‘Will the Left Pause After DC Shooting?’
That’s the question asked by Jonathan S. Tobin of Commentary.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but my immediate response — and I’ll bet yours too, is: no. The Giffords shooting* was an incident involving an New Age-obsessed nutbar, which was instantly spun into a vaguely Tea Party or rightwing-related incident by Obama and the MSM. (See also: Bill Clinton attempting to blame the Oklahoma Federal Bombing on talk radio.) In contrast, today’s incident involved a shooter who allegedly had ties to a LGBT organization, carried Chick-fil-A related merchandise according to NBC, and according to Fox News, begged the FRC guard after shooting him, “Don’t shoot me, it was not about you, it was what this place stands for.”
All of which makes this story infinitely harder to spin for the MSM. Instead, as Ace writes, “The media coverage on this is going to be… nonexistent. Prepare to be outraged as never before as the media simply embargoes this, almost entirely.” (QED.) And thus, no need for any timeout in the culture war from the left.
Or to quote again from Jim Treacher, “It’s only an ‘atmosphere of hate’ if it’s useful to liberals.”
* Which among the shooters’ victims, also resulted in the death of the Bush #41-appointed Federal Judge John M. Roll. Funny how that narrative-cluttering detail has been forgotten.
From the blinkered prog perspective, of the veep candidates in the last election Biden was the smart one.
I’d be interested in knowing how the story’s coverage is being handled in the D.C. TV market — while three of the four liberal sites offered little or no coverage (ABC being the lone exception tonight), WRC-Ch.4, the NBC affiliate, appeared to have to played this story up pretty well from the local angle (the WaPo seems to have stepped up its coverage slightly from its initial embarrassingly deferential-to-the-gunman report on line, but the story could still end up on Page 16-A of the dead tree edition).
Not sure how Ch. 5 (Fox), 7 (ABC) and 9 (CBS) or the local cable news and the news radio stations in the market handled this, but the D.C. market also includes northern Virginia, one of the swing state battlegrounds, and the fact that it is news in the capitol means for the politicians there, it’s harder to ignore, even if the big media is trying to make sure the news never gets west of the Blue Ridge Mountains or east of Chesapeake Bay.
“Instead, as Ace writes, “The media coverage on this is going to be… nonexistent. Prepare to be outraged as never before as the media simply embargoes this, almost entirely.” (QED.) ”
Not sure I understand this. Pjmedia, Hotair, Drudge, Breitbart, the Blaze, Rush & Glenn Beck have been covering it (or at least mentioning it.) kThe telegraph & Pony Express may not be covering it, but I’ve not been paying attention to them for a while.
Not a word of it here in the Midwest. My local paper (The St. Louis Post-Disgrace) still hasn’t run a story about the DC shooting. They fell all over themselves blaming conservatives in stories and hysterical editorials about Aurora and Gabby Giffords.