Why Does NBC’s Bob Costas Insist On Politicizing Cowboys-Eagles Games?
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??
I watched the entire game. I about fell over when I heard this moron making stupid in a sports venue. I may just quit watching NBC altogether if they keep this crap up – trouble is I like watching football. It was totally out of place in a sports broadcast for Costas to shill for the gun lobbyists. Which was all he was doing.
There were a number of ways in which Belcher could have murdered his GF and taken his life. Would we all be talking about banning Buicks if he’d have run over her with one? Or knives if that were used? There’s more than one way to skin a cat.
That’s really the problem, though. Almost everything is politicized. Music, movies, TV shows, even sports. You can’t escape it.
One of the few exceptions, or something that is perceived to be right leaning, would be how God Bless America is sung at baseball games sometimes, and liberals never cease to bitch about it.
Or Fox. Looking at my TV, there is CNN, Headline News, MSNBC, Current, CNBC, CNBC World, Bloomberg News. 7 left wing cable news channels, ranging from center left (CNN/CNBC) to hard left (MSNBC) to flat out communist (Current). Yet liberals constantly bitch that there are 2 center-right news channels.
As a four year permit holder for concealed carry, I can testify from experience that a lot of what Mr. Costas said is simply not true. Having a gun does not make you more aggressive or prone to violence, it does just the opposite. Firstly, it serves as a stark reminder that others might me armed as well as you. Which makes you less prone, not more to initiate an argument over something as stupid as “stealing” a parking space. Secondly, it makes you acutely aware of the repsonsiblity to be the bigger man and let insults or petty arguments go by, as it will be you the gun holder that will receive any scrutiny from law enforcement. Finally, in my own experience, not only did I become more aggressive with strangers, I quit going to any place that I could reasonably expect an interaction with someone who does not have the same impulse or legal motivation for self control… I
Sorry for not proofreading before posting. the line near the end should read, “not only did I NOT become more aggressive…”
“Wait — what’s the good way to go Olbermann??”
Off the air, of course.
People like Costas are often so self-assured in their own beliefs that their left wing attitudes are beyond the reach of rational argument. This has been a long time coming, has been weakly resisted, and is now the “new norm.”
As on Bryan Preston’s original column, I ask again:
Why no blame to the FOX Sports News website, for running Whitlock’s column in the first place?
I stopped watching NBC a while ago, save for the occasional football game. Last night, I flipped over to NBC at just about the time Costas was carrying on, but I had the sound off and wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying.
I think I’m pretty much done with that network now.
Why do so many of these professional-athlete involved gun-violence incidents involve athletes from the minority community?
Tell me Bob, was it the gun, or his upbringing that encouraged him to take the life of his child’s mother, and then his own?
Personally, I have never received advise from an inanimate object, but your voices may differ.
If there is a living exemplar of this thing called “Gun Culture”, I am he. My family has had guns for as long as we have been Americans (probably 300+ years or so). My mother grew up in Dust Bowl era Oklahoma, and carried a shotgun to and from school to help feed her family with small game. My father spent summers on his uncle’s farm, tasked with killing water moccasins and snapping turtles in the stock ponds.
I slept as a child under a rack holding two centuries worth of war trophies my ancestors had carried home, including a fully functional Arisaka rifle from Guadalcanal. I got my first gun, a 20 gauge shotgun, when I was 13 and shot competitively in college.
My wife, who inherited her father’s shotguns, joined me as a licensed concealed weapons permit holder recently.
My wife and I are, not to boast, extremely productive, totally law-abiding citizens. She sings in the church choir and works in a support capacity for our military. I work for a small educational non-profit and volunteer my time with the Boy Scouts. We pay our taxes, keep our yard looking nice and give to charity. My family, while far from perfect, has managed to avoid shooting ourselves, one another or strangers since the time of powdered wigs, despite the ubiquity of guns in our homes.
If Bob Costas thinks that we are the problem, he is even more of a conceited jackass than even I imagine. The problem is stupidity, arrogance, drugs and a culture that ennobles violence against women and a sense of entitlement.
Leave me, and the entire concept of “Gun Culture” out of it.
Hasn’t it become long over due to start boycotting the products of those that support the liberal agenda and communist lockstep? When will the boycott start, who will become the first example, we know it works, just look at what happened to Rush’s advertisers when they turned against him for the benefit of the “agenda”. We have propagandists in the MSM, why are we supporting them through their advertisers.
This was entirely predictable. From this to bloviating about the need for wealth redistribution in baseball, Costas has gone from a mildly entertaining sportscaster to a self important, sanctimonious blowhard who now thinks that the world give’s a rat’s ass what he thinks about anything other than who’s warming up in the bullpen for the Twins.
Zen for me exists when huddling behind the scope or sights and…putting full concentration on breathing, the perfect squeeze…steady, steady…. so I guess I have just have one question: if having a gun makes you more aggressive and prone to violence”…..does this mean that mine are all defective? Is this covered under an extended service plan perhaps? Anyone know where I can get this fixed? Gunsmith maybe? Is it a prescription pill that I can take for this or do I have to OD on pain killers and booze like this guy? I’m really worried if everything I have is defective.
On a more serious note:
My prayers go out to the family of Kasandra Perkins and the poor child who lost her mother.
I’d rather do without football than my rifles, so if this is found to be due to mental illness brought on by head trauma or other football related “injuries”, by all means… ban football and make idiots like Costas get a real job.
Don’t quit watching football because of one idiot. Send NBC an email and let them know you will contact every advertiser on SNF. Let the advertiser know you are boycotting them until Costas if fired. And then DO IT. I have already sent NBC an email that I will let every advertiser know I am boycotting them for advertising on SNF. The only thing the greedy liberal NBC slugs pay attention to is if they get hit in the wallet. If enough people do it, Costas is gone.
Bob you should stick to what you think you knoe best. You take away guns there is always other ways. Like knives, shovles, picks, forks, wood, hammers, even your beloved bats. You want to ban them too? I know u hate guns and are anti 2nd amendment, But what would you do if someone broke into your house to rob or rape your family? Watch. and wish you had a gun. You moroon. You are whats wrong with America. taking away our freedoms for us to be another hitler state.
I would boycott NBC’s advertisers except I never watch NBC, so I don’t know who they are.
Not surprising they yowl so soon, so loudly, and so wrong. What caused this is our current thug culture, and for that, Costas and his ilk have a lot to answer for. If he doesn’t manage to divert attention, his culture may get investigated.
And if Belcher had simply grabbed that poor woman and strangled her to death? Would the demand be that large dangerous people, with no self control, have their hands removed? Some how, some way, it became the inanimate gun’s fault; as opposed to laying the blame where it belonged – on the man who committed the crime. As if it’s the gun’s fault, not the A-hole who shot a woman nine times. Well, at least he had the decency to blow his own brains out! Even if he didn’t have the forethought to go home and do so in private.
Bob Costas needs to go. What an asinine moron. NBC get rid of him.