-By Warner Todd Huston
Curiously enough, the August 15 shooting of a security guard at the Washington HQ of the Family Research Council perpetrated by an unhinged gay rights activist didn’t spark the same hyperbolic claims from the Old Media establishment that politics is at the root of this violence, a claim that permeated reportage of past violence. No calls for investigations were made, no individual politicians were accused of fostering a “violent atmosphere,” and no particular ideology was blamed as the cause of this crime.
Quite unlike every recent shooting that happened before it, crimes that were immediately blamed on the evil, evil Tea Party, or conservatives, or even Rush Limbaugh, this shooting was treated in a subdued manner by Old Media and was practically ignored by the ignorati and talking heads of the lefty establishment.
The coverage was downright muted, for certain. It got so absurd that Jonah Goldberg had to come back from vacation to make a post at NRO’s The Corner to point out one of the most egregious headlines in the Old Media. It came from the Washington Post whose headline on iPad read, “Police: Suspect disagreed with Family Research Council.”
Quipped Goldberg:
“Disagreed”? The suspect shot someone. “Disagreed”!? Why so bombastic? Why not say that the would-be killer “had a different perspective’
In the Post’s coverage, the paper claimed that the shooter “expressed disagreement” with the Family Research Council’s political positions as he broke out the firepower. Goldberg is right. This is a absurd as it gets in the Old Media.
Let’s contrast the Post’s rather blasé treatment with ABC’s Brian Ross who last month immediately went looking for Tea Party members that might have a similar name to the Colorado theater shooter in an attempt to smear Tea Partiers with the crime well before anyone knew a thing about the killer.
Or recall when Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in 2011. Then the Old Media lost its collective mind in a frenzied race to again blame the Tea Party. Of course, it was eventually found out that the murderer in that case had no discernible political ideology, even while citing certain left-wing ideas in his rambling manifesto.
But this week, as an unhinged gay rights activist walks into the pro-traditional family group’s HQ and begins to shoot up the place, suddenly the coverage is quite vague and restrained.
Of course, the pro-traditional family outfit has been called a “hate group” by the extremist, left-wing group The Southern Poverty Law Center. So, with this fact, one has to wonder why the Old Media isn’t rushing forward to say that this demonization of the FRC by the SPLC isn’t the cause of this violence? After all, the SPLC is engendering hate against the Family Research Council, right? With the Old Media’s anti-Tea Party logic, the SPLC caused this violence.
But so far, crickets on that count.
Another extremist that has repeatedly gone for the Tea Party’s throat blaming every violent incident on grassroots conservatives is MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. Yet on the night of the shooting at the FRC, Matthews decided it wasn’t worth even a mention.
Gee, Chris, what happened? You didn’t check you emails or watch the day’s news on Wednesday?
It all makes you wonder, where’s the wild-eyed accusations of who is at fault, Old Media? Or is the fact that since this shooter is a gay rights activist and left-winger it is causing you to suddenly realize that blaming politicians or political parties is not such a great idea after all?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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