“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” – Rahm Emanuel.
Any time there’s a tragic event, the news media on both sides go into overdrive, trying to figure out “How could this happen?”
It’s no different with Aurora, Colorado and the terrible news of the massacre at the midnight showing of Dark Knight Rises.
As everyone tries to make sense of the story, folks on the Right want to decry the nation’s loss of family values and our distance from God. It’s all either part of an assault on Christian values, or it’s just another sign of what we have brought upon ourselves by previous assaults on Christian values.
It’s certainly not simply a tragedy. That headline doesn’t get hits on the website.
On the other hand, Leftist media (no, wait, “impartial journalists” I mean) want to paint the shooter as a Tea Party anything. As long as “Jim Holmes, the shooter in the theater” gets connected to “Tea Party” in the same sentence, mission accomplished.
It’s not like there could be anyone else named Jim Holmes. Oh wait, maybe there could be. Oops. Our bad.
But the damage is already done. Jim Holmes is already associated with the Tea Party… enough that people will assume the connection is true, in spite of the retraction.
One comment on the story quoted Twain:
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Hey, I get it. It’s an election year. We have to maximize every opportunity… and what an opportunity this is!
The Right can talk about how godless and lost America has become, under the evil influence of Hollywood, or video games, or the Internet, or Lord-knows-what. If only we put our faith in Jesus!
Yeah, except for the Catholic church pedophile scandals and the various prominent televangelists and ministers whose falls get worldwide attention…
Maybe claiming faith in Jesus doesn’t magically fix every problem in our society.
Likewise, the Left can rail against the benighted fools who cling to their guns and their Bibles, chanting about Second Amendment rights. They can demand stricter gun control laws… as if the suspect was concerned about following the existing gun laws! Gun control laws and bans work great on the law-abiding populace…
But the law-abiding populace isn’t really our problem.
Heck, we’ll throw in there that angry parents on both sides can rant about those who might bring a baby to a theater at midnight. It’s all the fault of the parents everywhere! If Jim Holmes’ parents had done a better job, then maybe we’d be better off.
If we can just assign some blame, then we can get past the tragedy and deal with the “real” problem!
But nothing in life is ever so simple.
The facts of the matter are that twelve people were murdered and more than fifty were wounded.
Not surprisingly, someone intent on harming others chose a midnight showing of one of the most anticipated movies of the year.
It (most likely) wasn’t because of a supposed liberal agenda in the movie where the 99% rise up against the wealthy 1%. It (most likely) wasn’t because OMG Bane sounds just like Bain, and maybe the movie is a dig on Mitt Romney.
(I want to scream every time I hear someone suggest that the name of the villain in a movie that has been in production and planning for quite some time is somehow associated with a recent news story about the 2012 election. Bane’s been around since ’93 in the comics. Stop being ignorant.)
My pure speculation is–shock! It was a good bet that the theater would be crowded, and someone intent on harming others used that to his advantage, for no other reason than because there would be a crowd.
That doesn’t score political points.
But maybe that’s not what this is about.
Maybe that’s not the response we need.