What Does Israel’s Prime Minister Have to Do With the Horrific Dark Knight Shooting?
This morning I provided coverage of the breaking news and commentary for a shooting last night during a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rising that left a dozen people dead.
This afternoon will feature further updates of the tragedy and the attempt by some to utilize it for political gain. One example so far — from David Sirota at Mother Jones trying to label the act “terrorism” – disturbed enough to warrant its own post here.
So far in the progressive responses we’ve seen attempts to blame the Tea Party and Rush Limbaugh for inspiring the shooter. We’ve also seen calls for gun control.
Now MJ Rosenberg takes the discussion in a whole other direction:
2:30 Update: Both atheists and Christians have responded to the shooting. Mediate quoted Tom Flynn, head of the Center for Secular Humanism criticizing President Barack Obama for invoking God in his speech today:
“Even in a situation like this, [when] he leads a public prayer to a deity that it pretty recognizably the Christian God, much as you can understand the emotional context of it, he’s still sending to some degree a message of exclusion to other religions who don’t call their god “Lord” and to non-religious Americans.”
“By the very act of praying, that’s a message of exclusion,” he continued. “If I’m a public official, I think I’m going to look around in the morning and conclude that, ‘hey, this religion thing is just too hot to handle, I should stay away from it in my official capacity.’”
And the lead story at the progressive-feminist group blog Jezebel all morning:
Here’s the tone Erin Gloria Ryan chose for writing about Rep. Louis Gohmert’s remarks:
Hours after a horrifying armed assault that claimed the lives of 12 people and injured dozens more at a Colorado screening of The Dark Knight Rises, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert took to the radio airwaves to call the tragedy an “attack on Judeo-Christian beliefs” and surmise aloud what would have happened if only more people in the hazy, dark movie theater would have had guns. Yeah, if only that 3-month-old baby that got shot had a gun and just a liiiittle bit more Christ, none of this would have happened.
The remarks came during a radio appearance on The Heritage Foundation’s “Istook Live!” and included some other gems like a bizarre ramble about how the Founding Fathers would have been upset about the state of the world today because some Americans aren’t all that into religion anymore, and how maybe if more people in the theater had guns, they could have shot blindly into the dark haze and ended the shooting spree, because everyone knows that when you carry a gun, you automatically get night vision. It’s like how Peter Parker got bit by a spider and became Spider-Man. And, really, even though God could have prevented this tragedy, God opted not to because God listens to American law enforcement, and Americans were like “Ugh, GOD, just GO AWAY you’re ALWAYS EMBARRASSING ME by SHOWING UP TO MOVIE THEATERS.”
And here’s what Gohmert actually said:
ISTOOK: We were going to talk about other things but since you are a former judge and you dealt with criminal cases on the bench…. I don’t know if you ever had something that was such a crime that is senseless as we seem to be seeing with this theatre shooting with at least a dozen people killed evidently in Aurora, Colorado. What? What is your experience, with the way we have so many twisted people in our society?
GOHMERT: Well it… some of us happen to believe that when our founders talked about guarding our virtue and freedoms that it was important … you know… whether it was John Adams saying that our Constitution was only for people with ‘moral and religious people’ and ‘wholly inadequate to the governments of any others.’ Ben Franklin, ‘Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom, as nations become more corrupt and vicious they have more need of masters’. I mean it goes on and on… you know… George Washington, ‘of all the disposition and habits that lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.’ We have been at war with the very pillars, the very foundation of this country… and when… you know… what really gets me as a Christian, is to see the ongoing attacks on Judeo- Christian beliefs and then a senseless crazy act of terror like this takes place.
ISTOOK: Now, in this case we don’t know much about the individual. Now, about the suspect all I’ve heard is is he 24 years old, his name is James Holmes. Obviously, he had hom…
GOHMERT: What I am saying…
ISTOOK: We don’t know…
GOHMERT: Don’t misunderstand my statement … don’t misunderstand. My statement – by saying that it is terror…
ISTOOK: Oh, No, I didn’t take it that way.
2:54 Update: At Film.Com Elisabeth Rappe worries about the effect of the shooting on “Fan Culture”:
After Columbine, focus turned on Marilyn Manson, “The Matrix,” video games, and trenchcoats. I lived in the same neighborhood as Columbine High School, and can attest to the paranoia and anger that swirled for months after the event. If you wore a long black coat (and you dared to pair that black coat with boots or sunglasses), you were looked at with fury, silently condemned as someone who celebrated murderers. One felt guilt at enjoying “The Matrix,” even though it was proved to have no inspiration or connection to the teenage gunmen. It didn’t matter. Everyone needed something visual to blame and rage at.
