Tuesday, May 07, 2013

JUST WHEN I WAS CONCERNED THAT RIGHT-WINGERS MIGHT RUN OUT OF PEOPLE TO HATE

The Baltimore Fox affiliate has found a woman who wants to arrange for Tamerlan Tsarnaev's burial at Arlington National Cemetery:
US Air Force (USAF) veteran Julie Frein said she is willing to give up her burial plot at Arlington National Cemetery to Tamerlan Tsarnaev - the deceased Boston bombing suspect.

The Anne Arundel County woman told Fox45 she feels the terrorist suspect should be able to be laid to rest and just wants it to all be over. "I feel sympathy for [his family] in that as long as this issue is open, they can't have closure," Frein told Fox45's Joy Lepola....

Frein served in the USAF for two years. Her husband served in the US Navy for 20 years.
I don't know what's up with this woman. She's weepy in the news clip (embedded below). She just seems sick of the rancor -- which means she's the most naive person in the world, because if Fox or Drudge gets wind of this, she's going to be subjected to a rancor-tsunami that's going to make her life a living hell.

And while I think it's a terrible idea to bury Tsarnaev at Arlington, I agree with Charlie Pierce that if we can chill out long enough to allow the burial of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Boston Strangler, we can let Tamerlan be put to rest somewhere, and hate what he did rather than hate his corpse, which can't harm us.

On the other hand, as Mother Jones notes, public anger that makes it hard to find resting places for notorious figures is nothing new. One curious detail from the MJ story:
Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who assassinated President William McKinley, was dissolved in sulphuric acid, Breaking Bad-style, to prevent admirers from visiting his grave.
A detail that's not in the MJ story: the same thing was said to have been done to John Wilkes Booth, according to this 1925 news story. On the other hand, Booth's niece said the same year that Booth escaped capture and lived for 38 years after his supposed death.

Now, you know what happens next, don't you? This story gets used in a right-wing game of ideological telephone, and we get told that this is something the evil, America-hating Obama government actually wants to do. It's already happening a bit: Joe the Plumber has a post up titled "Boston Bomber to Be Buried at Arlington," and there's a message-board thread titled "Obama Wants Tamerlan Tsarnaev Buried At Arlington." By Friday, I bet half the wingnuttosphere will think this idea was explicitly endorsed by the White House.


9 comments:

  1. They should bury him at sea like they did with Osama Bin Laden. Problem solved.

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  2. But...but...but...ZOMBIE TERRORISTS ARISING FROM THEIR GRAVES!

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    1. No, that's just the fucking christians.

      No fear.

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  3. "By Friday, I bet half the wingnuttosphere will think this idea was explicitly endorsed by the White House."

    Are you kidding? Just endorsed by the White House? No, the story will be that the White House originally proposed the idea and used a veteran as a tragic weeping prop to use emotion to sell their heinous plot. (Plot! Get it?)

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  4. Does anyone care where Adam Lanza is buried?

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  5. He can have my plot. The fucking flag too.

    No fear.

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  6. No way. Arlington is for vets. Cremate the kid and scatter his ashes over a town dump somewhere.

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  7. I hope none of the Reich-wing crazies decides that she should use her burial spot at Arlington, before the paperwork to tranfer it over to him, occurs.

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  8. Maybe cremation and his relatives could keep his ashes on their mantelpiece. Arlington is for heroes not terrorists.

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