Careful with That Ax, Mitchel

The second of the media responses portfolio. This one was passed along to me by my brother, and I found it easy to provide a response to this sort of media nonsense.


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ENG 290
September 17, 2009
Portfolio 2: Careful with That Ax, Mitchel


There are few things I know with absolute certainty, but I could hazard the assumption that if someone came running at me screaming and wielding an ax, I'd be terrified. But to take that sudden rush of confounding fear on to the linguist sibling of terrify to label that screaming, ax-wielding individual a terrorist is just not logical nor proper at all.

In a Star-Tribune article we are told, "A pickup truck driver is accused of trying to run over a bicyclist and then coming after him brandishing an ax after a road-rage incident." This sounds like a case of extreme road rage, and would, indeed, be a terrifying experience. But the situation turns, with a peculiar application of both linguists and the law. "The driver, Mitchel J. Pieper […] was charged in Dakota County District Court on Tuesday with making terroristic threats, a felony, in connection with the altercation Saturday."

Terroristic threats? How odd. Time used to be, an incident like that would be called, as it already had been in the article, "road rage." Now it is "making terroristic threats?

Consulting the OED, "terrorism: A system of terror. 1. Government by intimidation as directed and carried out by the party in power in France during the Revolution of 1789-94; the system of the 'Terror' (1793-4): see TERROR n. 4." But this incident is contemporary Florida, not Revolutionary France, what else does the OED tell us? "2. gen. A policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted; the employment of methods of intimidation; the fact of terrorizing or condition of being terrorized. Also transf. Cf. TERRORIST 1b." That's closer. An angry man with an ax is certainly employing methods of intimidation. But that still doesn't warrant a legal accusation of terrorism.

To equate the acts of a hijacker acting on extremist beliefs (for wouldn't any belief have to be extreme by some measure to conclude that it is in the interest of such faith to annihilate another person?) who would fly a plane into a building, killing himself and thousands of others with a suburbanite in Florida chasing a bicyclist with an ax may well produce some interesting debates, but to designate by name the two things are being the same diminishes the power of the word itself. And that diminishes the power of our consideration of that act—for those who control the meaning of words controls the reality they represent.

The Star-Tribune goes on to say, "The bicyclist was not seriously hurt."

That's more than can be said for most victims of terrorism.

Work Cited

Powell, Joy.

"Driver is accused of threatening cyclist with ax."

The Star Tribune [Minneapolis-St. Paul]
12 Aug. 2009. Web. 1 Sept. 2009.

"Terrorism." Oxford English Dictionary.

2nd ed. 1989. Print.

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