JABbering Stooge

Okay, I’m way behind the times on this one. I may as well go ahead and get it out of the way.

When I last posted, I said that I was going to talk about the Virginia Tech massacre. It’s been almost two weeks since the tragedy took place at the college in Blacksburg, Virginia, and what a two weeks its been. And while the event has been analyzed this way and that in that amount of time, here’s my reaction and summary of the whole sorry mess:

Bowling for Virginia Tech: The Debate Over Guns Rages On

As with any event of this nature, the subject of gun laws quickly becomes a subject of armchair quarterbacking, and the events of April 16, 2007 proved to be no exception. As Keith Olbermann pointed out, “before Virginia Tech was even close to giving any kind of official number of dead,” a certain pro-gun group that’s obviously in the “shoot up National Guard tanks for the hell of it” camp - Gun Owners of America - issued a press release suggesting that Seung-Hui Cho’s rampage coulda/shoulda/woulda been stopped if only everyone on campus was packing heat. Several other right-wing gun goons echoed that sentiment, never mind that armed students in panic mode would’ve been just as likely to start shooting each other up as the attacker. Never mind that once the professionals arrived on the scene, with no way to tell who needed to be taken down and who was a panic-stricken student shooting at anything that moved, the chaos would likely have been multiplied that much more. At one point in the debate, a caller to The Stephanie Miller Show even suggested that it might be a good idea to make gun ownership, at least by professors, mandatory saying that professors who don’t like it can “get a job somewhere else.” All I can say is “oy, vey!”

And that’s not all. As James Wolcott points out (via NY Daily News’ Michael Daly):

Not even the worst campus massacre in American history is about to stop Bob Moates Sports Shop of Midlothian, Va., from going ahead with its big Bloomberg Gun GiveAway. The winner will receive a Para-Ordinance Model 1911 .45 automatic, silver and no less deadly than the black pistol a witness says the Virginia Tech psycho used. The 1911 is part of the company’s new line of “Gun Rights” pistols, which carry the guarantee the company will donate $25 to the National Rifle Association for every one sold.

The date of the giveaway? Last Thursday, April 19 - the 12th anniversary of Timothy McVeigh’s orgy of anti-government violence - an event that wingnuts have continually tried to pin on “those 3v1l M00sl1ms.” Speaking of which…

Wingnutosphere: Exploiting Tragedy, Bashing Muslims

Before the identity of the shooter was confirmed, the wingnutosphere was afire in an attempt to exploit the tragedy for political gain, instantly making a leap of logic on the level of Superman’s ability to “leap tall buildings in a single bound.” “T3h M00slims didit!!!” they cried, from Cousin It and his knuckledragging saurian swarm to Costco Coulter Debbie “I’M AN HTML LUDDITE SO I SHOUT MY REBUTTAL COMMENTS” Schlussel (even as she sneeringly put words into Rosie O’Donnell’s thought bubble).

Later, when it was revealed that one of the few heroes of that bloody monday was a Muslim, what was the response of right-wingers? A chorus of chirping crickets.

And when that dog wouldn’t hunt, they switched to a different scapegoat: t3h libruls.

This angle came from no less than three separate wingnut pundits/advocacy groups in the days and weeks since the massacre. First there was Snoot Gingrinch, who played the blame game in an appearance on ABC’s This Week. Then there was the American Family Association, which promoted a video created by an unknown wingnut organization blaming everything from famous atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair to Clinton’s Almighty Penis - even going so far as to insinuate that t3h Clenis caused child pornography on the Internets. But the worst of the blame t3h libruls meme came from the pen (and mouth) of right-wing pundit Joan Swirsky, who between equating the killer with Palestinian suicide bombers, chastising the media for not doing the same, and calling liberals every nasty name in the book, managed to make an ass of herself in an interview on Milton Waddams’ radio show this past Monday. Waddams (or as Al Franken likes to refer to him, Colmes), for his part, had a rare moment of spine - hounding Swirsky to provide even the slightest shred of evidence that liberals are to blame for Cho’s murderous rampage. Was Stephanie Miller holding the camera for his video rant? Did Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid help him chain shut the doors in Norris Hall? Did Clinton’s Almighty Penis buy the guns for him? In response, Swirsky ducked, dodged, spun, rambled and did everything but answer the question (, jerk!). It was one of those moments where Randi Rhodes’ assertion that it takes less than two seconds to tell the truth rang especially true.

Side Story: Your Liberal Media At Work

How did the media cover the story? Well, when they weren’t irresponsibly airing portions of Cho’s multimedia incoherent rant, they were using it to verbally fellate The Most Holy George W. Christ, particularly Suzanne Malveaux, who rapturously claimed that Bush’s presence at the convocation less than 48 hours after the shootings harkened back to his “bullhorn moment” on The Pile at Ground Zero™ shortly after 9/11.