RUTHFULLY YOURS

A petition addressed to Adele, President Obama, and Billboard on Change.org demands that the singer admit that she has “little talent” and is succeeding mainly because of her white privilege.

“Adele sold over 3.38 million copies of her album ‘25′ and the media is praising her as if Adele’s success has everything to do with talent,” reads the petition, written by Rhianna Jones.

“Rather, it’s her white privilege that has put her on top,” it declares.

The petitioners also “demand that Adele donates her money to African-American causes such as #Blacklivesmatter.”

It’s not clear why exactly the petition is also addressed to President Obama — perhaps Ms. Jones is outraged that the leader of the free world hasn’t pushed the less important issues like ISIS aside to deal with the more serious ones like a singer’s being white and successful at the same time. (I mean, would an executive order requiring Adele to admit she is only successful because she is white and give away her money to people who are not white in order to stay in the country really be too much to ask?)

Why would Ms. Tashfeen Malik, who was born in Pakistan but lived most of her life in Saudi Arabia, want to come to the United States?

She obviously hated the United States and its values, at least enough to help stockpile an arsenal and to kill 14 people and wound another 21 in San Bernardino.

Or for that matter, why did her husband and co-mass-murderer Syed Rizwan Farook, if he was unhappy with his native America, not return to his parents’ Pakistan, where he might, in greater peace, have practiced Sharia law, memorizing his Koranic verses without the temptations of crass and uncouth American culture?

Or why did not family members or friends notice the couple’s assembling of a veritable arsenal of assault in their townhouse? And if they did notice, why did they not help to protect their adopted country?

And why did a spokesman for the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), Hussam Ayloush, as if suffering from a politically correct tic, almost immediately tie terrorism in the U.S. with American foreign policy? “Let’s not forget that some of our own foreign policy, as Americans, as the West, has fueled that extremism,” he said. “ . . . We are partly responsible. Terrorism is a global problem, not a Muslim problem.” Was that pop exegesis designed to show Americans how CAIR abhors Islamic-inspired terrorism inside the U.S.?

Nicholas Teausant, the Californian who sought to join ISIS in Syria and spoke of bombing a “Zionist” daycare center, has pleaded guilty to supporting a terrorist organization. According to news reports, prosecutors had sought approval from the Justice Department for a plea deal with Teausant, but on December 1 he pleaded guilty apart from any such agreement.

The day after Teausant’s guilty plea, American-born Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, a Pakistani national, murdered 14 Americans and injured 21 in San Bernardino, California. The mass murder was the worst terrorist attack since September 11, 2001 but in the early going public officials hesitated to identify the killings as terrorism. The president invoked “workplace violence,” as he had in the case of Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who murdered 13 unarmed American soldiers at Ford Hood, Texas, in 2009.

Unlike that case, San Bernardino police managed to kill Farook and Tashfeen in a shootout with no loss of innocent life. The couple’s residence, police and FBI agents discovered, was a veritable bomb factory and arsenal.

Each and every act of Muslim terrorism is followed by a wave of denial. The politicians who have done the most to cause the latest disaster are the eagerest to blame it on something, anything else.

The San Bernardino Muslim massacre was blamed on postpartum depression at CNN. Bill Nye blamed the latest Paris attacks on Global Warming. According to Hillary Clinton, Benghazi was a movie review with artillery. Islamic terrorism was blamed by the State Department on a lack of jobs, but Syed Farook had a good government job and his wife was the daughter of a wealthy family.

After rummaging through their big brass chest of excuses, Obama and his media allies have settled on gun control as their latest weapon of mass distraction.

California has the toughest gun laws in the nation. Unlike Ted Kennedy, the terrorists weren’t on the no-fly list that has become the latest desperate meme of mass distraction. And, despite Obama’s claim in Paris that mass shootings don’t happen in other countries because of gun control magic, they most certainly do. European gun control didn’t stop a Muslim mass shooting in Paris that killed 130 people.

Syed Farook and Tasheen Malik had built pipe bombs. The latest attack in the UK involved a knife. So did quite a few in Jerusalem. The Boston Marathon massacre used fireworks and a pressure cooker.

The Muslim mass murder of 3,000 people on 9/11 was carried out with box cutters.