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Bryan Preston catches Bob Costas in full wannabe political pundit mode, using NBC’s Sunday Night Football as a platform to push his — and presumably NBC’s — anti-Second Amendment agenda:
During half-time of the Cowboys-Eagles game tonight, Costas took a moment to acknowledge the tragedy and note that if it takes such an event to “bring sports into perspective” as is always said after a tragedy, then one may never reach the right perspective. Then, Costas offered up his perspective by paraphrasing columnist Jason Whitlock. Whitlock wrote, in reaction to the tragedy:
Our current gun culture simply ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.
In the coming days, Belcher’s actions will be analyzed through the lens of concussions and head injuries. Who knows? Maybe brain damage triggered his violent overreaction to a fight with his girlfriend. What I believe is, if he didn’t possess/own a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.
That is the message I wish Chiefs players, professional athletes and all of us would focus on Sunday and moving forward. Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it.
How was the “gun culture” to blame for the violent actions of a grown man? Was a gun the only means by which a professional athlete might have killed himself and someone else? Of course not.
Costas’ remarks constitute exploitation of a tragedy in order to push a political point that Whitlock, Costas, and NBC no doubt already believed, and only used the moment to forward. They all should be ashamed of themselves. But our current media culture is one in which shame does not exist. Neither does the truth.
What Costas and Whitlock and NBC offered is not “perspective.” It is a lie. It is also a broadside attack on the rights of responsible citizens to equip ourselves to defends ourselves and our loved ones. Will Bob Costas, NBC, and Jason Whitlock assume personal responsibility for every American who would be alive today if they had possessed the means to defend themselves from violent criminals? Of course not. To them, such victims do not even exist.
As for the game, this lifelong Cowboys fan turned it off after Costas’ political assault on my rights. I will not watch another game on NBC as long as Bob Costas has a job on that network.
I tuned in to Sunday Night Football to catch the end of the Cowboys-Eagles game when it was close in the fourth quarter, which means that I missed the above anti-gun rant from Bob Costas. But then, the last Cowboys-Eagles game I watched on NBC’s Sunday Night Football also came with Costas and NBC’s liberal talking points during its halftime. Or as I wrote back then, “NBC: We’ll Leave The Lights Off For You:”
You know, keeping the TV turned off also reduces energy consumption as well. Just sayin’.
Update: At Twitchy, a round-up of the Twitter reaction: “Bob Costas hijacks Sunday Night Football to give anti-gun lecture.”
Plus this: “Gun rights supporters to Costas: What about Casper, Wyo., bow-and-arrow killings?”
Meanwhile, at Instapundit:
Reader Rob Cooper emails: “Can someone remind me what caliber weapon OJ used on Nicole and Ron Goldman?” Maybe someone should ask Costas. Honestly, he should be taken off the air for such a rant. But he probably won’t be, given his employer.
Of course not. In early 2011, NBC’s magical thinking consisted of demanding a boycott of weapons-related metaphors in the media in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. You know, phrases such as the Special Teams Gunner, Trench Warfare, the Blitz, the Bomb, the Shotgun…
More: At Ricochet, Mollie Hemingway writes, “Bob Costas Goes Keith Olbermann — And Not In A Good Way.”
Wait — what’s the good way to go Olbermann??
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