This week’s attack on a historical black church in Charleston has sent the liberal political and media classes into a political feeding frenzy.The families of the dead, by contrast, has defied the odds embraced love and forgiveness.Here are five examples how some people sought to exploit the murders for political gain:
The left has always had an abusive relationship with the journalists at Fox News, and never waits long before trying to tie the latest domestic tragedy to the “hate filled rhetoric” “spewing” from the conservative network.South Carolina Democratic Representative Todd Rutherford all but blamed the Charleston massacre on “things like Fox News,” and when confronted by Bill O’Reilly, doubled down. Watch:Newsbusters has the breakdown:
Before things got heated, O’Reilly played a clip of Rutherford’s original comments in which told CNN’s Jake Tapper that:
And he [Dylann Roof] did so based on some ill gotten belief on some wrong belief that it’s okay to do that. He hears that because he watches the news and he watches things like Fox News where they – where they talk about things that they call news but they are really not. They use that coded language, they use hate speech. They talk about the President as if he is not the President.
Recognizing that Rutherford is “upset and I know it’s an emotional day” in having lost a friend in State Senator Clementa Pinckney, O’Reilly gave him an opportunity to further explain his remarks, but Rutherford doubled down:
No, no, it is disturbing but it is disturbing to most African-Americans to watch as Fox News continues to cover stories as to whether the President is truly the President and whether he was born in this country, whether his birth certificate is legitimate.
After asserting O’Reilly didn’t know “know anybody on this network who does that,” he continued on: “Now, you say that this Roof kid watches Fox News. Do you know what he watches Fox News?”
Rutherford then repeatedly tried to excuse his comments by stating that Roof sought outlets “like Fox News” and asserted that it led to him allegedly referencing during the shooting that “black people [are] raping white women.” O’Reilly, who seemed shocked, asked: “You are equating what Dylann Roof did in our church to our commentary here?”
At least they’re consistent?
Salon’s thinkpiece culture is always good for a laugh, but their molten take on the shootings in Charleston was nothing but a 1000 word attempt to hold all white people responsible for the actions of Dylann Roof. The tag line claims that Charleston has “revealed a double standard” on race, but unfortunately for Salon, all they’ve done is reveal their own enthusiasm for reverse racism.
Read:
Charleston church massacre: The violence white America must answer for …there are several phrases and words that are likely to not be used by the corporate news media in the discussions of the Charleston mass murders at the Emanuel Baptist Church. They include: 1. What is radicalizing white men to commit such acts of domestic terrorism and mass shootings? Are Fox News and the right-wing media encouraging violence? 2. Is something wrong with the white family? Why are their sons and men so violent? 3. What should law enforcement and white politicians do about white crime? 4. Is the Charleston mass shooting just one more sign that America needs sensible and reasonable gun control policies? … Once and again, white privilege is the power to be the ultimate individual where one’s actions and behavior rarely if ever reflects on the collective character of white people en masse. By comparison, Black and brown Americans, Muslims, Arabs and the Other more generally are routinely subjected to group punishment and demonization.
Well, we might as well just round them all up and [invoke Godwin’s Law right now because we all know that’s coming in a subsequent article.] #SalonPitches is a thing for a reason, people.
Always. Every time. Probably until forever. Is this man never not on the stump?
Here’s a snippet from President Obama’s statement following the massacre:
We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that, once again, innocent people were killed in part because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.Now is the time for mourning and for healing. But let’s be clear:At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. And at some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it, and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively.
We’ve all gotten caught up in the heat of breaking news; we’ve all probably posted something to Facebook or Twitter that, in hindsight, wasn’t 100% accurate. It happens, things get deleted, and apologies are made—unless you’re Dr. Drew.
Dr. Drew has a show on HLN that is described as such: “Driven by current events, ‘Dr. Drew” on HLN focuses on the human – and human behavior – at the center of the story.'”
The good doctor’s tweets, however, seem to be driven less by behavior and more by very convenient…oversights:
Except…
The debunking! The double down! Did it end with an apology for a statement that could have caused a riot? Nah—Drew and his team just hugged it out:
It wouldn’t be a “pathetic liberal” listicle without Chris Matthews making an appearance.
MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson made a guest appearance on Hardball this week, and did his best to blame the evil insanity of Dylann Roof on…right wing “atmospherics?” I’m not sure what an “atmospheric” is, but Matthews swallowed the bait, and away we go!
Newsbusters has the transcript:
I mean, there’s more than a whiff of white supremacy in the air. It’s still a stench. It’s fainter than it used to be, but it’s there. And somehow he breathed it in. He was in an environment in which, um, you know, this became meaningful to him….MATTHEWS: …Anyway, I do think you’ve got something there with the atmospherics and it’s not all one person acting alone, it’s always about something that gives moral license to certain kind of behavior.ROBINSON: Exactly.MATTHEWS: I thought when Kennedy was killed down in Dallas that time in ’63, I thought it was an atmosphere there–ROBINSON: Exactly.MATTHEWS: –even though he [Oswald] was a man on the left and that [the city of Dallas] was on the right, it was atmospheric.
It’s not the stupidest argument Matthews has ever nodded along with, but his comments about Lee Harvey Oswald, militant leftist, being influenced by vast right wing atmospherics is among his more bizarre comments.
It’s exploitation, pure and simple—but you’ll never see a headline about that in the mainstream media.
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