The same is about to happen to movie enthusiasts and comic geeks. This is the price of going mainstream. Eventually, the world knocks on the door, and demands to see our “weirdos.” Rumors persist that the accused was in “costume,” which will undoubtedly put a focus on cosplayers. The worst of our culture will be emphasized and we’ll likely see costumes banned at midnight screenings from this point on, regardless of what evidence about the assailant is revealed. Perhaps midnight screenings will end as well. Geeks, their gatherings and their costumes are going to be seen as a powder keg.
It may very well be that this man was obsessed with DC Comics, Christopher Nolan and Batman. He may be one of the very people who was sending death threats to critics. He may have been too into Nolan’s world, a sick mind who fancied himself a supervillain, and wanted to make his mark on a piece of pop culture in a louder way than in a comment field. We’ve seen the positive sides of fandom – fan-made posters, trailers, web comics, costumes, charity events – and it’s constantly thriving and shaped by people who want to be a part, on some level, of a property. Where there’s good and honest people who just want to join with others, celebrate and even leave the world better than they found it, there are people who want to hurt, maim, and ruin in the name of obsession.
We have to recognize this. We have to be prepared, and we have to be ready to defend the integrity of fandom we’ve all seen and experienced. Again, there may be no direct correlation, but we have to brace ourselves that the claims – which are already being made – could turn out to be true.
No, Ms. Rappe, I don’t think you’ll have to “defend the integrity of fandom” even though we now know he committed the act dressed as the Joker.
4:00 Update: Bill Maher weighs in from his blackberry:
4:11 Update: Like Rappe at Film.com, Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress also interprets this tragedy through the lens of “fandom”:
Mostly what I feel is this: Midnight screenings are big, hyped, advertiser-driven events that have become a source of new information to feed the Hollywood data beast, by indicating how motivated audiences are to see a movie. But they’re also a product of genuine enthusiasm and an expression of collective joy. Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy has meant a lot to an enormous number of filmgoers. And as someone who writes about movies, and who cares about the big, flawed thing we call fandom, I’m saddened by someone turning that shared enthusiasm into a weapon. And even if this tragedy hadn’t happened at the premiere of one of a dwindling number of genuinely mass cultural events, I hate the idea of using an audience’s suspension of disbelief, their openness to and absorption in the spectacle unfolding before them, as cover—the gunman reportedly started shooting during a sequence involving gunfire, meaning the audience was slower to react. We are vulnerable when we go to the movies, open to fear, and love, and disgust, and rapture, surrendering our brains and hearts to someone else’s vision of the world. We don’t expect to surrender our bodies, too.
4:19 Update: Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood with Christopher Nolan’s statement:
Speaking on behalf of the cast and crew of The Dark Knight Rises, I would like to express our profound sorrow at the senseless tragedy that has befallen the entire Aurora community. I would not presume to know anything about the victims of the shooting but that they were there last night to watch a movie. I believe movies are one of the great American art forms and the shared experience of watching a story unfold on screen is an important and joyful pastime. The movie theatre is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me. Nothing any of us can say could ever adequately express our feelings for the innocent victims of this appalling crime, but our thoughts are with them and their families.
4:32 Update: Nation contributor Max Blumenthal, who now describes himself as a “Desert bloom denier” in his Twitter bio:
4:36 Update: Michael Moore:
4:48 Update: Bill Moyers and Michael Winship declare at Salon that “The NRA has America living under the gun”:
Every year there are 30,000 gun deaths and perhaps as many as 300,000 gun-related assaults in the U.S. Firearm violence costs our country as much as $100 billion a year. Toys are regulated with greater care and safety concerns than guns.
So why do we always act so surprised? Violence is our alter ego, wired into our Stone Age brains, so intrinsic its toxic eruptions no longer shock, except momentarily when we hear of a mass shooting like this latest in Colorado. But this, too, will pass as the nation of the short attention span quickly finds the next thing to divert us from the hard realities of America in 2012.
We are a country which began with the forced subjugation into slavery of millions of Africans and the reliance on arms against Native Americans for its westward expansion. In truth, more settlers traveling the Oregon Trail died from accidental, self-inflicted gunshots wounds than Indian attacks – we were not only bloodthirsty but also inept.
Nonetheless, we have become so gun loving, so gun crazy, so blasé about home-grown violence that far more Americans have been casualties of domestic gunfire than have died in all our wars combined. In Arizona last year, just days after the Gabby Giffords shooting, sales of the weapon used in the slaughter – a 9 millimeter Glock semi-automatic pistol – doubled.
We are fooling ourselves. Fooling ourselves that the law could allow even an inflamed lunatic to easily acquire murderous weapons and not expect murderous consequences. Fooling ourselves that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of a “well-regulated militia” be construed as a God-given right to purchase and own just about any weapon of destruction you like, a license for murder and mayhem. A great fraud has entered our history.
