The question of the political implications of the Amy Bishop case continue to roil through the Blogosphere. This afternoon I have noted several individuals involved in the discussion (or whatever one might wish to cal it), including (in no particular order or ideological position): Ann Althouse, William Jacobson, Dan Collins, Kathy Shaidle, Barbara O’Brien, Mark Hemingway, Steve Huff, Scott Lemieux, and Scott Eric Kaufman.
The basic debate is between those who hold my basic position, i.e., that there is no evidence of a political motive or motivation in the killings, and therefore it is unseemly to try and to score political points from the event and those who think that this is a chance to make some political point about the MSM (as well as a handful who seem to think that Bishops’ politics were, in fact, relevant).
The predicate of those who see no problem in making a political point out of the shootings seems to be, to quote Ann Althouse’s post title on the subject, “If Amy Bishop had turned out to be right wing, the MSM would have made a big deal out of it.” And the presumption from there is that that would not be right and that in the past the MSM has over-emphasized the right-wingedness of other violent actors.
Now, if we stipulate for a moment that this, in fact, would have been the case, then the impression on gets from Althouse, Reynolds, Jacobson, et al., is that this is bad and should not happen (because the MSM has wrongly over-emphasized politics in the past). Their response, seems to be to therefore state that it is fair to then make a little political hay about Amy Bishop’s potential political predilections (which, by the way, are currently based on the fact that she went to Harvard,1 a student called her a “socialist” on RateMyProfessors.com, and an anonymous family member referred to here as “a far-left political extremist who was “obsessed” with President Obama to the point of being off-putting”).
This is, by the way, the very definition of what I asserted over the weekend: the using of a triple homicide to score cheap political points. How can it be seen as anything else? They claim that the MSM is known for unfairly harping on the right-wing nature of some criminals, and so to make that point they think it proper to jump on the UAH tragedy as a vehicle for their position. This is true of their actions, by the way, even if (like Reynolds) they only allude to the potential that her politics are leftish, without actually making an accusation that the murders were politically driven.
To put the matter as succinctly as possible: this is using multiple murders as a vehicle for making a partisan/ideological critique of the mainstream media, and it isn’t a critique about how they are covering the homicides in question, but rather a point about how they have covered other crimes.
This strikes me as unseemly and inappropriate and trivializes a heinous crime.
Sphere: Related Content- You know, because, all Harvard grads are left wing. Just ask Bill O’Reilly and/or Jerome Corsi if you don’t believe me. [↩]
February 16th, 2024 at 11:41 pm
What do these people expect the news articles to say? “Obama-lover kills academics because leftists have a well-known hatred of professors”? “Obama-lover kills minorities because leftists have a well-known hatred of minorities”? Oh, never-mind.
If she had walked into a Republican party headquarters and killed people, then it would have been relevant.
Out of the hundreds of murders committed everyday, how many make a big deal of the political affiliations of the murderer?
February 17th, 2024 at 3:42 pm
You know, I had no idea that those two were Harvard graduates! I have in fact been awaiting the opportunity to refer to Jerome Corsi as a “pinko commie Marxist socialist leftist”.
But yeah… It seems to be more and more widespread, now. Case in point, one blog that I thought was above this:
http://www.flashpointblog.com/2010/02/16/amy-bishop-attacked-woman-at-ihop/comment-page-1/#comment-103732
February 17th, 2024 at 4:05 pm
Yes, I am not sure why so many people want to make this political.
February 17th, 2024 at 5:31 pm
[...] let me repost this comment that I left at Dan Collins’ site in response to his post noting one of mine on this [...]
February 18th, 2024 at 2:27 pm
You know, I had no idea that those two were Harvard graduates! I have in fact been awaiting the opportunity to refer to Jerome Corsi as a “pinko commie Marxist socialist leftist”.