Miller

Ok, I caved and looked at the LA Times article I linked to below and am already a worse person for it. First sentence:

THREE TIME zones, 3,000 miles and a cultural galaxy apart, New York and Los Angeles — along with Washington — face a common threat: They are prime targets of Islamic terrorists.

First of all, LA and NY are only a cultural galaxy apart inasmuch as your galaxy has been confined to large, liberal cities in the United States. On just about any larger scale cultural galaxy, LA and NY are basically neighbors--like the Sun and Proxima Centauri, only with better food.

Also, I should add that both cities, but particularly LA, don't even rank in the top five of cities that are the prime targets of Islamic terrorists. They do, however, both have recognizable police department acronyms. Which seems to be the main fact animating these stories.

Comments

[Goldberg]

what would the top five cities be?

[Brian]

Baghdad, Beirut, Jerusalem, Islamabad, and... why not London. There are probably more. As it turns out, NY and LA (and, ahem, DC), while prime targets for terrorism in theory don't in practice experience all that much terrorism. I realize that pointing this out puts me at risk of sounding callous about 9.11. But on a global scale it's just happens to be true.