The mainstream media sunk to new lows in its collective coverage of the Jan. 8 Tucson shooting tragedy.
Selective media members may start backpedaling on their outrageous claims that a heady mix of talk radio and that rootin’ tootin’ Sarah Palin were to blame for the tragedy. That doesn’t dismiss their dereliction of duty.
The media’s ghastly performance may also be a window into how it will cover the 2012 presidential elections. Any attempt at criticizing President Barack Obama may be labeled “hate speech.” Any violence that breaks out during the campaign cycle, no matter the cause, target or provocation, may be labeled Tea Party-approved behavior. Who needs facts?
It’s too soon to say exactly how the media will misbehave over the next two years. One thing is clear — outlets from MSNBC to The New York Times and CNN are capable of just about anything to smear the Right. The Tucson coverage confirms it.
The 2008 “Slobbering Love Affair” coverage might seem quaint by comparison.
Luckily, fewer and fewer people care what they say. A trend that their current dereliction of duty is only accelerating.
Meanwhile, Prof. Jacobson. notes this article from the Daily Mail: How America’s elite hijacked a massacre to take revenge on Sarah Palin.
The reality is that there is as yet no evidence that the political Right, and the Tea Party in particular, has — as its opponents say — ‘blood on its hands’ over the Tucson murders.
While some liberals have slyly implied that Loughner was a Tea Party supporter, former classmates remember him as being ‘Left-wing’ and ‘liberal’.
Another said he was ‘on his own planet’, which seems nearer the mark. No existing political organisation – including the Tea Party – comes close to championing Loughner’s deranged world view.
Paranoid and nihilistic (he kept a miniature altar with a replica human skull in his backyard), he had clearly surfed the wilder shores of political views on the internet, preaching about the evils of religion, and even picking up and espousing a theory that the government was using grammar as a form of mind control.
I’m not sure this is working out as planned. As Prof. Jacobson comments: “Of all the despicable aspects of this shooting, the conduct of the left-blogosphere and mainstream media in hijacking this event ranks just behind the murder and mayhem itself.”
UPDATE: Reader William Girardot writes: “Given that Jared Loughner registered as an independent, isn’t it time to condemn the vitriol of the middle? We have borne the milquetoast rhetoric of the moderates for too long!”