Breitbart Is Right
As might you, I remember exactly where I was, and what I was doing when I heard about the Aurora massacre.
I was driving to work, like many a man who has not suffered an unimaginable tragedy. On the radio there came a brief mention — the true magnitude of how many had died was not yet known — of the massacre.
It was only two sentences. The second sentence was a denial that any “overseas” (that was the euphemism used) terrorists groups were involved.
That immediately tickled my suspicions. I used to work for a newspaper, as a writer and as an editor. It takes time to do policework, to check credit card records, to check if a suspect had been overseas, to get warrants, to read his old mail, to talk to neighbors. There is no way, no possible way, any responsible police agency could have investigated between midnight (when the crime occurred) and morning (when I heard the news) when all the businesses were closed and announced that it had ruled out anything.
The newsman was not reporting an official announcement: he was merely making the literally true but deliberately deceptive statement that no evidence had yet emerged of any link to overseas terror. There was also no evidence to a link to Ethiopia, to Elocutionists, to Eggplants, or to Ecumenism, because six hours is too soon for any confirmed evidence of any kind. So why single out terrorists for exculpation?
Parking my car a few minutes later, I walked into my work. I have a dayjob, working for a military subcontractor. As all military facilities in which I have ever worked, there is a television tuned 24/7 to the mainstream news channels in the break room. Why US Military ordains that Orwellian viewscreens should be tuned constantly to channels that disseminate anti-Military agitprop, I cannot guess. As I walked past the break room door, I heard the massacre being discussed by the news entertainment heads.
I only heard two sentences yet again. The first mentioned the location and time of the shooting. The second sentence was speculation that the shooter was a rightwing extremist or a neo-Nazi.
The next thing I heard about it was not the numbers of the victims, nor the heroism of those who threw themselves in harm’s way to save sisters and girlfriends, and not the little twelve year old girl who tried to give CPR to a six year old who died under her hands.
No. The next thing I heard about was Brian Ross, who had announced on ABC news that the shooter was a member of the Tea Party.
I did not see or hear civilized and sane voices calling for prayer, for silence, or for dignity until much later in the week, or, as we measure time now, much later in the newscycle.
That was not where the emphasis was. We live in a Dark Age, where civility, piety, decency and honesty are not praised nor prized.
No, instead, the headlines of the radio and television news, the first thing I heard before I heard any details, was those two assertions being hammered home: the attacker was not a Muslim terrorist. The Right was to blame.
(As of the time of this writing, Mr Ross has not been fired, or even censured, for this slander presented as news to a trusting and nationwide audience. If he has issued an official apology, I am unaware of it.)
Of my other thoughts, I will be silent. But I will add my voice to the choir of condemnation against the mainstream media:
You are vermin.
I mean this in the literal sense: a vermin is an animal that destroys livestock and must be put down for human life to be successful.
You could have been newsmen and told the truth as you knew it.
You could have been gentlemen and told the truth without a sick and sadistic desire to fatten yourselves on the blood of the slain, and then spew out that blood, mixed with bile, into to faces of your political rivals in the game of power. You could have been polite, and civil, and honest, and sane.
You could have been human.
But no. The most vicious town gossip who seeks ever to destroy the reputation and blacken the character of an enemy never launched so quickly and so immediately a campaign to stir up slander, hate, and malice against an innocent foe.
You were running on autopilot, dear newsmen.
The autopilot of ideology charts only one course: when there is a gun-massacre or an act of terror, you blame your political rivals as long as possible and as often as possible because that is what the simplistic fairy tale of your world view demands. You immediately, long before any evidence is in, exculpate your allies, because this is also what your simplistic fairy tale demands.
George Zimmerman, a registered Democrat, is reported as being a “white Hispanic” because Caucasians shooting Negroes in cold blood fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
When Dr. Amy Bishop shot and killed three colleagues at a faculty meeting, the Left speculated that she was a Tea Partier because that fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale. In fact, she was lifelong Democrat and Obama donor.
James Lee, 43, took three hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Maryland. The media speculation was that Lee a “climate-change denier” who’d resorted to violence. That fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale. In fact, he was a radical environmentalist who viewed humans as parasites on the Earth
The census-taker Bill Sparkman in rural Kentucky was supposedly hanged by extremist anti-tax Tea Partiers. Such insanely murderous acts by the peaceful protesters (who clean up after themselves when they gather in public areas) fits the fairy tale. In fact, he hanged himself. The facts do not fit the fairy tale
Mayor Bloomberg immediately speculated that the bomber was someone upset about the president’s new health-care law. The media trumpeted the idea that crazed conservatives had turned to violence. In fact, the perpetrator was Faisal Shahzad, jihadist terrorist. The facts do not fit the fairy tale.
