Newsweek's Evan Thomas [1]
regretted the Fort Hood mass murderer, Major Nidal Hasan, is a Muslim
because of how that reality will be abused by conservatives. On this
weekend's Inside Washington, Thomas, now Editor at Large with Newsweek
after stints as Assistant Managing Editor and Washington bureau chief,
rued:
I cringe that he's a Muslim. I mean, because it inflames all the fears. I think he's probably just a nut case. But with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going and it just - I mean these things are tragic, but that makes it much worse.
NPR's Nina Totenberg soon chimed in with agreement: "It really is tragic that he was a Muslim."
Audio: MP3 clip [2]
The weekly Inside Washington [3]
is produced by Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, WJLA-DT which runs it on
Sunday morning, but it's first aired Friday nights on the PBS station
and is carried several times by the DC-area all-news cable channel,
NewsChannel 8.
- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center