Quote:
Originally posted by Diane_Keaton
To me, this is where the distinction lies (not that bombing equals homicide). I agree that saying "suicide bombing" resonates as a PR matter, but I'm not sure whose PR agenda is fulfilled. For me, hearing "suicide bomber" drives home the fact that *certain* groups of people (usually Muslims) are pathetic enough to strap bombs on kids in order to blow up as many adults and kids as possible. It also makes me think about who is funding these escapades (or paying for the suicide bomber's funeral). Hearing "suicide bomber" doesn't evoke any sympathy. I don't mind the term at all.
But if Fox news wants to use homicide bomber to focus the crime on the homicide victims, why should I care? When you hear about Israeli parents sifting through a streetful of body parts trying to put back together their toddlers, why does anyone care that Fox is using "homicide bomber"? Because folks might (gasp) side with the victims? I don't see anything unfair about the term and don't see any unfair stuff that's being "whipped up" among supposedly stupid red-staters. (Yes, this is a reply to Sebby's post too. I'm lazy like that).
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Diane, I have to quibble with your second point about how we should side with the victims. But I think that's implied.
But the problem with "homicide bomber" is it sounds, generally speaking, stupid. It's as though Fox were too stupid to understand that "suicide bomber" is just a way of describing a certain type of bomber. It's a dumb knee-jerkresponse that assumes the word "suicide bomber" is some leftist term coined by CNN or Reuters to give gravitas to those bombers. It's clearly not. It's just a descriptive.
Now, Fox isn't stupid. But they know a lot of their audience is. So what they've done is play to the dim bastards who think "suicide bomber" is a Lefty term. Really, at the end of the day, its nothing more than a trick of branding. Fox is trying, cynically, to distinguish itself by purposefully misconstruing a vanilla, descriptive term. And it knows how idiotic "homicide bomber" sounds, yet it pushes the term anyway, because it knows that to a certain uneducated sector of our society, using "homicide bomber" looks like the network is "taking a stand against all them damned lefties."
The term "homicide bomber" doesn't offend me so much as it saddens me. We have a nation of people who can so easily be cowed with these slick propaganda tricks? It's upsetting.
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