Atrios points to this piece about Fox News agents saying that today's horrible London attacks work to the Western world's advantage; JGolla at TPMCafe reports similar sentiment on Fox and Friends.
But what I find offensive isn't so much the tone as the sentiments Fox expressed, as reported in the Media Matters piece:
at the G8 summit, where their topic Number 1 --believe it or not-- was global warming, the second was African aid. And that was the first time since 9-11 when they should know, and they do know now, that terrorism should be Number 1.
Should it be hard to believe that the number one topic was global warming, which could threaten civilization as we know it and is likely to cause great harm to people in the most vulnerable parts of the world? Should it be hard to believe that the number two topic was aid to Africa, where--I don't like making this comparison, but--surely more people were killed and wounded in violence today than were in London? What arrogance, to say that terrorism should always have been the number one priority. What a sign of our leaders' successful campaign to infantilize us in the face of terrorism.
This Kenyan journalist, who has been personally affected by terrorism himself, does not think it obvious that the terror attacks should push Africa off the agenda. Matthew Yglesias reminds us that, to paraphrase a much better President, the worst thing we have to fear is fear itself. (See also this from a very well-named commenter.)
Posted by Matt Weiner at July 7, 2005 04:08 PM