Weighing in on Jared Lee Loughner and the Idiocy of the Media

The debate in the news media and among left and right bloggers over Jared Lee Loughner and his shooting of Federal Judge John Roll, US congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford, and many others point to a serious flaw in the media's reasoning.

Before getting to that, here's a list of stories, heavily politicized, dealing with "news" about the shooting. Note that most of the news stories fixate on Congresswoman Gifford, centering on the political context of the shooting, rather than centering on the tragedy of the shooting.

The Guardian, a UK paper has a story about the media's pointing the finger at right wing commentators for its supposed rhetoric of violence. Obviously there was a huge amount of backlash against the right for this story to make it to the UK. The news agency also assures us that Loughner was indeed "erratic, disturbed and prone to rightwing rants."

In connection with blaming the right, Keith Olbermann offered his views on Countdown. While many of my left-leaning friends hailed his comments as the epitome of sensible talk in condemning violent speech, note that his video points fingers and uses exclusionary talk directly at Sarah Palin and other politicians and commentators with whom Olbermann disagrees. While he "apologizes" for one instance of his own inflammatory language, his entire speech indicates that he wants to ensure anyone he disapproves of has "no further place in our system of government."

The Wall Street Journal weighed in on the debate by letting us know just how much Loughner "fixated" on Congresswoman Gifford. In this story, the WSJ traces how Loughner became a social outcast:

Mr. Loughner started acting strangely, [one of Loughner's friends] Mr. Montanaro said, and "his friends changed from people like us to more, drug oriented people I suppose." He quit playing saxophone and was eventually ignored by his old friends. "Jared really became an outcast," he said.

A few right wing writers such as the blog at RedState have attempted some amount of reason, moving the discussion from the political sphere to note: "The truth is people like Loughner kill because they are too mentally unbalanced and angry at society to be influenced by even normal considerations of self-preservation, no less by the tone of civil discourse."

And, as usual, the anti-gun faction in the US, such as represented by such people as Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, are already demanding "something be done" about the "ineffective" gun laws in the US. McCarthy promises to introduce another sort of gun regulation bill on Monday morning.

Now through all of this, one point of reason has been lost. Here's the problem - every last one of these articles, even the right wing blogger, lays the blame for this shooting on some aspect of society:

• "It's the right wingnut commentators Beck and Hannity's fault!"
• "It's Sarah Palin's fault!"
• "It's the inflammatory rhetoric of the Right!"
• "Loughner is a leftist!"
• "Loughner was an outcast!"
• "Loughner was angry at society!"
• "We need more gun bans!"
• "Frank Sinatra is to blame!"

(I may have made that last one up.)

All of these type of statements point to Loughner as a victim of some sort or another, not as an individual who made poor choices. In this world view, criminals become victims and society becomes the criminal. Loughner is seen as a victim of Right Wingnuts/society/guns/Halo/medicinal marijuana or what have you and thus is to be seen as an object of pity, or at the very least a means of extending the leftist agenda of government.

Because, of course this propagnada stems from the left. It is leftist doctrine based on the utopian principle that all the world's problems - war, violence, hate speech, hunger, guns, intestinal distress, and ingrown toenails  - all would go away if we'd just allow "benevolent" government to control our lives. The left preaches this doctrine in the schools, from Hollywood, and in the mainstream media until we've become a people inculcated to blame anyone but irresponsible individuals.

The shame in the "news" about Loughner stems from focusing on why Loughner shot all those people until we forget that the important thing is to put Loughner away and mourn the loss of innocent lives.

As a final word, here is a quote from Evan Sayet, a Hollywood writer, who explained in a speech to The Heritage Foundation just this sort of leftist doctrine:

What I discovered is that the Modern Liberal looks back on 50,000 years, 100,000 years of human civilization, and knows only one thing for sure: that none of the ideas that mankind has come up with--none of the religions, none of the philos­ophies, none of the ideologies, none of the forms of government--have succeeded in creating a world devoid of war, poverty, crime, and injustice. So they're convinced that since all of these ideas of man have proved to be wrong, the real cause of war, pov­erty, crime, and injustice must be found--can only be found--in the attempt to be right.

If nobody ever thought they were right, what would we disagree about? If we didn't disagree, surely we wouldn't fight. If we didn't fight, of course we wouldn't go to war. Without war, there would be no poverty; without poverty, there would be no crime; without crime, there would be no injustice. It's a utopian vision, and all that's required to usher in this utopia is the rejection of all fact, reason, evi­dence, logic, truth, morality, and decency--all the tools that you and I use in our attempts to be better people, to make the world more right by trying to be right, by siding with right, by recognizing what is right and moving toward it.