In the first days after Mohamed Osman Mohamud was arrested on a charge of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction at a Christmas tree lighting in Portland, Ore., the news focused on, well, the attempt to use a weapon of mass destruction at a Christmas tree lighting in Portland, Ore.
But as with previous terrorist plots, the media found it intolerable to keep attention exclusively or even primarily on a suspected radical Muslim for long. So in short order, we were treated to a combo platter of stories on the perils of being Muslim in notoriously bigoted America.
The thin reed on which this weird shift of focus rested was a small arson at a mosque, more than an hour’s drive from Portland, where Mohamud had put in occasional appearances. One room was damaged, nobody was hurt, and no suspect had been arrested as of this writing.
A story worth covering? Yes.
A story in the same ZIP code of importance as a man who authorities say dialed a phone number that he believed would detonate a van packed with explosives in the midst of thousands of spectators at a tree-lighting? Most people named anything other than Osama bin Laden would say no.