(The following bit of journalistic malpractice is brought to you by Agenda®. Agenda: Never Let the Facts Cloud Your Judgment.)
For those who don’t want their intelligence permanently insulted by watching a clip of Blitzer bloviating about the alt-right killing people in Spain from a van in Virginia, allow us to do it instead by providing the transcript.
Jim Sciutto, Chief National Security Correspondent: Another point I would make, Wolf, is just this note that in light of the uproar of the last couple days, five days apart you have a white supremacist in Charlottesville use a vehicle to kill and here you have attackers at least following the modus operandi of terrorists using vehicles apparently to kill as well and it is those shared tactics that should be alarming.
Wolf Blitzer, Headless Talker: Yeah, and there will be questions about copycats; there will be questions if what happened in Barcelona was at all—at all—a copycat version of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia. Even though they may be different characters, different political ambitions, they use the same the same killing device: a vehicle going at high speed into a group, a large group of pedestrians…
Putting aside for a moment the naked depravity of a man so eager to make presumed Trump supporters—however tangential—the wellspring of Islamic terror across the globe, consider that in Wolf’s wild world of willfully ignorant whimsy, some variation of this exchange is the reality:
“Younes, brother, why do you sit in the corner seething with the rage? I mean, even more so than usual?”
“Me and the other twelve members of my local lone-wolf terrorist cell must kill all those who blaspheme the Prophet by generally existing, but I cannot seem to settle on the perfect modus operandi to do so!”
“Hmmm, that’s a real turban-scratcher. Have you given consideration to the rentable van?”
“What is your meaning!”
“You could drive a killing device into random crowds of guiltily innocent infidels, crushing them with all the fury of Allah and the steel-belted radials.”
“Away with you, Youssef, and your plan of folly! That would never work!”
“Actually, it did work in 2001 in Israel; and in 2002 in France; and in 2006 in the North of Carolina; and in 2008 in Israel; and in 2011 in Israel and in Israel; and in 2013 in England and China; and in 2014 in China and Israel and Canada and Israel and Israel and also Israel and France and also France; and in 2016 in France and the Ohio and Germany; and this year in Israel and England and Sweden and England and also England and France, plus also France.”
“And…!”
“And, there was that neo-Nazi nutjob in the Virginia last week who—”
“Of course! We could copy that cat! Just think how alarming will be our use of shared tactics! All the world will wonder whether if what is about to have happened in Barcelona is at all—at all—a copycat version of what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia! What is scarier than jihadis!”
“I give the up. What is?”
“Jihadinazis! Heil five… Youssef, do not leave me hanging! I will kill you to death!”
Contrary to Wolf’s comically serious assertion, there won’t be questions about copycats by anyone who is not him. Because no one who is not him is unscrupulously stupid enough to conjoin these two totally unrelated events to the absolutely absurd exclusion of the two-dozen-plus attacks that are Barcelona’s true antecedents. Except for Jim Sciutto, Chief National Security Correspondent, who apparently corresponds, chiefly and nationally, in a way that, like Wolf, makes a mockery of security by shoehorning into his reporting of the news ridiculous and pointless pronouncements that dangerously obfuscate the factual story at hand. And it is those shared tactics that should be alarming.
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