Tuesday, December 02, 2008

CALLING THEM "THE LIVING EMBODIMENTS OF EVIL" ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH. YOU HAVE TO CALL THEM "THE LIVING EMBODIMENTS OF PURE, UNADULTERATED EVIL FROM THE BOWELS OF HELL," YOU QUISLING APPEASER.

Lead sentences of an editorial in the New York Post:

THE international media have already morphed the horrific slaughter in Mumbai into the murky realm of euphemism and apologetics.

Al Jazeera and The Guardian label the terrorists "gunmen"; CNN calls them "militants." ...


It's come to this? "Gunman" and "militants" constitute "euphemism" and "apologetics"?

In what possible way can "gunman" be described as a euphemism? Are large deadly handheld weapons that shoot bullets no longer referred to as "guns"? Is there some Murdoch-approved conservatively correct substitute expression I should use, in case someone shoots me to death someday, possibly in a terrorist assault? Because heaven knows I wouldn't want the description of the attack I give in the ambulance on the way to the emergency room as I lay dying to be insufficiently stiff-spined. Ralph Peters might picket my funeral.

Oh, and here's more from that editorial, in reference to Chabad House in Mumbai:

Some Western media outlets unsympathetically labeled victims there as "ultra-Orthodox" ...

Um, just for the record, here's a sentence from an AFP story:

"Of all the ultra-Orthodox communities, Chabad was the first to adopt the Internet as a work tool," said Rabbi Menachem Brod.

Rabbi Menachem Brod -- who uses the liberal appeasenik term "ultra-Orthodox" to refer to Chabad -- is in fact the official Chabad spokesman in Israel.

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