our minds should be focused on Boston and the victims.
Talking heads on liberal temple MSNBC had their own spin on the perpetrators. When President Barack Obama initially didn’t refer to the bombing as a “terrorist attack,” former Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod assumed to read the president’s mind.
“I’m sure what was going through the president’s mind is — we really know who did this — it was tax day,” Axelrod mused.
Obama referred to the bombings as an “act of terror” on Tuesday. But seizing the chance, Axelrod raised the specter of a right-wing madman upset with his tax bill. So, after dropping his Treasury check in the mailbox, this potential terrorist thought it prudent to bomb hundreds of other taxpayers.
MSNBC host Chris Matthews voiced similar assumptions and mused a fire at the Kennedy Presidential Library (quickly deemed a mechanical incident unrelated to the bombings) could be chalked up as an attack against the Democratic Party.
If it turns out the terrorist was a tax protester, I commend Axelrod and Matthews for their foresight. But hours after an attack, amid confusion and terror, it is abhorrent to broadcast unfounded assumptions.
But let’s leave the investigation to the FBI and the police and take this time to pray, mourn and rebuild.
We can’t do much to keep a trap on insensitive buffoons like Rush, Matthews and Axelrod, but the social media morons are a different story. The best way to combat them is to ignore, block or delete them. Drown out misinformed finger-pointing and hatred with prayers, tributes and positivity.
There will be a time to discuss the theories and politics of Monday — but only once the facts are clear, the wounded are healed and the dead are buried.
