FoxNews.com has a recurring feature called Tongue Tied, which is intended to expose "politically correct" speech and similar offenses to fair, balanced right-thinkers everywhere. But Fox apparently has no plans to expose its own bizarre "politically correct" term for certain kinds of terrorist attacks -- the ones you and I know as "suicide bombings." It's taboo to use that term at Fox. The politically correct term at the right-wing news network is "homicide bombings"; that's what they're called here, here, and here.

The conservative argument for this PC usage is that "suicide bombing" doesn't adequately suggest malign intent. That's nonsense. In standard English, a "bomber" is always someone whose intent is to harm life or property; a "bombing" is always a malign act. (We have a completely separate term for the benign use of explosive devices -- "demolition.") A "suicide bomber" is a threat to peace because he or she is a bomber.

There's another reason to criticize the use of the term "homicide bomber" -- logically, a bomber who detonates a lethal bomb and doesn't seek to die in the blast is also a "homicide bomber," but politically correct right-wingers don't use the term to refer to such people. For example, Eric Rudolph was recently arrested in connection with a series of bombings; victims in two of these bombings died. Yet Fox News doesn't call speak of "homicide bombings," or call Rudolph an (alleged) "homicide bomber," in this article, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one. Why not?

Obviously, a suicide bombing is an act that's distinct from most other bombings -- it's intended to cause harm and strike fear without leaving a perpetrator to prosecute or question; the perpetrator can attack a shoot-to-kill roadblock with impunity, having no intention of surviving. Everyone understands this. Everyone knows why suicide bombings are particularly devastating. But right-wing political correctness compels Fox News to ignore what everyone knows.