AP Reports Theft of Mojave Cross, Suspects 'Scrap Metal Scavengers'

The Associated Press again demonstrates bizarre journalistic navel gazing in reporting that thieves have stolen the Mojave Memorial Cross from the California desert. This theft occurs just three weeks after the Supreme Court’s flat rejection of the years-long crusade to remove it by the ACLU and other groups openly belligerent to any public displays of religion, especially Christianity. Associated Press writer Robert Jablon, after making the profoundly erroneous comment that the cross stands “on federal land” (Congress authorized the transfer of the land to private ownership in 2004) addresses the journalistic “why” for the story, writing:

Authorities had no immediate motive for the theft but ideas range from scrap metal scavengers to people with an interest in the case.

Scrap metal scavengers?!? Of course! Imagine the confused, head-scratching scene in the Associated Press newsroom when this story broke. Why? Why would anyone steal this cross, they puzzled? On the one hand, you have embittered anti-religious zealots who just lost a years’ long battle costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

On the other hand, you have a 7 foot tall cross with a scrap value of maybe $100, which would take at least two men most of a day, a pickup truck, and probably 20 gallons of gas, for the 250 mile round trip, not to mention the long hike to access, cut and remove the cross, leaving a net profit of perhaps $20 each for a day’s work. So, who could it have been – bitterly aggrieved anti-religion zealots? Or economically suicidal scrap metal scavengers? Why, scrap metal scavengers!

Once again, the MSM contorts itself into a journalistic pretzel to avoid the obvious. Such media legerdemain only make sense in the media fantasy world where the Times Square Bomber is an anti-Obamacare Tea Partier and “Jihad Joe” Major Nidal Hasan had no religious motivation for his Ft. Hood massacre. Granted neither Shahzad nor Hassan was in the Mojave to shout “Allahu Akbar.” I just wonder whether the “scavengers” shouted “ACLU Akbar” as they dragged the cross away.