Saturday, February 03, 2007
Fox News Channel is still at it:Big news today about the bombing in Baghdad that killed lots of people. Here's how Fox News described it on their website's home page: 
"Homocide" bomber, they say. But if you click on the link to get the story, you read (note the AP sourcing): At Least 121 Dead, 226 Wounded in Homicide Attack on Baghdad Market
Saturday, February 03, 2007
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq — A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 121 people and wounding scores among the crowd buying food for evening meals, the most devastating strike in the capital in more than two months. ... The word "homicide" in the title is most likely a Fox touch (though this is not certain). If Fox continues in this way, redefining how the English language is used, eventually they will literally be speaking to a distinct minority, using terms that other people will find baffling, or at least peculiar. That's a good way to marginalize yourself. So, keep it up Fox!
posted by Quiddity at 2/03/2007 10:03:00 AM
11 comments
I'd be the last person to start a sentence with "In fairness to Faux News," but other news outlets have been using the term homicide bombers. And, frankly, the term more aptly describes what those terrorists are doing. They only want to murder as many random people as possible.
Beg to differ. It's a Fox specialty.
news search
Fox has been doing this for a while; they apparently have a little script that does a global search-and-replace to convert "suicide bomber" to "homicide bomber." Occasionally it makes them look bad, as when they changed an actual quote from Hillary Clinton.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200502230006
Political correctness has always been a right-wing weakness
Homicide bomber was an administration coinage, I recall
http://www.wordspy.com/words/homicidebombing.asp
Well, if the lefties can redefine mass murder of a hundred people as "suicide", why should it bo so shocking for Fox News to attempt to correct this liberal-enemy distortion?
Well, I am a lefty and I don't know if other lefties invented the term "suicide bomber" or not. However, I do think the term "homicide bomber" is more accurate and that's why I use it.
There was some interesting discussion at this link about the origin of the term homicide bomber. While Faux News didn't start it, they have certainly tried to popularize it.
Okay, people, here's the underlying problem: Almost all bombing is "homicide bombing". That's kind of the point. So every roadside IED that kills an American soldier is a homicide bombing. But *suicide* bombing is a special case of bombing; that's why we use an adjectival noun phrase for it. The only way it could be dumber is if they started calling it "explosion bombing".
Bombings are terrorist activities.
Often, particularly during the '60s and '70s, they involved bombing (or threatening to bomb) buildings or other structures. The basic intent was not to maximize the murder of civilians.
Since then, bombings have usually involved maximizing civilian casualties.
When people say "suicide bombing," it gives more attention to the person committing the act than to its intended victims.
In doing some research on this issue, I ran into a suicide bombing apologist posting which stressed the "humanity of the bomber." Any person whose sole intent is to massacre civilians has no humanity.
Since a bomber is homicidal, what does hate media call a President who puts our guys and gals into the neighborhoods of those homicidal crazies, without armor and even without enough ammo, for God's sakes?
I'd call him a homicidal Republican. The leader of their Party.
Purge your beautiful minds of that, Faux.
What is the distinguishing characteristic of the act that distinguishes it from other bombing. Ummm...that the guy kill himself while doing it.
Timothy McVeigh was a homicide bomber. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about somebody who kills himself to kill others.
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