By Mollie Hemingway
Thursday, June 15, 2017
The media’s big problem right now is that everyone in the
country knows how they’d be covering yesterday’s shooting if the parties were
reversed.
Progressive Democratic activist James Hodgkinson spent
years on social media and in local and national politics focusing on his hatred
of Republican politicians. On Wednesday, he went after a group of Republican
politicians as they practiced baseball in the early morning, shooting a member
of the Republican leadership, two capitol police, a legislative aide, and a
lobbyist. Rep. Steve Scalise remains in critical condition.
Hodgkinson’s social media trail and the accounts of
neighbors leave no question that the man was politically engaged, aligned with
progressives, and upset with Republicans.
Some media coverage of the incident has been fine, if
restrained. The media have not chosen to make this shooting a referendum on
leftist political violence, on the use of extreme rhetoric and conspiracy
theorizing by major mainstream media, on the dangers of the resistance
movement. There has been no rush to introspection.
Some media treatment has been disgusting. The New York Times ran an editorial that
is dangerously dishonest.
First, Let’s Flash
Back to 2011
Before we discuss it, we should reflect on the 2011
Tucson shooting in which a deranged man shot up a Gabby Giffords political
rally, killing six and injuring another 18. Despite the fact that the man was
extremely mentally ill, obsessed with Giffords, and not conventionally
political, the media immediately leaped to the conclusion that conservative
rhetoric had led him to shoot Giffords. There was no evidence to support the
idea initially, and the false claims were disproven with time.
The day after the shooting, the Times editorial board wrote that Jared Lee Loughner “is very much a
part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has produced
violent threats against scores of politicians and infected the political
mainstream with violent imagery.” It said that opponents of Obamacare were
threatening members of Congress, and mentioned an effigy of a Democratic representative
hung outside a district office.
It is facile and mistaken to
attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party
members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most
virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has
produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many
on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power
by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to
have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but
the enemy of the people.
That was what the New
York Times wrote when a man who believed that the government practices mind
control through grammar shot up Giffords’ rally.
Sarah Palin came in for particular condemnation by the
media. Why? Well, although there is literally zero evidence that Jared Loughner
ever saw it, Palin’s political action committee had drawn a map that targeted
certain congressional seats for campaigns. The map showed gun sights on the
congressional districts that donors were supposed to focus on. While military
campaign technology is common for political campaigns, the media pretended that
this was somehow in part responsible for Loughner’s shooting.
Andrew Sullivan, then at the The Atlantic, wrote “No one is saying Sarah Palin should be viewed
as an accomplice to murder. Many are merely saying that her recklessly violent
and inflammatory rhetoric has poisoned the discourse and has long run the risk
of empowering the deranged. We are saying it’s about time someone took
responsibility for this kind of rhetorical extremism, because it can and has
led to violence and murder.”
Writing in The New
York Times, Matt Bai said Palin and others used “imagery of armed
revolution. Popular spokespeople like Ms. Palin routinely drop words like
‘tyranny’ and ‘socialism’ when describing the president and his allies, as if
blind to the idea that Americans legitimately faced with either enemy would
almost certainly take up arms.”
MSNBC used a graphic that said “Power of Words” with an
image of Loughner, suggesting that conservative rhetoric was responsible for
the shooting.
And The New York
Times’ Paul Krugman wrote “Climate of Hate,” a column blaming Republicans
and conservatives for creating a climate of violence in which Giffords was
shot. He said Republicans needed to take a stand against “eliminationist”
rhetoric. James Taranto of the Wall
Street Journal showed the significant problems with this general media
talking point at the time, and it’s worth
a review.
Back to 2017 and
Alexandria
Now it’s 2017. We’ve seen months of street protests, many
of them violent. Antifa protests have involved torched cars and buildings, and
physical confrontations. We’ve seen parades shut down rather than let
Republicans march in them. There have been acts of serious violence against
Trump supporters. Media messages about Republican policies are continued
variations on the theme that Republican policies will literally destroy the
planet, enslave women, or kill sick people. Media messages on Donald Trump
include conspiracy theories that he is a Russian stooge committing treason, or
simply suggest that he needs to be removed from his duly elected office by
whatever means.
