TASTE COMMENTARY
What Happened toDon't hold your breath waiting for Mr. Levin's Gilda Radner-esque "never mind," as the image of two handsome black men--who'd need no cover in inner-city Washington--fills every television in America. He has too much company to be singled out for mockery.
To be fair, one reason the media were so willing to paint the mystery murderer as a disgruntled white guy was that the experts led them in that direction. A seemingly endless parade of profilers, ex-cops, ex-FBI agents, security experts, hostage negotiators, criminologists and forensic psychologists--or people who just play them on TV--insisted that the Washington-area sniper would have to be a Caucasian male loner, probably ex-military, with a score to settle and a trunk full of Soldier of Fortune magazines. Phil Donahue represented the conventional wisdom nicely when he gleefully insisted that the sniper had to be white.
Indeed, the New York Times scoured experts from around America and concluded that there were only three possibilities: the "macho hunter," the "icy loner" and "a teenager with a friend." These "three radically different portraits," deadpanned the Times, "underscore the reality that no one seemed really to know who the gunman is."
Interestingly, James Allen Fox, a respected criminologist at Northeastern University--who favored the Caucasian icy-loner scenario--collects a database of sniper homicides. He found that out of 514 sniper murders between 1976 and 2000, 55% of the murderers were white. This, of course, would mean that whites are actually underrepresented among the ranks of sniper-serial killers. One can only assume that in a better world this increasingly influential subculture will look more like America.
Speaking of subcultures, various news organizations delved deeply into the sniper subculture, explaining how the mantra of "one shot, one kill" was increasingly popular among "ex-military" and "police" types. Much of this was egged on by Tom Diaz, an analyst with an antigun group called the Violence Policy Center. Mr. Diaz told the Chicago Tribune. "We do not yet know what specific firearm is being used." But "it is clear the gun industry stands ready to arm and train anyone with the fantasy of being a real live sniper."
This may be true, but as sniper groups have been insisting for the past month, it was never likely that the Washington-area murderer was a professionally trained sniper at all. He used the wrong ammo and shot from a very short range when compared with a pro or serious amateur.
No, the most relevant story line about John Allen Muhammad is not his stint in the Army--mainly as a combat engineer. It is that last name of his, which he assumed only in the past year or so. Indeed, throughout the month of sniper coverage few news organizations would entertain the idea that the serial sniper was directed or inspired by al Qaeda. A few op-eds appeared in late October, but generally speaking the networks and major newspapers only brought up the idea to shoot it down.
It seemed at times that many members of the press were much more eager to return to cultural politics as usual, which in this case meant getting back to smacking around white conservative men, even by proxy. When those two Hispanic immigrants were mistakenly arrested at a phone booth this week, the cameras seemed to linger lovingly over the Bush/Cheney, Marine Corps and NRA bumper stickers on their van. When an unsavory former military man was wanted for questioning in Baltimore, the New York Daily News was ready with a headline: "HUNT ARMED RACIST: Supremacist sought in sniping spree."
On Wednesday night, the networks showed admirable restraint in not revealing the name of the alleged sniper. Many correspondents, including NBC's Pete Williams, assured viewers that "we know more than we can report," which clearly included the man's name. In the wake of the Richard Jewell case, the anthrax scare and, most recently, the Florida "terrorist" medical students, restraint was a hard-learned virtue for the media. But one can't help wondering whether they would have been so responsible if the suspects hadn't been black and the leader a Muslim.
This odd reluctance continues even now. Mr. Muhammad's liquor-store robbery in Alabama has been reported, along with the government's search of the "Ground Zero USA" private military training camp. But as this piece goes to press no news organization has mentioned that the Ground Zero camp was investigated for ties to al Qaeda just this past summer, when Scotland Yard learned from Zain-ul-Albidin, a captured and alleged al Qaeda supporter, that the camp was being used to train terrorists on American soil. James Ujaama, the Seattle-based Muslim black activist who is under investigation for ties to al Qaeda has also been linked to the Alabama camp. According to the Seattle Times, he may have helped a British-run Web site that sold training at the camp, billing it as the "Ultimate Jihad Challenge."
Yes, it may be that there is no link between Mr. Muhammad and any of this. But the fact that federal authorities have searched the camp raises the question of why the press has failed to note any of it.
Prior to Sept. 11, liberals and conservatives used mass murder to score points in the culture war. Conservatives, like me, looked at Columbine and decried the loss of a moral compass and the elevation of self-esteem over self-discipline in the Clinton years. The liberals looked at Oklahoma City or the Matthew Shepard murder and blamed the bomb-throwing rhetoric of Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey.
That sort of thing seemed to sit on the back burner after 9/11. Now, it seems, there is a new dynamic at work, and a new division: between those who believe our enemies here and abroad are willing and able to do terrible things and those who see such worries as exaggerated. It is certainly easier to blame the old bogeyman of the angry white male than to deal with the possibility of a determined and ethnically diverse fifth column.
Of course, it is doubtful that Mr. Muhammad was under orders from Osama bin Laden or his henchmen. But it has been reported that he was sympathetic to the 9/11 attacks, and even many in the Pentagon and the CIA have come to believe that future terrorist attacks may not by ordered by al Qaeda but inspired by it. That is the pattern around the globe today, we are told by intelligence experts. Why shouldn't it be here at home? And why shouldn't the media follow this story line?
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