For example, I've been skimming the white liberal blogosphere and happened to see that several of them are pointing to this article by Frank Rich, "The Good German".
I go read and here is what I see:
As Mrs. Bush spoke, two women, both Armenian Christians, were gunned down in Baghdad by contractors underwritten by American taxpayers. On this matter, the White House has been silent. That incident followed the Sept. 16 massacre in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, where 17 Iraqis were killed by security forces from Blackwater USA, which had already been implicated in nearly 200 other shooting incidents since 2005. There has been no accountability. The State Department, Blackwater’s sugar daddy for most of its billion dollars in contracts, won’t even share its investigative findings with the United States military and the Iraqi government, both of which have deemed the killings criminal.and the way I read that is, "OMG! We must do something now. Before they were killing those animals with their silly mumbo jumbo dangerous religions and who cares about that? But now, NOW, they're killing REAL HUMAN BEINGS!"
The gunmen who mowed down the two Christian women worked for a Dubai-based company managed by Australians, registered in Singapore and enlisted as a subcontractor by an American contractor headquartered in North Carolina.
Why would it make any difference in the story to mention that they are Christians* and not once, but twice. Considering how geographically challenged Americans are, I also think adding in the Armenian part was a nice touch; it will be taken one of two ways, "At least they aren't Iraqis, our enemy**, so who cares if Iraqis are killed?" or if an American happens to know where Armenia is, "Oh European, even more like us then probably."
I don't think Rich is racist, but I'm thinking that he believes that his readership is. His focus is Blackwater and the other mercenaries, he knows that another dead Iraqi, or a hundred, or a thousand, is a yawn to the average racist American. But two dead Christians? That might get them riled up enough to write letters, protest, do something to show their disapproval of these out of control cowboys.
*Heading you off at the pass, I know someone will argue that bigotry based on religion isn't racism. Sometimes it's not, but the unspoken antonym for Christian is Muslim. Give a piece of paper and a box of crayolas to a random American and ask her/him to draw you a picture of a Muslim and I guarantee that 99.999% will be picking a brown or black crayon instead of white or pink. Bigotry based on skin color is...
**Enemy? Aren't we there to rescue Iraqis? Nah, that's an acceptable lie for ignorant American people and the international community. The Bush administration couldn't very well say they were going in to steal the oil. When a colonized people fight back they become "the enemy" and all terrorists.
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