No Tucson Lectures for ‘Artists?’

In his weekly op-ed, Brent Bozell writes:

Within minutes of the news breaking that Jared Lee Loughner had killed six and wounded 12 in a rampage outside a Tucson Safeway store, including a critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the news media immediately leapt to the conclusion that the harsh tone of our political discourse — led by conservative talk radio — surely must be to blame.

That narrative turned out to be hogwash, but another one has emerged during the investigation into Loughner’s psyche, yet virtually no one wants to discuss it. Was the shooter inspired by the entertainment media?

Why would violent movies or music be left out of the rush to judgment? Perhaps it’s because pop-culture defenders never tire of arguing that no one can blame the “artists” – be they musicians, movie-makers or video-game manufacturers – for youth violence. So it becomes awkward, to say the least, that everyone’s discussing the need to curb a national appetite for angry rhetoric, when it was disturbing music and movies that were influencing Loughner’s mind, and they are ignored.

Well, not by everyone; Stacy McCain takes a look at the state of the Zeitgeist: “9/11 ‘Was an Inside Job’ Also: It Won a ‘Progressive’ Film Award and Is Based on ‘New Age’ Sources.”

Yeah, that sounds exactly like something the film sections of the Standard, the New Criterion and National Review would each give four stars to…