Boston and the Left

This story is an instant classic:

The secret transport of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body from Worcester to a small community near Richmond, Va., was set in motion by a woman who said she was upset to hear about protests to his burial and wanted to see an end to the weeklong burial saga. Martha Mullen, 48, of Richmond, said she was dismayed reports of protests outside of Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester that she heard on National Public Radio.

Of course she heard about it on NPR . . .

Mullen, a licensed professional counselor who has lived in Richmond for most of her life, said she was sitting in a Starbucks Tuesday when it hit her: She could be the one to end the controversy.

. . . and is a professional “counselor” . . . and was meditating at a Starbucks. If this was an Onion story it would be too on-the-nose.

But the best is this part:

“It portrayed America at its worst,” she said in an interview with the Globe this morning.

Really? Peaceful picketing of a private business to encourage them to behave in a certain way is America at its worst? What the protestors did to Boston-area funeral homes isn’t any different than what liberal groups have done to, say, conservative talk radio shows like Dr. Laura, when they ask businesses not to advertise. Or to Chipotle, when they bullied it into revoking its sponsorship of a Boy Scout event. Liberals normally like “direct action.” Heck, they invented it.

But let’s take Mullen on her own terms: If picketing a funeral home to get them to pass on the job of burying a terrorist is “America at its worst,” where would Mullen rank Japanese-American internment during WWII? Or the Trail of Tears? How about Jim Crow? Bueller? Bueller?

And if that’s not bad enough, let’s close out this pathetic vignette with a quote from Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia, the organization that Mullen found to take custody of Tsarnaev’s remains and bury them:

“What Tsarnaev did is between him and God. We strongly disagree with his violent actions, but that does not release us from our obligation to return his body to the earth,” an Islamic Funeral Services of Virgina official, who did not want to be named, said in a statement.

You see, what Tsarnaev did is not just between him and God. He didn’t look at porn or cheat on his wife. He committed a public act of mass murder in the name of a religious ideology. God has final say over the disposition of Tsarnaev’s eternal soul and all that, but Caesar–which is to say, the society against which Tsarnaev committed this crime–has a clear and compelling interest, too.

Oh, and by the way, it’s pretty big of Islamic Funeral Services of Virginia to “strongly disagree” with Tsarnaev’s “violent actions.” I know what you’re thinking: “Strong disagreement” is normally what we have in disputes over, say, immigration policy or a presidential election and ideologically-motivated mass murder probably warrants something a little higher up the condemnation scale.

But hey: At least they didn’t say “his alleged violent actions.”