InstaProf is trying to make a point about CNN coverage of the Washington Sniper, but I'm still not buying into it:

Likewise, it may well turn out that -- despite rather a lot of suggestive evidence -- the sniper attacks by a guy named Muhammad who said he supported the 9/11 attackers and who seems to have had a lot of money and airplane tickets for a homeless guy will turn out to be pure, garden-variety nuttiness. But that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people seem to be bending over backward to be sure it looks that way, and that's why I'm harping on the issue.

It's pretty obvious to me, though I'm open to being proven wrong, that the Sniper is a domestic Islamist nutcase. Islamist, however, is the adjective and not the noun in my view. If I call him Williams instead of Muhammed it's not because I'm subtlely trying to make it appear as if he's something that he's not, it's because I think of him as a Williams and not a Muhammed. If it turns out he was getting the money and airplane tickets from al-Qaeda or an affiliate organization, I'll concede that he falls into the Islamist Terrorist category. Nothing I say between now and then will change what turns up.

Now, if Glenn's fear is that since they view it that way they are unlikely to follow leads that point in the direction of collusion between Mohammad/Williams and al-Qaeda, I'm with him 100%. I don't think that to be the case, but I certainly want to know if it is. As it stands, Mohammad/Williams is from the Nation of Islam, which is the equivalent to fundamentalist Islam that Mormonism is to fundamentalist Christianity. NoI isn't even considered the real deal by anyone except it's members. Remember the Islamic fundamentalists are so tightly wound that they get into wars with one another over whether or not they are Sunni, Shiite, Wahabbist, etc. So they're going to pawn off money to this black redneck who doesn't even fall into any of these mainline categories? That strikes me as implausible. Maybe they did. I don't know. However, the idea that it should be the main assumption and those of us who don't make that assumption are naive doesn't strike me as right, either.

Now, back to the name of the Sniper. Whether the media and public recognizes someone's changed name is always iffy. Cat Stevens is still known by most people as Cat Stevens and not Yusef Islam. Cassius Clay, on the other hand, is more known as Muhammad Ali. John Walker Lindh is rarely recognized as Suleyman or whatever name it was that he came up with for himself. There are reasons for each of these. Stevens is still Stevens because he wrote songs and performed under that name and hasn't really done much musically since converting. Ali did most of his most famous stuff under that name, so it has become accepted. John Walker Lindh never officially changed his name, so it's still Walker, Lindh, or Walker Lindh. Williams was unknown until his arrest, so people didn't know exactly what to refer to him as. We're given two names at once. People who believe him to be a part of the aggregate forces of terror we're at war against chose his newer, Muslim name. People who believe him to be a nutbar that happened to choose Islam as his outlet take his birth name.

I don't think either side is deviously trying to shape public opinion.

Take, for instance, the arrest warrant that was made out for Williams instead of Muhammad. Would the police really put the wrong name on a warrant just to shape public opinion? It shouldn't cause any problems, but crossing the T's and dotting the I's is a pretty important thing for arrest warrants. They screwed up. It happens.I am probably technically wrong when I refer to him as Williams, but it's how I view the man and the situation and hardly a conscious effort to bend backwards to admit anything.

I think I'll just stick to The Sniper.