It Must Be Great to Be Able to Have Everything Both Ways

Effort to use Times Square bomb plot to demonize Tea Party movement doesn't end with non-tea partier suspect

In the immediate aftermath of the foiled Times Square bomb plot, the minds of many people around the world turned to the question of who may have been behind it.

Many presumed that the perpetrator must have been an Islamic terrorist. Based on the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, one would expect that these people have the right to feel vindicated.

Not so, according to Salon.com's Alex Parent, who is holding a grudge at the relief expressed by Jonah Goldberg that the perpetrator of the act "wasn't white":

"The bloggers at National Review's The Corner can barely conceal their glee that the man arrested this morning for attempted terror is a proper foreign-born Muslim dude, and not a God-fearing white Christian. Jonah Goldberg admits as much:

When the Times Square story first broke there was a part of me that said, 'Man, I hope it's not some white militia nutjob.' When I saw the news this morning that it was a Pakistani, the same small part of me was relieved.

A normal human might be relieved that the person responsible for the attempted bombing is in custody. Jonah is just relieved that his prejudices against Muslims were reinforced."

That could have been the case -- maybe. Or maybe it's more likely that Goldberg was worried about efforts by left-wingers to accuse the Tea Party movement of being responsible for the plot:

That was a cached page from Yahoo! answers. The following is a comment plucked off of TPM Muckraker (do they ever):

So this is the rhetorical world that Alex Parent inhabits: if early reports indicate that the suspect is middle-aged and white, it's entirely fair to surmise that the perpetrator might be a Tea Partier (or Tea Bagger, in the juvenile parlance of the left).

If the perpetrator turns out to be a Pakistani allgedly attempting to avenge the deat of a Taliban leader, it's unfair for the Tea Party movement and its supporters to feel vindicated.

It's a similar rhetorical trick as the demagogue who accuses an individual of being racist if they don't believe that racial epithets have been spat at an African American legislator.

It must be nice to be entitled to have everything both ways -- particularly when it's yourself who's decided that you're entitled to have it so.