Conservatives have had a decade and a half of fun with New York Times journalist Fox Butterfield’s headlines:
“The Butterfield Effect” is named in honor of ace New York Times crime reporter Fox Butterfield, the intrepid analyst responsible for such brilliantly headlined stories as “More Inmates, Despite Drop In Crime,” and “Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction,” not to mention the poetic 1997 header, “Crime Keeps on Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling.”
John Nolte of Big Journalism spots CNN’s Don Lemon going Butterfield one better, and muttering, “It doesn’t matter if gun violence is down.” It just doesn’t matter! (Cue Bill Murray’s rant in Meatballs.) Lemon wants guns to magically vanish in America, and that’s all there is to it. (Presumably though, not from the guards on the ground floor of CNN HQ.)
Meanwhile Soledad O’Brien, another Time-Warner-CNN-HBO spokesperson, demonstrates epistemic closure on the topic, dismissing Second Amendment scholar John Lott by sniffing:
“I appreciate you talking with me this morning, but I just have to say, your position completely boggles me, honestly. I just do not understand it.”
“I just don’t understand it” is a strange verbal tick that’s uttered with “unexpected” frequency by the left — which holds itself out as being multicultural and believing in diversity and that everyone’s worldview and viewpoint is equally valid — but refuses to allow any information contrary to an already preconceived idea in to be considered.
So unlike Soledad’s take on Rev. Wright, evidently Lott didn’t score “a home run” from her perspective, I guess.
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