Why are bombs killing scores of people in Pakistan not news

[Igel]

13. Nothing much new about Syria, either.

Except that Syria fits a nice narrative. Good versus bad, totalitarianism vs. democracy.

The bad guy is an acceptable bad guy. Granted, there's vacillation over the "good guy," but we still like hating on the bad guy.

In Pakistan we don't think of the Shi'ites as good guys or the Sunnis as bad guys. We don't like the narrative of Muslims killing Muslims, not because it puts them in a bad light but because there's no us involved. When the Taliban in Pakistan kills an aid worker, when there's some attack on a girls' school, when there's some attack on US soldiers or Afghan official, there's a good bad guy. Sometimes it's the US, sometimes it's because the US was involved, sometimes it's because there are bad religious people out to keep women barefoot and pregnant. Nice narrative.

Can't sort out Muslim-on-Muslim oppression. Esp. Sunni-on-Shi'ite. And esp. when it's majority Sunnis-as-oppressors on minority Shi'ites-as-oppressed. Why, that means that the Sunni attacks on Shi'ites in Iraq might not be what we think they are. Or the Sunni attacks on Shi'ites in Syria may not be what we think they are. We can't let it be religious because that might mean some other attacks that fit our domestic, US-based narrative might also be religious.

So we ignore them, pretty much. No, they aren't completely ignored. They are mentioned. Then they vanish from the media and it's like they never happened.