Michelle Malkin giveth, then taketh away. Still on the Oklahoma University bomber, who's death was ruled a suicide, Michelle feels that the MSM is giving short shrift to bloggers concerns that the meatbomb in question was actually a moslem terrorist who may have died while fiddling with his wares, and not from any suicidal tendencies.
I breeze along through all of this and she begins to sway me until including gobbledeegook from John Hinderaker at Power Line who makes as much sense as usual, namely none. So what if more explosive devices or means to create them were found in the mans home? People who off themselves with firearms usually have quite a few MORE rounds of ammo around the house, and from this you postulate that the suicide was accidental when they were in truth really wanting to shoot up the neighborhood? How about the guy who locks himself in his garage and starts the car to die a relatively painless death from carbon monoxide poisoning? If someone finds him long gone but with more gas in the tank then does this mean he figured on taking us all with him? A stretch? You betcha, but not any longer than some of the ludicrous offers of "proof" that I've seen.
The second factor in Hindrakers presumption of guilt is the "undisputed fact" that Hinrichs tried to purchase fertilizer several days before going boom-boom, but again, so what? The guy was obviously deranged in one way or another and occams razor suggests we believe that he was really wanting to blow himself up real good and didn't quite know how much of a charge to use, or wanted his passing to be a truly memorable one. Leaping to the conclusion that he was a terrorist intent upon taking the university with him is taking one helluva wild ass jump with very skimpy facts.
And look, be reasonable here. Using "undisputed facts" when trying to determine the rationale behind someone who just killed himself is silly at best and horrid journalism and scare-mongering at worst. Hinderacker KNOWS what was on this mans mind and how he was thinking? Michelle does? Anyone?
I'd give ALL of them a great deal more credence if they had spoken to an explosives expert rather than make assumptions until the cows came home, but the guy killed himself and had more bomb making material at the ready, so he MUST have been intent upon taking several small towns with him. Because he was a moslem, too.
A lot of the umbrage results from the MSM not taking blogs seriously, and I can understand how the bigger web log proprietors must feel from such slights. THEY are the big fish, and THEY should be listened to and THEY are NOT being listened to by the big boys with alla that brick and mortar. Problem is that the MSM sees the hive mind at work, and DOES cast a lot of it's conclusions aside as "facts" being derived from little or no real investigation but a barnyard full of what-if's.
Which takes us full circle to something I've been saying for years. Blogs don't go get the news, they vette it. Sure, Drudge gets a rumor right every now and again but none of us, from the mighty to me, have the time, effort, or resources to go out and investigate a potential story.
We comment. If we at times come to harebrained conclusions it's because at times we're all harebrained. We can't be right all of the time, and from some of the drivel I've seen maybe not even half of the time, and to the Powerlines and the Malkins and the other monster-blogs, I'll say this; spend some of that cash on checking into something once in a while and you'd have a lot more credibility. PLUS...and we all know this to be true...when one is spending one's own money the story BETTER be worth it to begin with, and not just something to while away the hours whining about how nobody loves us.
Respect is earned, and not by jumping on the conservative-blog-mentality-bandwagon and weeping that no one is listening because, after all, we're only blogs.
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