Our Clockwork MSM

Shot:

Paris Muslims fear Backlash #TomorrowsHeadlinesToday

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) January 7, 2015

Chaser:

@iowahawkblog congrats,you predicted this headline 24 hrs ago. CNN… pic.twitter.com/cXolhCTEAV — Dillon (@000Dillon000) January 8, 2015

Hangover:

Yeah, that’s the real problem here. RT @ezraklein: The constant demands for Muslims to condemn terrorism are awful: http://t.co/G6fyL0OmVB

— Drew McCoy (@DrewMTips) January 8, 2015

Something’s “awful,” that’s for sure, and it’s a cycle that’s been going on since 9/11. As Mark Steyn wrote in 2008:

Shortly after the London Tube bombings in 2005, a reader of Tim Blair, the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s columnar wag, sent him a note-perfect parody of a typical newspaper headline: “British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing.”

Indeed. And so it goes. This time round — Bombay — it was the Associated Press that filed a story about how Muslims “found themselves on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion.”

Oh, I don’t know about that. In fact, you’d be hard pressed from most news reports to figure out the bloodshed was “linked” to any religion, least of all one beginning with “I-“ and ending in “-slam.” In the three years since those British bombings, the media have more or less entirely abandoned the offending formulations — “Islamic terrorists,” “Muslim extremists” — and by the time of the assault on Bombay found it easier just to call the alleged perpetrators “militants” or “gunmen” or “teenage gunmen,” as in the opening line of this report in the Australian: “An Adelaide woman in India for her wedding is lucky to be alive after teenage gunmen ran amok…”

Kids today, eh? Always running amok in an aimless fashion. The veteran British TV anchor Jon Snow, on the other hand, opted for the more cryptic locution “practitioners.” “Practitioners” of what, exactly?

On the other hand, perhaps this week’s news does offer a slight moment of clarity:

Oh, and now that @CNN, @MSNBC, @ABC, etc refuse to run “offends Muslims” cartoons, can we finally kill “Jews control the media” canard? — Michael Graham (@IAMMGraham) January 8, 2015

Heh.

Update: And speaking of our clockwork MSM, “The left rushes to sympathize with Paris terrorist after he claims Abu Ghraib radicalized him.”

Wait, so it’s George Bush that caused ysterday’s murders? I thought it was Da Jooooos — that’s who Julian Assange is blaming today.

Gary Larson, call your office.