http://www.salon.com/news/jared_loughner/?story=/politics/war_room/2011/01/11/hasan_loughner""Columbine" author Dave Cullen wrote yesterday that most media figures compulsively -- and incorrectly -- assign all killers to one of two binaries: Crazy or political. Right-wing commentators do the same thing, for the most part, though they tend to say killers are either crazy or terrorists. And while they'll usually freely admit that Tim McVeigh counted as a terrorist, for the most part they reserve that term for Muslims who kill.
There is, for example, Charles Krauthammer's classic column on Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood. Krauthammer is a former practicing psychologist -- he's also a former practicing liberal -- and he used his considerable skill to argue that because he did not think Hasan was crazy, to call him crazy was dastardly political correctness. The correct diagnosis, according to Krauthammer, was that Hasan was a Muslim. He was driven to kill by Extremist Islamic rhetoric. He had, after all, e-mailed Anwar al-Awlaki, who sympathizes with al-Qaeda. He had even said frankly nutty things to his colleagues about nonbelievers having hot oil poured down their throats.
It's not just that Krauthammer made a point of highlighting the influence of radical Islamism on Hasan's crime -- Krauthammer mocked those who thought there might be a psychological component to a formerly well-adjusted American suddenly falling under the sway of extremist rhetoric and shooting dozens of people.
Jared Loughner, though? He's just nuts. Seriously, classic nutcase, end of story. It's frankly irresponsible to speculate as to whether or not he had a political motivation when he attempted to assassinate a member of Congress.
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Unfortunately, too many Americans are letting the media pull this trick on us.
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