5:12, Last Update of the Day: Chris Kelly, a writer on Real Time with Bill Maher, featured at the Huffington Post:
Early this morning, 71 people were shot — 12 died, one of them six-years-old — in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, at a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises. They were killed, apparently, by a rifle and a handgun and the faulty wiring inside the head of an alleged gunman named James Holmes. And our response — America’s response — is going to be nothing.
No. They were not killed by guns and “the faulty wiring inside the head” of James Holmes. They were killed by James Holmes. He is the one who will bear responsibility for his evil acts.
Ahhh, MJ Rosenberg… The Anna Breslaw of all things Zionism.
MJ Roseburg has sunk to a new low. Too objectionable and unprofessional even for Media Matters from which he was fired from his cushy six figure job he resorts to anything to get attention.
Hey Spindok…I got a news flash for you…the same guy who funds Media Matters funded a lot of stuff in the former USSR that were trying to overthrow Russia-friendly governments and succeeded, albiet only temporarily. You don’t think Beck partially got canned for making the connection between Soros ‘philanthropy’ in the U.S. and abroad?
Keep it up, MJ. Convince the Israelis, as if they need any more evidence, that many loudmouth American Jews are among their greatest enemies.
Why doesn’t MJ just get the suspense over with and apply for an Iranian passport?
I doubt even Beinart or Friedman would stoop so low.
maybe MJ Rosenberg and Anna Breslaw should hook up; it could be a match made in self-hating-Jew heaven!
I would prefer a union between Max Blumenthal and MJ Rosenberg- at least that union would not give rise to malignant progeny
So many American Jews would have been elbowing their way to the front of the lines for the ovens in Nazi Germany.
Communism and Judaism seem to be partially synonymous. How nihilistic is that?
Angst…Woody Allen does that well.
Rosenberg is sick and demented. Frustrated by the fact that nobody ever took his views and “advice” seriously, he’s flailing about now in his rage. Sad, lonely end to his long but insignificant career. He’s always been a fringe sideshow.
And that is the main problem with the media today. Just like producers and service providers look for a niche, improvement or something novel to create a new market, the media spouts new narratives to generate more viewers/listeners. We as human beings, generally, are so malleable that some will attach to what should be considered baseless narratives and put them on a level that is equivalent to those that have merit in reasoning, history and common sense.
A few years back I recall reading one of his nasty articles posted to the Huffington Post. He had no problem telling everyone that he was writing it on Yom Kippur, claiming he had been to shul that day.
Needless to say when I read it (the next day) my comments were deleted by the HP monitors.
Maybe he will find his relationship to G-d and the people Israel. Maybe he thinks he is some latter day Isaiah. That is not my concern. The almighty will always take you back but the harm you have done to other people cannot be forgiven by G-d, it is up to you to make amends.
This is one place where armed victims probably would not have made a difference. You have to be able to see in order to aim, while the assailant was “spray-and-praying” with an automatic weapon in the dark. Not good odds even if you had 50 concealed-carriers there, because they were taken by surprise in the dark, and facing down superior firepower. It might have meant that the shooter wouldn’t have been taken alive, but only after killing and wounding dozens and possibly more injuries from friendly fire.
Come on, myth. The shooter didn’t have any problem with aiming and some survivors stated the shooter was five or six feet away from them.
By the way, myth, you are probably wrong in saying he used an automatic weapon. All reports I’ve seen say he was armed with semi-autos only.
“even if there are 50 concealed carry”
Really? You’re so indoctrinated you’re BEYOND stupid. If there were “50 conceal carry” people he would have been blown to pieces. He didn’t have full body armor either Libtard.
Liberals are not stupid. They’re BEYOND stupid. To the Libtard like “myth – uster” it’s better to allow someone to shoot you and everyone around you then for you to shoot them and accidentally shoot someone else in the process. that is the essence of Liberalism – get shot, raped, beaten, and abused then blame whites, Christians, and “right-wingers” because you’re too stupid to stand up to the real criminals.
As I stated earlier,always trust a liberal to make the most out of any tragedy. Why is it they remind me of carion eaters?
It just makes me sad. Bill Maher is the usual lowlife we have come to know and loathe. I didn’t really expect any better, but I wanted to.
In Kelly’s fatuous remark we once more see the basic conceit of the enlightened elite’ of today. Namely, that nothing is ever the fault of the person who did it. Rather, it is society that is to blame for not somehow restraining them from doing “it”.
Except of course that “society”- i.e., the rest of us- are not allowed to exercise any restraint on the behavior of the most crazed among us. Our Enlightened Leaders view them as “thought leaders” in creating Utopia, precisely because they care nothing for the mores and restraining customs of a society (ours) which those same supposedly enlightened ones hate for not adhering to their dictums.
Which mainly consist of, Do as I demand because I am incredibly smarter, better-looking, and just plain better than you are.
