Calling Paddock a ‘lone wolf’ isn’t racist

It’s been nearly two weeks since Stephen Paddock committed mass murder in Las Vegas and the FBI is still casting about pitifully for clues. Why did he do it? Not even his girlfriend knows, though it’s said he claimed to have been simply ‘born bad’. Plans are afoot to put up billboards urging anyone who ever met Paddock to come forward. There’s something touching about billboards in the internet age.

Perhaps because there are no answers in the offing, in place of them has swelled a great wave of outrage, not, oddly, about America’s gun laws, but about race.

The strong feeling among America’s celebrity class — the pop stars, the hip hop stars and actors on Twitter — is that it’s racist of the FBI and of the President not to call Paddock a terrorist. Ava DuVernay, one of Hollywood’s hippest young directors, tweeted this: ‘The lone wolf. The local shooter.