Conservatives are angry that mainstream media liberals have jumped to the uninformed conjecture that the Boston Marathon bombing was committed by a “right winger.”
Eric Allie / Cagle Cartoons (click to view more cartoons by Allie)
Yes, some conservative media outliers presumed the police report of a Saudi being a “person of interest” means the U.S. should reconsider Muslim immigration, but there’s a world of difference between the host of a show on American Family Radio and major media host Chris Matthews of MSNBC, driving his partisan hack into the ditch presuming the Boston Marathon bomber is a conservative.
The reasoning Matthews and Representative William Keating (D-Mass.) employ is that Monday was Tax Day and Patriots Day. Because Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building on Patriots Day in 1995. That’s it. Others have pointed to David Koresh. The difference is that the Branch Davidian horror ended an ill-conceived 50-day assault on their compound by Janet Reno.
You’ve also likely seen left wing bloggers, a Wisconsin school official and uncountable blog and online news chatterati wheeling out their baseless presumptions that the bomber is some right-wing maniac, while right-wing bloggers are baselessly presuming it’s al Qaeda.
This column isn’t about the bloggers, hosts of niche programming or occasional partisan guests on cable talk programs.This isn’t about serial conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, former Representative Cynthia McKinney or anyone suffering from pareidolia.
This is about the alleged major media professionals and the executives who keep them employed.
What is the goal of news and news-talk programs broadcasting nonprofessional, non-educated opinions about the nature of the bomber(s)?
In the case of Matthews, it appears to be an exercise in using the camera as a psychiatrist’s couch to let him release his anxiety about conservatives who push for fiscal responsibility.
It is meaningful for broadcasters to interview experts and professionals with years of experience, helping audiences gain some knowledge as to how the investigations are conducted and what details they may be considering, such as the calendar date and historical perspective as well as the nature of the targets and significance of the type of bomb, which is used in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the ones Times Square jihad bomber Faisal Shahzad was trying to detonate.
Experts include among their list of suspects solo domestic terrorists as well as those loosely affiliated with or inspired by al Qaeda.
What’s not meaningful and is certainly divisive in this country is to define your imaginary killer as “right-wing,” impugning conservatives in general. If you only watched Matthews or CNN’s Jake Tapper you might actually believe “right-wing” groups are responsible, as if the “political right” is an entity to be feared, as the Obama administration propagandized in a 2009 Department of Homeland Security memo identifying evangelicals and pro-life groups as potential threats to national security.
Do they call the terrorist groups Environmental Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front “left wing?”
On CNN, Jake Tapper’s analyst referred to a “right-wing” attempt to bomb a Martin Luther King parade. Kevin William Harpham, a former member of a white supremacist organization, was convicted as attempting to bomb a MLK parade. I would describe him as a “racist criminal.” For Matthews, Tapper and others who thoughtlessly or deliberately consider all racists and domestic terrorists to be “right-wing,” consider this:
A large group of white people protesting against a politically influential organization is videotaped and posted on YouTube stating that a black judge supportive of this group’s economic stance should be “hung,” saying, “put him back in the fields,” and “cut off his toes one by one and feed them to him.” Is this group racist? Is this group “right-wing?”
This vile, racist, white “right-wing” group is actually the liberal political group, “Common Cause.” The site of their 2011 protest is the Koch Brothers’ free market policy meeting. The subject of their collective racist fantasies is Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Perhaps Matthews and other mainstream media liberals should start referring to the liberal group, “Common Cause” as “right-wing.”
This is kind of cherry picking to conform to the title of this post. In no more than 30 minutes after the bombing, Alex Jones labeled it a false flag operation. Apparently no one is astounded by his prescience.
There were many who pointed fingers, some directly, some waving them around a bit.
This post looks like it was written simply as an opportunity to indict the liberal media, but Rick had to reach to far and failed. I have paid attention to all the media, regardless of their position on the political spectrum (one of the advantages of being independent) and any reference to the far right wing or Muslims, was relatively equal and even comparatively restrained considering the media’s behavior in the past.
As I said, there is enough finger waving to go around.
I would second what Dave said and even go further….
2 ‘conservative’ ( no offense meant, they label themselves such) sent out very bad tweets
Bell, from AR, said, I bet there are many Boston liberals tonight that wish they had AK-47s and access to high capacity magazines tonight,
And Sen Bell, from NY, suggests torture…..
Neither commentary is appropriate, and should not ever have been sent.
But not a whole lot of screaming about that on this blog.
So, instead of attacking the media for left- wing bias or right- wing bias……why don’t we just agree that if all you watch is FOX, is because you like and believe what they say
And the same with MSNBC….
Look what the NY Post did- look at the lives ruined by those picture being posted on the front page- the lives of those boys, one of them a minor child, are ruined….or have you conveniently forgotten that, because it doesn’t suit what you yourself watch, because it has not been discussed on Murdochs channel, because it was his screw-up?
Colin Powell famously said he learned in the military to never make decisions based on the first reports of an incident, as they are rarely totally correct. In my line of work , I also learned the same thing, and also found it to be true.
My father always told me, about listening to others, ” take it from whence it comes”
Maybe the media and yourself, should take the same advice.
There are two things holding back America. The 24hr news cycle and the two year election cycle, both produce a lot of idiotic comments and idiots.