It's Not Terror If An Old White Guy Does It

Just because it's the worst (nonmilitary or state-sanctioned) gun massacre in modern American history, and thousands of people were terrified by it, doesn't mean you get to call it a terror attack.

A quick Google search of headlines on the Las Vegas atrocity reveals that media outlets are mostly going with "mass shooting" to describe the carnage. Not only was the gunman apparently not a Muslim or an ISIS sympathizer. He was an older white professional with no criminal record who lived in a $400,000 house. Talk about an atrocity not being media-ready, or especially Trump-ready! The most that the bombastic president could glumly tweet out was hs "deepest condolences" minus the usual dog-whistling outrage at which he is so adept.

There was no way CNN could cue the canned Doomsday soundtrack for this one, and absolutely no way that weapons manufacturers could immediately book and run the usual ads which both fund and ramp up the War On Terror. National security actors were left twiddling their thumbs by the phone. For one thing, the shooter himself was at one point in his life an auditor for the mega-weapons, fighter jet, bomb and drone manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Talk about not fitting the standard narrative!

So all CNN could come up with as of this morning was Suspect Killed 50+ People and Had 10 Rifles.

NBC was similarly bland, but went even further and put its own headline in the passive mood: More Than 50 Killed and 406 Hurt Near Mandalay Bay. They did not mention that concert-goers were "terrified" until the second paragraph. The suspect is not an assassin, he is a "gunman."

CBS managed to bypass human agency entirely in its headline: Las Vegas Shooting Leaves At Least 50 Dead.

It's not until the second page of the morning's Google results that we venture across the pond and get the name of the domestic terrorist right in the headline. The BBC bluntly announces: Las Vegas Shooting: Steven Paddock Kills Over 50 People.

But wait, stop the presses! The Independent, also based in the UK, announced that Isis was claiming responsibility after all!* Adjust the Google algorithm, pronto, as the corporate media outlets cue the Doomsday soundtracks and enlarge the headline fonts to full capacity for the global terrorized viewing pleasure of millions.

If this claim of Isis involvement is true, watch as Paddock magically metamorphose from a respectable guy who just "snapped" to a stark raving mad evil jihadist in the space of a minute.

Celebrities and politicians will adjust their own settings and change the tune of their Tweets asap, vying for the chance to be first to blame it all on either Trump (if they're Democrats) or the vast Muslim conspiracy (if they're Republicans) to supplement the hash-tagged thoughts and prayers to the victims of the inevitable #VegasStrong.

As ever, all talk of gun control legislation has been declared "too soon" out of solemn respect for the dead. If they couldn't get it done after the Sandy Hook massacre, they certainly won't get in done for a few hundred country music fans. What happened in Vegas will, sadly, probably stay in Vegas.

Of course, when a right-wing white supremacist congressman named Steve Scalise is the victim of a would-be assassin, the media will fawn all over him and his miraculous, well-insured recovery, while he solemnly hopes that his shining courageous example will break the "gridlock" and inspire a whole new wave of bipartisanship. (as in tax cuts for the wealthy, and social program-slashing for the rest of us.)

Country music star Jason Aldean, one of the Vegas performers, was certainly right when he observed that "this world is sick."

*Update: The FBI said there is no evidence of Isis involvement in the Vegas terror attack. So let our rulers put this terrible tragedy behind us as they get on with the important work of terrorizing the public with the narrative of Russian meddling in American politics, a/k/a the war on democracy itself. The Kremlin agitprop on Facebook has gotten so bad that even Fido isn't safe.

Be properly afraid and patriotically believe everything the "intelligence community" tells you through its Mighty Wurlitzer house organs, the New York Times and the Washington Post.