Hello and welcome back to the news, reviewed, with the sobriety and calm it deserves. But first, announcements!
We have new items going up in The Free Press store: a Think for Yourself crewneck; a Free Press beanie (first ever); and, an America at 250 hat. Check out the shop if you’re open to getting into verbal altercations at your next community board meeting.
We also have an urgent, truly desperate job posting: Senior Director of Finance to track subscription metrics and run the books—until now, it’s been three monkeys in a closet with a calculator. The Free Press needs YOU. And our last announcement is just a note of appreciation for a great man named David Giaramita. He has answered all our questions, philosophical and otherwise, as we switched over our IT systems, which sounds easy but is not. This will shock you but journalists aren’t great at calendar migration. Thank you, David! In honor of your labor, you get one America at 250 hat.
→ Two terrorists and a lie: Two young men—Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi—are accused of trying to use homemade bombs on New York’s Upper East Side this past weekend. Outside of Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence, someone yelled “allahu akbar” and Balat allegedly threw one of the bombs. Once in custody, Balat pledged allegiance to ISIS, according to authorities, and later gave the ISIS salute to a camera crew.
Their target: a small anti-Islam rally led by a racist right-wing troll named Jake Lang. The scene: about 20 people with Lang and more than 100 counterprotesters. While one of the counterprotesters was speaking the familiar language of progressive acceptance into a bullhorn—about how everyone is welcome in New York—Balat reached over his shoulder to throw a lit bomb. The carrot of acceptance—and if not, then the stick of an IED! All in one moment. It’s all caught on video.
Call me crazy, but I just don’t really think we should kill people willy-nilly on the sidewalk like that, even if they disagree with my politics. This was a clear-cut Bad Moment. On this front, I am apparently an outcast among journalists. Because my comrades did something clever. They blamed the right-wing trolls. The establishment news media worked this week to make a great lie: that the right-wing group threw the bomb. And if a bomb was indeed thrown by the side of the good, then it wasn’t a big deal at all.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a tour.
