Left, Media Blaming Colorado Shooting on Gun Rights, Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh

Some people on the left cannot resist politicizing every single tragedy. Many on the left including leaders in the Democratic Party blamed the Tuscon shooting on Sarah Palin, and did not let the fact that the shooter was a deranged man with no coherent political philosophy deter them. Many on the left blamed the Austin airplane suicide crash on the Tea Party, when it turned out that the suicidal pilot was a man who had had longstanding issues with the IRS, which had an office in the building he crashed into. His incoherent manifesto mostly pointed toward the political left. This morning, some on the left are blaming the Aurora shootings, which have left 12 dead and 50 wounded, on radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. President Bill Clinton served as the template for casting such blame, when he used the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing to demonize the radio host. His response to that national tragedy was widely credited at the time for resurrecting his faltering presidency.

Earlier this week, Limbaugh suggested that Hollywood was using Bane to make a villain of Mitt Romney’s connections to Bain Capital. Limbaugh seems to have been misunderstanding an argument that I was the first to make, which had nothing to do with the content of The Dark Knight Rises, but instead just used the Bain name as a springboard to discuss why the Democrats sought to make a villain out of Romney, whose life and record harbor no indications of any illicit activity at all.

Now, liberals on Twitter have been quick to turn the shootings into an excuse to criticize Rush’s criticism of the film. This follows the usual pattern: Piers Morgan and Mike Bloomberg have blamed Americans’ Second Amendment rights, and ABC News hosts have already reached to make a Tea Party connection. It’s as if the rush to judgement in the George Zimmerman case never happened. How long before a media network or web site fabricates evidence, as NBC clearly did in its attempt to case Zimmerman as a racist?

The fact is, TDKR was anticipated to be the biggest box office opening of all time. We know nothing of the alleged shooter’s motives, but the frenzy leading up to the movie’s opening likely played a part. Rotten Tomatoes, the web movie critic aggregator, had temporarily suspended comments in reaction to numerous threats against any critics who panned the film. The attention paid to this opening is the most of any film in recent memory. The shooter knew he could prey on unsuspecting moviegoers who were unlikely to be armed. He timed his massacre to dominate today’s headlines, to have the nation awake not to news of the blockbuster’s gaudy earnings, but to news of his evil actions. The evidence suggests that he was armed to the teeth and heavily armored, and had planned and premeditated his heinous act.