(As you might expect, this is demonstrably not true, unless The New York Times and The Washington Post don't count. )
Malkin has a sinister theory: "The silence is rooted in viewing committed Christians as alien others."
Seriously? Americans are an obscenely religious people -- a population reportedly 40% evangelical that would theoretically elect a baby chicken as President before considering an atheist. In other words, a goodly portion of Americans are the "alien other."
Even if Michelle was telling the truth -- he says, laughing -- the "snub" wouldn't be rooted in a hatred of Christians. It's not fair, but story coverage is a numbers game. (Celebrity stories, Pat Tillman among them, are the exception.) That's why milestones receive so much coverage, the hundreds of pieces spawned by the 3,000th dead American GIs killed in Iraq being a grand example.
To be blunt, aside from the fact of their religion -- which doesn't make them particularly notable -- why should a couple of dead missionaries, who were in the Middle East of their own volition, presumably telling the locals to accept Christ or spend an eternity in hellfire, get as much press as, say, 69 dead nameless civilians?
...It's worth quoting Specialist G in-full:
De mortius nil nisi bonum but the coverage I've seen, and there's been plenty, has mentioned the ambivalent feelings the deaths have generated in Korea. People are rightfully outraged by the killings but also wonder what the hell these people were doing travelling to places where the locals fear to go. The fact they took pictures of themselves posing by a warning sign at the airport doesn't make it better. No one deserves to get kidnapped and killed, but if some lefty went into the mountains to teach the Taliban about the virtues of enlightened secularism, I wouldn't be crying "persecution" when he/she inevitably wound up as a human Pez dispenser.
Well said.
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