Quote of the Day: The War on Terror

From Jim Geraghty in today's TKS, writing about the weekend arrest of terror suspects in Canada:

All over the blogosphere this weekend, bloggers mocked the press accounts suggesting the suspects covered a ‘broad strata’ of Canadian society. The names of the suspects that have been released: Fahim Ahmad, Zakaria Amara, Asad Ansari, Shareef Abdelhaleen, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, Mohammed Dirie, Yasim Abdi Mohamed, Amin Mohamed Durrani, Steven Vikash Chand alias Abdul Shakur, Ahmad Mustafa Ghany and Saad Khalid.

Well, that’s some diversity there. It’s a regular Benetton ad!

By the way, when the press insists upon saying that the suspects represent a “broad strata” when 4 out of the 11 of the released names have “abdul/abdel/abdi” in them, 2 Ahmads, 2 Saads, and 3 Mohammeds, it sends one of two messages to readers. The first is “we think you’re stupid and can’t figure out the common thread these suspects have in common”; the second is that “we in the media are stupid and can’t figure out the common thread these suspects have in common.”

I don't think the folks in the media are that stupid, so that leaves option 1. Of course, the fact that the media thinks that only confirms option 2. It's a sort of chicken-and-egg thing, I guess.