Jamie O, Political Crack, So Called Liberal Media

Both-Sidesing A Near Tragedy

Pennsylvania State Police and bystanders attend to Corey Comperatore, the man killed during Trump’s assassination attempt.

First things first, if Trump had taken a death shot to the head, it would have been a tragedy. First off, killing someone is the bottom-barrel worst political response to a campaign opponent, even someone like Trump. Full stop. Also, a life was lost, and at least some of the crowd experienced trauma in a way that could affect them for a long time.

In addition, a person lost their life, Corey Comperatore, a firefighter who died protecting his family from sniper bullets. There were two others critically wounded.

The motives behind the person who carried out this attack are unclear. He donated $15 to a progressive PAC, but later registered as a Republican. Some friends describe him as conservative and one was puzzled as to why he would shoot a conservative candidate. I get the feeling that this is a John Hinckley type thing, or just your run-of-the-mill school shooter situation where you have a dreadfully disturbed young man with access to an AR-15.

A lot of speculation is going on right now, and boy, was there speculation immediately after. David Gura with a good list of what to keep in mind:

Many in the DC media ride the Both Side’s Rhetoric Are Just as Bad horse hard. The key here is “many” as there is no such homogeneous organism as The Media given the variety of outlets and individuals. But hoo boy, some of it isn’t good.

First off, there is this weird hyperfocus on some lefties doing what people do on social media in the wake of a big news story, wallowing in conspiracy. This take on it is absolutely insane for a few reasons. There is no widespread “BlueAnon” outside of a small number of edge lords on TwitterX. Many of the people who were thinking this is some kind of a false flag have backed way off of it. But there are mainstream outlets like the Washington Post running with the BlueAnon narrative.

The problem with this is A) there were elected officials like Professional Awful Human Marjorie Taylor Greene spreading dangerous conspiracies immediately after and today and there were no Democratic elected officials at the national level doing the same and B) to my knowledge there has not been anyone in the left doing things like taking a rifle to a pizza place because they believed Democratic politicians running a child sex ring out of the restaurant’s basement. These are significant differences.

Plus, the claim that Joe Biden is guilty of his own violent rhetoric is crazy talk. Biden telling donors that Trump “needs to be in the bullseye” is referring to focusing on the dangers of a potential second term, which are still there. It’s a huge reach to think that Democratic donors thought Biden was telling them to take Trump out. And guys like this opportunistic weasel should be called out or ignored completely.

Compare that response to the response by Nancy Pelosi, a woman whose husband was severely beaten with a hammer by a right-wing nutjob who went to their house to murder her. Or compare Pelosi’s response to the Republicans who thought an attempted assassination was hilarious.

I defy the both-sides hand-wringers in the mainstream media to find me ONE Democratic campaign ad like any of these examples.

I haven’t even mentioned what awful stuff GOP Congresscretin Mike Collins and other prominent Republicans said.

By the way Beauchamp goes deeper into the right-wing fanning of flames in the wake of the assassination attempt in his piece in Vox. There should be more of this type of analysis, but unfortunately, the media powers-that-be seem to be not interested. For example, MSNBC continued to preempt their programming this morning, and I cannot agree more with Jeff Jarvis here.

There is a very good chance that the Trump assassination attempt was nothing deeper than a very disturbed person trying to kill Trump for reasons only he can understand. There is also a very good chance that the GOP will attempt to use this to further their goals of putting democracy in danger. The usual suspects in the media should at least discuss this, but instead, they are jumping on the opportunity for Both Sides Are Just as Bad nonsense.

The last word goes to Paramore.

 

 

 

 

 

One thought on “Both-Sidesing A Near Tragedy”

  1. At least in TV’s case,”News” stands for “Nothing Educational or Worth Seeing”.

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