HIT AND RUN SUV

"Can you imagine, if someone had (God forbid!) driven a car into 14 gay people, how quickly the press would have managed to cover the story?"

CLogging is catching on (Comments-Logging, such as this site does). Michelle Malkin has a story about a driver in San Francisco who ran amuck driving around hitting people and finally ending in front of the Jewish Community Center. Whether by coincidence he ended his rampage there or not, he spent a lot of time hitting people on Bush street as well. This man was a Muslim, of middle eastern origin, and while there's no proof or testimony to the idea of this as some one-man terrorist rampage or it being connected to Jews or President Bush, the coincidences are odd, to say the least.

Another odd detail is the fixation news stories have of referring to SUVs as committing the crimes in question or being responsible for accidents. I have yet to read about a pickup being the one crashing into schoolkids or hitting people, no station wagons or sports cars. But whenever something happens while someone is driving a sports utility vehicle, they almost always refer to the SUV rather than the driver as responsible. Here's how the San Francisco Chronicle puts it:

The SUV struck two people in front of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on California Street, a few blocks from where the rampage ended.
...
Architect Jeremy Warms also saw police pull Popal out of the SUV and sit him down on the curb.
...
Emanule Gowan, 50, said he had been standing on his Steiner Street doorstep around 1 p.m. when an SUV roared by, driving the wrong way down Bush Street, and hit an elderly man in the crosswalk
...
Other witnesses described the SUV as jumping the sidewalk in apparent pursuit of pedestrians.
...
The SUV struck two people in front of the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco on California Street, a few blocks from where the rampage ended.
...etc

This kind of repetitive use of a type of vehicle is not accidental or coincidental. Typically writers try to avoid using the same word over and over, but apparently there's an exception for the term "SUV."

CBS Channel 5 has the same kind of theme:

An FBI agent on his lunch break was also struck by the suspect's SUV in the vicinity of the Federal Building.
...
Jennifer Sawle, 33, of San Francisco, said she was headed eastbound on California Street when she saw the SUV driving recklessly in the other direction, around 1:15 pm.
...
The SUV "went speeding in reverse on Bush (Street) heading west, weaving in and out of traffic," she said. "The whole right side of his SUV was smashed in."

Michelle Malkin covered the story, then solicited her gazillion readers for more information on the area

Bay Area readers, I have a question: What can you tell us all about the intersections and locations of the vehicular assaults? Is there a large Jewish population in Laurel Heights?

But San Francisco is not really broken up into ethnic blocks like some towns except in Chinatown. Like my home town, San Francisco can change radically block to block from poverty to great wealth.

Her readers gladly responded, with some highlights:

I lived in SF and worked very near the Jewish Community Center there, located at Presidio and California. To say the Presidio (as it's known) is a "Jewish" area is not quite accurate.
-by Kirk K.

This whole thing went down a block from my apartment and I disagree with Kirk's assessment. Three of the incidents appear to have happened on Bush street, which is a one-way street going west to east. [map of area] To me this looks like a methodical, circuitous expedition ending at the JCC.
-by Chuck

Kirk K. is corrects that Pine St. leads to an area near (though NOT directly to) the SFJCC. But I just saw a map of the incidents (pedestrians hit in SF) and clearly Popal did not take a straight path. It seems like he headed west out Pine St., double-backed on Bush St. (a one-way in the other direction) for a few blocks, then headed north tol California, where he turned westbound until he hit the SFJCC and then came to a stop about three blocks later. This is also based on a witness who saw him turn left from Pine onto Divisadero (southbound to Bush St.) and then saw him go by again westbound a few minutes later. A little confusing, I know but he clearly was driving around the neighborhood.

It is a very interesting question as to why Popal, living in Fremont (very remote from SF), chose to do most of his damage (after already killing someone in Fremont, it must be said) in this neighborhood when he had to drive through 40 miles of heavy freeway traffic and then through several more miles of dense urban traffic in SF to get there.

I was just watching KTVU 10 o’clock news and apparently one of the SF victims was black – in fact the suspect tried to run him down twice.
-by Gary R.

As you know by now, Temple Emanu-El is one of San Francisco's most distinguished synagogues, architecturally and in terms of its populous congregation. fyi, It's also somewhat left-leaning: witness the hejab-wearing woman joining her hands in Christian-like prayer in the image currently on its website. Three of its six rabbis are women, one ofwhom, Sydney Mintz, I believe is lesbian. At a service I attended there three years ago, a fellow worshipper (who otherwise was a stranger to me) let loose a gratuitous, derisive comment about President Bush. All things considered, it makes perfect sense to me that a desperate and poorly-planned jihad-derived rampage (as this one seems to be) or certainly a desperate and better-planned one would aim for Laurel Heights generally and any of these locations specifically. The JCC and Emanu-El are absolutely San Francisco's emblems of liberal, affluent and socially productive Jews.
-by Jeremiah

There's more on her site, I just grabbed some highlights from some of the writers. You'll have to go read Michelle's article to get the whole story.

Anchoress is frustrated and annoyed with the way the legacy media covers events where Arabs and Muslims are concerned:

This is becoming an appalling habit in the press and by politicians. An Islamic fundamentalist shoots Jews in a Synagogue, and it’s some sort of random incident. An Islamic fundamentalist uses his car to kill people in front of a Synagogue, and in what would appear to be a somewhat “Jewish neighborhood” and the press takes a while to cover the story (probably looking for the appropriate “frame,”) until someone in authority can be found to sing out, “ROAD RAGE”! Yeah, that’s the ticket! Road rage! Mayor Newsom sees no problem, here…a “relatively young” person, obviously confused! Yes, that’s the ticket!

A topic Tim Blair has been hitting on for a while now in the context of Australian news coverage. In No-Appearance Gang Still At Large he points out a consistent theme in the news, showing story after story where the news describes the events and a generic depiction of the people... and the police report making it clear they are Arabic and Middle Eastern in appearance. This is a deliberate attempt to avoid mentioning something.

Now, what possible motivation could news organizations have for not mentioning crimes being committed by Muslims and Arabs? Hmm, can't possibly be that this might annoy people at such a group of people and thus remind them of 9/11, terrorism, and become favorable for President Bush could it?

Think I'm crazy? Why do you think they keep repeating the word SUV constantly in news stories, referring to the vehicle as if it is self-driven? Is it because they find the word so very attractive, or because they understand that putting a word and a type into a negative story over and over helps form a perspective on that word or type?

These people report and work with words for a living. Many major legacy media outlets deliberately avoid using the word "terrorist" by policy, not because of fear of lawsuits by said terrorists, but because they want to avoid reminding people that terrorists exist and are a problem.

That's why it's the legacy media. Because people are more and more turning to news sources that don't play these games.

*UPDATE: The driver himself in this Channel 2 San Francisco video clip says "I am a terrorist." Of course, if he said he was a turnip I wouldn't pay him a lot of heed, but given the context it seems compelling at least.

News Media, Crime, San Francisco