The Sniper Pundits

Authorities may have the snipers who terrorized the DC area behind bars. But still on the loose are the sharpshooters on the right who've cynically used these crimes for the purpose of smearing and scapegoating groups of people, taking aim and firing with precision. To listen to tv and radio windbags like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo simply must be some sort of agents of Al Qaeda or some other Islamic terrorist group. And that dreaded liberal media, filled with fifth columnists hell-bent on bringing down the country, are suppressing the information. This, even though evidence increasingly shows the alleged snipers are two-bit thugs who robbed and killed their way across the country.

Ah, but even if there isn't a direct connection, these conservatives say, the motives had to have originated with the longtime immersion of one of the suspects into that vicious cult called Islam (the Nation of Islam specifically), particularly because Muhammad did allegedly make comments supporting the 9/11 attacks. Victor Davis Hanson, at National Review Online, dubs this "Al Qaedism," and says the Beltway killings are "as dangerous as the work of terror cells."

John Allen Muhammad, to these conservatives, is sort of like the character in The Manchurian Candidate. He was brainwashed by the tenets of Islam and had an awakening after Sept. 11, when the sleeper cell deep inside his brain was suddenly activated. (Malvo, on the other hand, is to them just a wretched illegal alien who shouldn't have been here, period!) Muhammad, they claim, was a "freelancer," in the parlance of all the new terrorism experts who've popped up all over tv.

I don't recall these same conservative pundits having driven this analysis home about the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, however. He, too, wasn't formally connected to any particular militia group, but did align with the "patriot" movement-a "freelancer" in his own right. I certainly don't remember these pundits railing about how McVeigh was the product of a dangerous twist in the cult of American patriotism, a man who invoked much of the antigovernment and right-to-bear-arms ideology that these pundits themselves espouse, and that the sleeper cell inside of him was suddenly activated after Waco. One could certainly argue that this kind of psychobabble is a lot more solid when applied to McVeigh, who blew up a building filled with people and said it was precisely for political reasons, than when applied at this moment to Muhammad and Malvo, who allegedly asked for $10 million in the midst of the Beltway murders, and allegedly robbed others they may have killed in a spree across the country.

But then, the sniper pundits' goal is not to get to some interesting truths as much as it is to vilify entire groups of people. Writing on the sniper attacks, Ann Coulter and Andrew Sullivan seem to have finally morphed into one being-a testosterone-fueled blonde Amazon marksman with a goatee who pronounces every breathless new attack on its victims as a "devastating" exposé. It sits there at the computer, furiously pounding out declarations against those dreaded liberals, remaining ever vigilant in its witch hunt for Islamic terrorists. And it seems to view everything it sees as a possible Islamic terrorist.

Here was Coulter last week: "After all the speculation about the sniper terrorizing Maryland and Virginia, at last we have some cold hard facts. He is a Muslim?

"To review recent events, last year, 19 Muslims slaughtered thousands of Americans on U.S. soil. Since then, one Muslim tried to blow up a U.S. commercial jet with a shoe bomb and another Muslim shot up Los Angeles airport."

And, with prose and claims virtually indistinguishable, here was Sullivan: "The Associated Press is reporting that 'Muhammad also is linked to a shooting last spring at a Tacoma synagogue in which no one was injured, Tacoma police said.' So he was a terrorist, a Muslim, a member of the fanatical anti-Semitic group the Nation of Islam and someone who shot up a synagogue. Who'd have thought it? As I've been saying for days now, connect the dots... Because the mainstream media will do all they can to avoid it."

Well, Ann and Andy, how about connecting these dots: Timothy McVeigh was a screwed-up Gulf War veteran. John Muhammad is a screwed-up Gulf War veteran. Robert Flores Jr., who shot three people and himself at the University of Arizona last week, was a screwed-up Gulf War veteran. And they were all gun nuts who were able to get weapons of destruction pretty damn easily.

Oh, but once you bring up the gun issue-as I did a few weeks ago regarding the sniper case-the NRA types start sounding like every crude stereotype they've thrown out there about the whining and whinging, politically correct, ACLU-loving left. I received a slew of mail telling me how "ignorant" and "intolerant" I was of the poor, downtrodden "shooting community." (I'm sorry for the insensitivity, really I am. And I'll make sure to tell that to the families of the snipers' victims as well.)

Over at National Review Online, meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg is gleeful that the sniper suspects are both Muslim and black, and is hoping they turn out to be homosexual as well.

"IS JOHN MUHAMMED A THREEFER?" he asked last week. "We know the Sniper is a Nation of Islam Muslim (which is to say he belongs to a cult that uses Islamic jargon). We know he's black. But I've got this nagging feeling we might find out that he also practices an alternative lifestyle-I mean besides from all of the murdering. There's just something about this Batman and Robin act-Malvo is his 'ward'?-that strikes me as odd, in a specific way. Call it a hunch. Not that there's anything wrong with that."

A "threefer." I think that says it all about how much sport these guys take in bashing whole categories of minorities. It's like: Gee, we might be able to smear homos now, in addition to Negroes and towelheads! Fun times, dude!

It's also interesting that Goldberg delights in speculating-based on absolutely nothing-that murder suspects might be homosexual, but wasn't compelled to tell us that 9/11 hero Mark Bingham was gay in those first days following the tragedy, when Goldberg penned columns about his helping to steer Flight 93 away from Washington. It's at those moments, when a hero is to be lauded, that guys like Goldberg tell us that we dwell too much on sexuality, you see. But at these moments, when it's about a couple of infamous alleged murderers, he's just got to let us know about his "nagging feeling" about their "alternative lifestyle." Score another hit for the sniper pundits.

Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com)