The Deserving Hostages

We know about the old distinction between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor. Now for some rightwing keyboards warriors we appear to see a comparable difference between hostages, captured soldiers and so forth. When they die or are in held for ransom we honor and hold out hope for them. Except if they’re a little Islamy or had bad politics or actually did some things that were wrong (thinking about Bowe Bergdahl in latter case), then all bets are off. So now you have anti-Islam hardliners trashing the latest ISIS victim as a “Jew-Hating, Anti-Israel Bitch.” The death of these hostages is tragic, except if they didn’t have the right politics.