Joe Stack who flew his plane into the IRS in Texas was supposedly a Tea Partier, because according to the fairy tale the ordinary Americans in the Tea Party are insane murdering scum. In fact, he quoted from the Communist Manifesto in his suicide note. But the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
Amidst the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque, Michael Enright stabbed a Muslim cab driver in the neck. It was immediately dubbed an “anti-Muslim stabbing,” with “rising Islamophobia” on the political right to blame. Because the fairy tale is that the Tea Party commit acts of random violence for political ends. In fact, Enright, a left-leaning art student, had worked with a firm that produced a pro-mosque statement.
John Patrick Bedell shot two Pentagon security officers at close range. The media went wild with speculation that a right-wing extremist had reached the end of his rope. Bedell turned out to be a registered Democrat and 9/11 Truther. The facts do not fit the fairy tale.
The Fort Hood shooting is reported as being unrelated to the religious affiliation of the gunman because this fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
When Congresswoman Giffords was shot, even though this was done by a deranged man with (as far as we know) Leftwing political views, the rhetoric of the Right was blamed by Paul Krugman, and Sarah Palin was blamed. By what torturous line of Palin-Derangement-Syndrome suffering stream-of-consciousness style logic the Senator from Alaska can be blamed for a shooting in Arizona, I leave for psychiatrists to explain.
But I know the explanation for the slander, and all these slanders. It fits the fairy tale, and the facts do not fit the fairy tale.
Friends, who you hear of some enormity or ghastly crime, is your first thought to speculate that your political rivals and the game of seeking popular political power resorted to random atrocities? Do you think everything is politics? Is it the only lens through which you view the world, the only tale that you ever tell, the only tale you ever believe? Then you believe in fairy tales.
I was in the newspaper business not so very long ago. I never saw anything of this magnitude. I never saw such pure malice, such reckless disregard for and hatred of the truth, such pure propaganda. And I was in the muckraking yellow-journalism side of the business.
Can you imagine if someone in your neighborhood did this?
Suppose every crime committed in the neighborhood was blamed by your next door neighbor’s wife on some young black Jew who lives on your street. Each time, there is no evidence. Nor has the young man ever done anything wrong. Each time the accusation is immediate, utterly baseless, and it does not matter what the crime is. Purse snatched? She tells people the Jew did it. Power line down? Car stolen? She speculates that is the Jew. Air conditioner broken? She blames the Jew. Pet cat missing? She blames the Jew. Plague? Arson? Traffic accident? She blames the Jew, the Jew, the Jew.
And when she says the Jew kidnaps and murders children to grind into their passover bread, and poisons wells, and murdered Christ, and stains with mongrel blood the Aryan Race…
Exactly how many baseless accusations would it take before you became convinced that your neighbor’s wife was a lunatic with no ability to control herself, no ability to tell the truth, a nutcase in a delirium? Five times? Ten? I have listed more than that right here, and this list is not exhaustive.
And now suppose your lunatic neighbor’s wife was getting paid for her ability to report the facts honestly and fairly. She is not the town gossip but the town crier. She makes her money by spreading rumors. What then?
And what if you were the dark-skinned Jew. At what point would you become convinced she was your deadly enemy?
I have reached that point. The mainstream media speaks of me and mine exactly as if, precisely as if, they are trying to stir up a lynch mob.
The mainstream media are the enemy. Andrew Breitbart was right about that.
It is not the Democrat party, not the socialists, not the activist Judges or lunatic University academics who poison the minds of millions and slander all that is godly, good, wholesome and sane. These are side effects, mere epiphenomena.
The media are the enemy.
Without the support of the media, the partisans and activists and academics would have no public support, and their power would collapse.
The newsmen of this day are vermin, dangerous beasts, parasites and maggots. They must be abolished, hounded by the public square, harassed by the law, scourged by the intolerance of the righteous, driven into the fringes of society, exiled. We trusted them; they betrayed us. They betrayed the truth, and betray the nation, and betray humanity itself.
They must be broken. The media are the enemy.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
