Osama is logged on to political realities

Check out my Los Angeles Daily News column today, inspired by an issue of Reason magazine that landed on my desk the other day, with a cover blurb about Osama's favorite blogs. (The article within did not confirm or deny if GOP Vixen is among them.) Coupled with the omnipresent "Where's Osama?" question, a column was born. A snippet:

"As I drove down - er, sat immobile on - the 405 Freeway through L.A.'s Westside recently, I noticed a large sign hung on a chain-link fence at an apartment complex: 'Where is Osama bin Laden?'

I'm willing to bet bin Laden isn't shacked up in Culver City.

But he might be found on the Internet at this very moment. Brendan O'Neill, writing in the May issue of the libertarian magazine Reason, theorized that bin Laden is reading our blogs and cherry-picking wild conspiracy theories and anti-Bush arguments to push in his own statements. 'Bin Laden, it seems to me, is regurgitating the arguments of Western commentators and using them to justify his crimes,' writes O'Neill.

I began to do a mental happy dance thinking of bin Laden stumbling across my own blog, on which I've compared and contrasted his No. 2 - Ayman al-Zawahri - to Dr. Evil's No. 2 in the 'Austin Powers' flicks, among other things.

But we do know al-Qaida is logged on to the extent that the Web is its main P.R. conduit, its recruiting arm that reaches into the darkened dens of the biggest jihad-prone losers.

The Global Islamic Media Front - the production arm of al-Qaida - was advertising last fall for positions producing Web-based video and online statements, presumably paying in accordance with Jihadists Guild standards.

And USA Today reported last month that bin Laden fans were using the Google-owned Orkut service to rally support and recruit al-Qaida members.

Bin Laden's also been playing book reviewer, recommending William Blum's 'Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower,' which gave the far-left tome a momentary catapult on the Amazon.com sales rankings. Blum welcomed the endorsement with open arms, saying it was 'almost as good as being an Oprah book.' Meanwhile, 'Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden' was at a whopping 12,890 sales rank on Amazon last week.

But 'Where's Osama?' could truly be the greatest rhetorical question of the century thus far.

He's on the Internet, he's on Al-Jazeera, he's on Amazon. And increasingly since 9-11 he's on the American political playground, a tetherball swatted at partisans when useful. ..."

Read the whole thing! Osama might, having stumbled upon it in a late-night online vanity search...

Comments

[Tugboat Phil]

I think I spotted him in downtown L.A., marching for "immigrant" rights.

[Bill]

I think you're right, Tugboat! I thought I saw him wolfing down a Kentucky Fried Rat at a refreshment stand set up along the way!

Bill

[Lewis B. Sckolnick]

Well he is not in a hole like SH was.