Okay. Now let’s go to The
New York Times editorial in response to Wednesday’s shooting:
Was this attack evidence of how
vicious American politics has become? Probably. In 2011, when Jared Lee
Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding
Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a 9-year-old girl,
the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s
political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts
that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs.
Conservatives and right-wing media
were quick on Wednesday to demand forceful condemnation of hate speech and
crimes by anti-Trump liberals. They’re right. Though there’s no sign of
incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack, liberals should of course hold
themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the right.
Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Are you
mother-bleeping kidding me, New York
Times? This is an insane couple of paragraphs.
For starters, it is a completely indefensible falsehood
to state that “the link to political incitement was clear” in the Giffords
shooting. It wasn’t clear when media personalities falsely claimed that in
2011, but after a thorough review of the evidence showing Loughner’s mental
illness and general lack of traditional political engagement, it’s an error
that boggles the mind now.
To still blame Palin for something completely unrelated
shows a level of derangement that is honestly quite worrisome. Since the Times knows it’s not true that the map
played a role in the shooting, it is discrediting to state otherwise. This is
the very picture of fake news, at a time when media outlets are claiming they
are paragons of virtue and truth-telling. The
New York Times ran an ad during the Oscars saying “the truth is hard,” but it’s
not that hard to avoid saying false things that you know to be false.
The last line includes two doozies. It’s simply false to
say that “there’s no sign of incitement as direct as in the Giffords attack.”
Hodgkinson is responsible for his own behavior, even if he was in a political
environment that has pushed the idea that Republicans are illegitimate holders
of power. Unlike Loughner, Hodgkinson’s local media reports and social media
record paint a picture of a man who was highly political.
His social media showed that he liked or was a member of
groups such as “Dump Trump,” “Liar, Liar Republican Campaign on Fire,” “Stop
the Obstructionist Tea Party,” “Just Say No to Republicans,” “Republicans ARE
the Problem,” “Stop the Speaker,” “No More Republicans,” “Hey Republicans….Shut
up!,” “Hate All Republican Douches (H.A.R.D.),” “Fire the Republican
Government,” “Republicans are stupid,” “Republicans Suck,” “Americans Against
The Republican Party,” “Fight the Right,” “The Republican Party Makes Me Sick,”
“Expose Republican Fraud,” “Terminate the Republican Party,” and “The Road to
Hell Is Paved With Republicans.” He followed politicians and celebrities such
as John Oliver, Bill Maher, and Seth MacFarlane, who use extreme rhetoric
against Republicans.
Bai said spokespeople who use words like “tyranny” when
describing politicians shouldn’t be “blind to the idea that Americans
legitimately faced with either enemy would almost certainly take up arms.” Well
if that’s true, what in the world should Americans do in response to the
non-stop mainstream media and Democratic narrative that Republicans are
enabling an existential threat to the country by not resisting the duly elected
president and legislating destruction of people and the planet when they enact
their policy goals?
Blame the Victims,
Hard
The second doozie is the claim that “liberals should of
course hold themselves to the same standard of decency that they ask of the
right.” Varad Mehta described the editorial as the Platonic form of a Times editorial: “hypocrisy,
double-standards, duplicity, and moral obtuseness.” He wrote of the line about
decency, “No one who actually believes this would’ve published such an
abominable editorial. So clearly the NYT doesn’t.”
The New York Times
in this very editorial shows that its standard is to blame Republicans for
violence against Democrats when there is no relationship of any Republican to
that violence, and to blame Republicans for violence against Republicans when
the perpetrator is a progressive Democratic activist.
As Guy Benson put it:
Six years from now, the NYT
editorial board will lecture us about that time a right-winger shot Democrats
on a baseball field.
How is this newspaper held in any regard when it
willfully and gratuitously publishes malicious lies about Republican
politicians six years after they knew they were wrong?
And what can be done when the most revered of the liberal
papers is engaged in Stalinesque rewriting of history to suit the purposes of
its propaganda?
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