Last year, here in Ohio we had a multiple murder case in which a young man who had a record of both mental aberration and criminal activity broke into a house, killed two women and a young boy with a knife (which he got from the house’s kitchen), and abducted the boy’s 13-year-old sister, whom he tied up in his basement, intending to use her as a “sex slave” until he could sell her to human traffickers. He was caught because somebody noticed him hugger-muggering around the house an hour or so before the bodies were discovered.
His family had frequently asked, in effect begged, psychiatrists to have him committed, because they knew of his violent fantasies and were (quite reasonably) afraid of what he might do. Said psychiatrists, including those from the State of Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, instead excoriated them for their “intolerance”, and lectured them on how they should be “valuing his insights” because of his wonderfully different worldview.
I’ve had the same experience a couple of times myself. With court-appointed psychiatrists telling me that, to cite one example, a twenty-somthing guy with a fondness for illegal drugs, sharp objects, and rape as a recreational pattern was less dangerous to the public than I was. Because I was carrying my (duly-authorized and required by regulations) service sidearm as a police criminalistics (crime lab) specialist. (Said psychiatrist hated “cops” of any sort.) Said perp almost got off scot-free, until he made the mistake of admitting, in court and in front of the judge and jury, that if he were released, he’d do it again because he liked it. Bam- twenty years. No thanks to the psychiatrist I dealt with, who was supposedly a witness for the prosecution.
Does anyone doubt that the same behavior from a psychiatrist would have happened in this case, had the perp been “in the system” before this massacre?
I don’t. Because that is the orthodoxy of our Best and Brightest, like Mr. Kelly. Nobody is at fault for anything they do, it’s the fault of all the rest of us. Mainly for not being exactly like… Mr. Kelly, with all his politically-correct attitudes, dogmas, and conceits.
Personally, I’ve had it with his ilk. As far as I’m concerned, every time someone like him goes into raptures over how wonderful it is that anyone with a bizarre but oh-so-politically-correct delusion can “express themselves”, while the stalwarts of the progressive worldview like him attack the rest of us for daring to even suggest that said bizarre-belief holder might be somewhat less than completely safe to be walking around unsupervised, they are guaranteeing another Aurora.
Or another Columbine.
Or another episode like the one here in Ohio.
They apparently do not give a damn about that. Any of it. Not as long as they can use it to push their version of Utopia, complete with the rest of us defenseless against dangerously-insane people they view as some sort of gurus due to their yen for power, destruction, or both.
Instead, how about this;
clear ether
eon
But … if it had turned out that he was associated with the Tea Party, they wouldn’t be talking about “faulty wiring”. It’s only “faulty wiring” when they can’t pin it on an enemy.
A dozen blacks are shot and killed almost every weekend in Chicago, yet you never hear the liberal media moan about guns and gun culture.
If the shooter is black or Muslim, there is no massacre – just some workplace violence or racism.
This whole thing smells like a false flag leading up to the Un gun treaty. This guy has $20,000 of sophisticated body sarmour shotguns, AR’s, smoke helmet, and booby-trapped apartment that will take weeks to defuse?
Where does a Neuroscientist student get $20 grand and terrorist training?
This is a classic “Manchurian” mind manipulation with psychotropic drugs or other mind manipulation studies. This was his field, after all. There is a Muslim/DHS connection here. The terrorist who blew up a busload of Israeli tourists was a released GITMO detainee. Again, compliments of the Muslim/DHS White House.
I expect more to come.
The UN small arms treaty is the first step to disarming Americans under this unConstitutional Treaty and it is set for a vote on July 27th.
We must keep the US from signing it to protect our sovereignty.
the glock he had was less than $500, the shotgun was a remington 870, mine cost me around $500, the AR15 was about $1000. the body armor wasnt more than $2000. the smoke grenades he had were from what i heard cheapo’s or home made. people that just dont know about this stuff are the ones jumping to the biggest conclusions. he didnt have any terrorist training or military training, you dont need any of that to pop into a room with a semi-auto gun with a 100 round drum mag and start spraying. the only way out of the theater is the main isles and thats where everyone will end up, just shoot that direction and you cant miss. this is why there should never be a gun free zone. anyone with a gun permit could have easily fired in the direction of the noise/muzzle flashes and stopped this before this was such a major tragedy. I do agree that this will end up bolstering the loons that want us to be the “united states of the united nations” but in the end, its not what i think you are pointing to which is a conspiracy…
Ya’ think any of these dolts will take it back when they find out it’s another product of their elite educational system, and probably an Obamite, to boot?
I’m sure he’s against global warming, racism, and war, too. Just not shooting innocent stangers.
It’s not that we don’t sometimes WANT to kill liberals…it’s just way too impolite for conservatives to sneak up on you and shoot you in the back. THAT’s the commie/lib way.
You’ll know we’re coming for you, because we’ll tell you, first.
That’s how my Mom brung me up. I’d hate to embarrass her.