June 11, 2009
Exploiting tragedies: Par for the course

Posted at 11:17 am, in: MSM
Tags: Jesse Dirkhising, Matthew Shepard

Only when fringe lunatics reinforce the left’s caricature of the right do the acts of a few represent the many:

Civil rights activists say a string of recent attacks blamed on right-wing extremists, including Wednesday’s shooting at the Holocaust Museum, show that conservative critics were too quick to fault the Department of Homeland Security over an April report warning about the potential for such violence.

The report was roundly criticized by Republicans for painting conservatives as a threat—particularly military veterans and those opposed to abortion or immigration – and DHS later withdrew the report.

“I think this latest round of killing once again shows how ridiculous the criticism from the right of the Department of Homeland Security report was. That whole brouhaha was absurd,” said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Rush Limbaugh and John Boehner can go on until the end of time about how [the report] was an attack on conservatives, but in reality it was a perfectly sober assessment of what was going on out there.”

When two straight males brutally murder a homosexual in Wyoming, which they claimed was motivated by money and drugs not because of the victim’s sexual orientation as the press and prosecution had portrayed it, it’s all over the news as an indication of those intolerant bigots on the right who further hatred simply because they are morally opposed to homosexuality or same-sex “marriage.”

But, when Jesse Dirkhising, a 13-year-old boy who was murdered by “two homosexual predators who confessed to using the boy as a sex toy while torturing him to death,” the story was pretty much ignored (coverage of the Shepard case to the Dirkhising case in number of articles was about 18:1). When the story was reported, it wasn’t used as proof that all homosexual are predators, either.

So, let’s get this straight. Straight men kill gay male and that is an indication of the rampant hate, violence, and discrimination faced by all homosexuals. Two homosexual men kill an innocent child and that is not an indication of the predatory nature of homosexuality. That seems a tad unfair, doesn’t it?

I’m not saying that all homosexuals are predators. The actions of these two perverts shouldn’t be used to paint all homosexuals as such. The same goes for the other side. The actions of two heterosexual males (who, arguably, didn’t even murder Shepard because of their supposed hate of homosexuals) shouldn’t be used to falsely represent anyone who opposes homosexuality or gay-”marriage.”

When any Muslim does anything wrong, we are not supposed to judge all Muslims or the religion of Islam based on the actions of the few. When 19 Muslims hijack commercial airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and are forced down in a field in Pennsylvania, we are not supposed to judge a whole religion. When Muslims bomb embassies and market places, we are supposed to see those as the acts as the few radicals on the fringe. When Muslims behead “infidels,” we are supposed to continue believing that this is the “religion of peace.” But, God forbid a man who is labeled a Christian shoots a baby killer late-term abortionist!

When a single Christian commits a bad act, it is treated in the press as an indicator of what all Christians are capable of. If one Christian is racist, all Christians are racist. If one kills an abortionist, they’re all plotting to kill an abortionist. How come when an anti-military Muslim convert shoots at soldiers outside a military recruiting center, killing one, that’s not an indication that all Muslims are plotting to kill soldiers?

And so, I see a trend here. When members of a group favored by the left does something wrong, it’s always the acts of a few radicals on the fringe who are not representative of the larger group that they have been identified as being a part of (gays, Muslims, etc.). When members of a group disfavored by the left does something wrong, it’s always that the culprit is not one of the isolated few, but rather a true representation of the larger group they have been chosen (by the left) to represent.

If a white man utters a racial slur, it’s an indication of the rampant racism that still dominates every day life in America. All white people are racist! When the Democratic Party’s chosen presidential candidate’s pastor of 20 years is outed not only for racist remarks, but for preaching racism from the pulpit, it’s played down as not even being racist and the man is denounced as not representative of the presidential candidate who has chosen to sit in his pews for the past 20 years. Never mind! I forgot. Jeremiah Wright can’t be racist. Racism only goes one way: white against black. It’s “reverse racism” if it’s black against white. Garbage!

So, a Christian killed an abortionist. Christianity is the religion of hate! A white supremacist walks into a holocaust museum and starts shooting: it’s vindication for the Department of Homeland Security labeling a vast majority of ordinary Americans and soldiers as potential terrorists and threats to the United States. It figures.

I’m not saying that what happened here yesterday wasn’t a tragedy. This was obviously the work of a loon, whether left or right. The people falling to the left and the MSM  just can’t wait to call this a vindication and use this as another opportunity to mischaracterize their opponents. What else would we expect from the left? They never let a crisis go to waste. Exploiting tragedies is par for the course.