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Washington Post’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi obit header triggers outrage, memes
Baghdadi blew himself up, detonating a suicide vest, trapped in one in a tunnel as US special ops dogs chased after him on Sunday.
The Washington Post has been severely criticised for its headline for an obituary for the Islamic State commander, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and was on the receiving end on the internet with viral memes and spin-offs.
Baghdadi blew himself up, detonating a suicide vest, trapped in one in a tunnel as US special ops dogs chased after him on Sunday.
US president Donald Trump announced the death of the elusive leader of the Islamic State, saying he died “like a dog (and) a coward… whimpering, screaming and crying” in a night-time raid by American special forces on a compound in northwestern Syria.
The initial headline of the publication, which is widely read in the US, called Baghdadi ISIS’ ”terrorist-in-chief”, before it was changed to the “austere religious scholar at the helm of Islamic State”.
Amid a massive backlash on the internet and almost everywhere, the Washington Post finally settled on “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, extremist leader of Islamic State, dies at 48.”
This was before internet users had already saved screenshots of the controversial headline.
As the newspaper was at the receiving end of internet users, #WaPoDeathNotice and #WashingtonPost trended in several countries. Many used the hashtags to poke fun at the headline tweeting mock obituaries of notorious figures—real as well as fictional.
Twitter user Josh Jordan seemed by far the most prolific headline creator with multiple versions of The Washington Post obituaries on American serial killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, American criminal and cult leader Charles Manson, Soviet politician Joseph Stalin and Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
He didn’t stop at historical figures and added film and television baddies to his list of obits. Joker, Thanos, Walter White, Hans Gruber, Smeagol and Bane were among those.
Another Twitter user and YouTuber, Rachel Chen, also joined in. Chen’s tweet was on Adolf Hitler and it received several other spinoffs.
In India, Ramesh Srivats’ spin on the headline on British colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre , Bollywood villains Mogambo and Gabbar Singh and even Biblical figure Judas Iscariot more being retweeted widely.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor was the latest to join in the trend with a tweet on Nathuram Godse.
As the Washington Post was mocked and trolled, the vice-president (communications) and general manager of Washington Post Live, Kristine Coratti Kelly, tweeted an apology.
“Regarding our al-Baghdadi obituary, the headline should never have read that way and we changed it quickly,” she said.
