Boston Marathon Suspects At Large, So Media Guesses it Was Because Of Tax Day

As people attempt to recover from grief over Monday’s tragic bombings of the Boston marathon, speculation has started to abound. The lack of answers and solid information in the immediate wake of the tragedy has meant that many in the media have begun conjecturing with any slice of information that is possible, right down to the date of the bombing.

The theory is that the date is a combination of three past events makes the date of April 15 particularly attractive to a certain group of domestic right-wing terrorists.

Such forecasting is absurd, on the level of reading tea leaves or glancing in a crystal ball. Yet some in the media, desperate for some angle to run on the story, have decided to forge ahead into a murky sea of speculation.

The one section of the "theory" is that April 15 is Patriot’s Day, a holiday that commemorates the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Patriot's Day is not a national holiday, and is only celebrated in Massachusetts and Maine. Some in the media have been claiming that Patriot's Day is significant because of the special significance the American Revolution holds to members of the extreme right-wing.

To support this point another date is invoked. Not April 15 but April 19, the day of the Oklahoma City Bombing by right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh chose the date of April 19 in part because it was the anniversary of the Waco siege and the exact date of the Battles of Lexington and Concord. McVeigh never lived in Massachusetts or Maine, so it is unlikely that he even knew of the existence of the local holiday. Lacking any evidence about the person or persons behind this, it is absurd to think that of the hundreds of possible scenarios an local holiday would be the jump off point for such a tragedy.

Another part of the significance of April 15 is that it is tax day in the United States. Despite no evidence that there was an relation between the tragedy and something mundane as paying taxes, that did not stop some in the media from springing onto the tenuous lead. Chris Matthews speculated on Hardball said, "It's filing day for the federal income tax, which does cause some emotions around the country, sometimes in the wrong parts of the brain." Across the pond, the Telegraph was quick to mention that April 15 "is an ominous day in the calendar for anti-government, anti-tax activists."

Attempting to grasp at tenuous links to jump to conclusions is no better than conspiracy-level speculation, such as straight-up wasting time at a press conference hours after the tragedy with question of "false flags" and other nonsense theories:

Absent of a smoking gun such as a suspect with carrying a copy of the Turner Diaries or other extreme right-wing literature, such speculation is useless at best and actively misleading for the sake gaining of viewers and pageviews at worse. You may as well attempt to link it with other significant events that happened on April 15, such as the sinking of the Titanic or first McDonald's being opened. But absent of real information expect such speculation on feeble information to sadly continue.