Much ado about "something"

If you're offended by Rep. Ilhan Omar's use of the word "something," you don't get to mock anyone else for being a triggered snowflake.

Her statement from last month that's causing all this controversy was that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) "was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties." She didn't make her point as eloquently as she could have, and she was technically incorrect about when CAIR was founded. But you're allowed to use a basic pronoun like "it" or "something" to refer to, well, anything — even the most horrific atrocity. As far as I can tell, she wasn't emphasizing the word "something" to minimize the enormity of the attacks. Instead, she was pithily getting across the familiar point that just because some people perpetrated these acts of war doesn't mean everyone who looks like them or practices the same religion should lose their rights.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right; the New York Post's cover is a gratuitous attempt to stir up hatred against Omar. As you can see at that link, the cover puts her name at the top and quotes her out of context; right under that is a photo of the World Trade Center being destroyed (in a newspaper that's widely in circulated in New York City where it happened), with superimposed text saying: "Here's your something." I get that they're using the phrase "Here's your . . ." in the colloquial sense of "Here, let me show you what this is about . . ." Still, using the word "your" right after naming Omar is an almost subliminal way of linking her to the World Trade Center attack in readers' minds. I've been critical of Omar in the past, but that is not a decent way to be talking about a member of Congress.

(Photo of Rep. Ilhan Omar from Wikimedia Commons.)