Man, is the New York Daily News on a roll these days or what?
First, their response to the shooting in San Bernardino (which we now know was a terrorist attack) was to put "God Isn't Fixing This" on the cover of the paper. The next day, they doubled down on the gun control rhetoric--not only did they admit that the shooter in the San Bernardino attack was a terrorist, they also called the president of the NRA one as well. (Even some on the left thought this went a bit too far.) And last night, a column by NYDN columnist Linda Stasi hit the internet, where she laid out the case that one of the victims of the attack, Nicholas Thalasinos, was as hate-filled and bigoted as the man who killed him.
Make no mistake, as disgusting and deservedly dead as the hate-filled fanatical Muslim killers were, Thalasinos was also a hate-filled bigot. Death can’t change that. But in the U.S., we don’t die for speaking our minds. Or we’re not supposed to anyway.
Thalasinos was an anti-government, anti-Islam, pro-NRA, rabidly anti-Planned Parenthood kinda guy, who posted that it would be “Freaking Awesome” if hateful Ann Coulter was named head of Homeland Security. He asked, “IS 1. EVERY POLITICIAN IS BOUGHT AND PAID FOR? 2. EVERY POLITICIAN IS A MORON? 3. EVERY POLITICIAN IS RACIST AGAINST JEWS?” He also posted screeds like, “You can stick your Muslim Million Man march up your asses,” and how “Hashem” should blow up Iran.
His Facebook page warns that “Without HEALTHY PREGNANT WOMAN (Democrats) would have NO SOURCE of BABIES to SACRIFICE and SELL!”
We have freedom of speech but even so, a city worker should refrain from such public bigotry. Municipal workers have been fired for spewing and posting racial and sexual slurs.
Now, to be fair, Stasi hasn't exactly been known for subtlety or delicacy in writing. But seriously? While she stopped short of saying that Thalasinos straight-up deserved to be shot dead by a terrorist for the *serious* crime of an all-caps angry Facebook rant, she did however neglect to include his death as one of the "innocent" victims of the attack. While there were 14 people killed in the attack, only 13 of those were "innocent" according to Stasi.
It's a sad world we live in when a person who posts angry Facebook rants can be equated with a straight face in a major publication to someone who stockpiled guns and explosives and massacred 14 people. This is the United States--a person should be able to post something on Facebook without fear that one of their coworkers will burst into a holiday party with his wife (after apparently casing it, no less) and open fire. This kind of rhetoric is disgusting, and to attempt to equate them is nothing short of mind-boggling.
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