Predictable - Media and Politico Reaction to Aurora

Cowboy Confessional ^ | 7/23/2012 | Guy Smith

[guyshomenet]

I knew Al Jazeera was calling.

It was the first of a long string of predictable outcomes from Aurora’s Armageddon. With details just beginning to foment last Friday morning, Al Jazeera and other news outlets were clamoring for talking heads to appear on their evening broadcast. That was as predictable as the fact that they called while I barreled up the highway for a long-planned weekend away to where no televisions existed much less broadcast-quality video feeds.

“We want a panel to discuss gun control in America,” their producer said. This too was predictable. With few hard facts about the massacre, aside from guns being used to commit the crime, media members were basing their coverage around ideology. Twelve bodies were still warm when outlets revived a meme that only they utter – that the tragedy in Aurora was renewing the “debate” about gun control. This response was predictable despite there being no debate about gun control in America since it became the new third rail of national politics, and since the Supreme Court – in a rare moment of lucidity – recertified gun ownership as an individual right.

Almost as predictable would have been my response had I the leisure to appear on one of the nightly news broadcast. As with many public debates, most people avoid the core issue in order to advance their tangent agenda. In this instance the issue was not about guns or their control, but about our collective inability to detect and heal people sliding dangerously into madness. Had the cameras again been pointed at my mug, I would have noted that mass murder in America has been committed using homemade bombs, driving Buicks into crowded farmers markets, and even a few yards of rope. But identifying and treating delusional individuals requires new thinking and, predictably, ideologues prefer old canards.

The next serial certainty was that scribes with suspect sanity would pen certifiably insane scripts. This full frontal frenzy was best displayed (predictably) by the editorial board of the New York Daily News who blamed Aurora’s carnage on Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and the several million members of the National Rifle Association (I doubt you could fit all of them into a movie theater). Their disquieting disquisition contained so many technical errors and logical lapses that it is little wonder newspapers are dying slow and painful deaths, which the Daily News will predictably blame on radio, television, and disruptive transmissions from Mars (though I have located a tool to help the Daily News editorial staff).

Most predictable of all was our national egomaniac. It is no fault to offer the afflicted comfort, but to use suffering people for photo opportunities is shameful. Had Barack Obama quietly telephoned his condolences or even made personal visits unaided by photographers, we could award him points instead of demerits. But his travel to Aurora instantly became about Barack and not the families of twelve corpses. If anyone doubts this they need only read Obama’s hospital room remarks, which expose his fixation:

I come to them not so much as President …
I had a chance to visit with each family …
I confessed to them …
I also tried to …
I also had a chance to …
I just want to …
I want to tell …
I saw and heard …
I had a chance, just now …
I also had a chance to …
I walked into the room …
I wanted to share it …
I just had a conversation with …
I know that there’s going to be …
I hope that all those …

I’m sure his predictable self-centered recitation was of great comfort to people with bullets lodged in their bodies.

Sadly, the most predictable parts of this unfolding saga will be more of the same. Dianne Feinstein will demand her failed “assault weapon” ban be reinstated despite eye witness reports indicating that it would have not stopped the Aurora rampage. Mental health systems will not discover new ways of isolating the psychotically volatile or treat them effectively. The pretender in chief will wait until after the election to exploit the tragedy for his latent gun control promises.

All this is predictable and the lack of focus on the core problem is truly tragic.

[Joe Brower]

Back to the world after a week on the road.

Good writeup, Guy.

[Petruchio]

Typical for 0bama to turn a Blood Dance into a Campaign stop.

Now, Where is the golf course?

[philman_36]

Perhaps of interest...
@ But then there is a major mass shooting JUST PRIOR TO EVERY SINGLE GUN CONTROL EFFORT.

@ A "for instance" side by side comparison...

@ S Amdt 362 - Gun Show Sale Regulation Amendment

May 20, 1999 Senate Amendment Adopted
May 19, 1998 Senate Introduced
It languished for one year and then...

@ Columbine April 20, 1999

Read that again...May 20, 1999 Senate Amendment Adopted, one month to the day after the shooting with Gore making the deciding vote.

[blackie]

Be Ever Vigilant!

[going hot]

Dems drool and lay in wait for anything, anything, that shows firearms in a less than optimal light, ignoring all favorable light, for the opportunity to push anti gun agenda.

It (gun control) is what they live and breathe for.

Regards DiFi, that useless bag of liberal puke is same same robot preprogrammed to activate at the sound of media reporting on gunfire, particularly when innocents get hurt. She should have (been) retired years ago, and go live in her mansion with her crooked husband, with her hands no where near legislative machinery.

[GOPJ]

Giving government the right to ‘anticipate’ who's going to commit a crime is a horror. We're hundreds of years away from even having that ability - if we ever have it.

Think about it. We'd have people in power projecting their fears into the design of such a system. If liberal elites were in charge they'd define 'dangerous and deranged' as most likely white middle class men. If conservatives were in charge they'd find the dangerous and deranged among academics, left wing students and members of the press.

Thought crimes - and the ability to prosecute based on them? Way too totalitarian...

[guyshomenet]

Thanks Joe. Hated to miss a TV opportunity, but 1st wedding anniversaries have priority (what a wife I have — she offered to delay the celebration so I could do the show).

[guyshomenet]

Agreed GOPJ. The real failing comes with family. Most o the lunatic shooters are falling and neither friends or family intervene.

[GOPJ]

The real failing comes with family. Most o the lunatic shooters are falling and neither friends or family intervene.

Agree guyshomenet...