The Usual Suspects Blame Their Usual Suspects With The Usual Results

M2RB:  Thousand Foot Krutch

Then, I asked have you ever felt abandoned?
Felt so lost that you were stranded.

Just like all the walls are closing in...

And, you were left inside?

Have you ever felt like your days were numbered?
Stuck under a tree in thunder?
Seems to be no way out!
But, there is One when in doubt.

Why?

So much more to life than this...

"There's a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado tea party site as well, talking about him joining the tea party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado."

  - Brian Ross, "Investigative Correspondent" for ABC News, 20 July 2012

By John Kass

How long does it take for a major American television news network to politicize mass murder and blame conservatives for the blood of innocents?

Not long.

It happened on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday morning, as the country woke to the news of the mass murder during the midnight showing of the new Batman movie: A heavily armed man named James Eagan Holmes allegedly killed 12 and injured 58 others in a suburban theater outside Denver.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos, once a top aide to former President Bill Clinton, and ABC reporter Brian Ross teamed up to quickly place the horror at the feet of American conservatives.

Stephanopoulos: I'm going to go to Brian Ross. You've been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.

Ross: There's a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado tea party site as well, talking about him joining the tea party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado.

Stephanopoulos: OK, we'll keep looking at that. Brian Ross, thanks very much.

And that's all it took, a mention, a name, a possible connection about a Jim Holmes joining the tea party movement that is reviled by establishment Democrats and (though not often reported) establishment Republicans. The connection was made. 

It was artfully done.

But there was one thing wrong with the ABC report.

It was the wrong Holmes.

The Holmes ABC referred to was a middle-aged man. The one arrested with the guns and the gas bombs and the mask and the booby-trapped apartment is James Eagan Holmes, a 24-year-old graduate student who was in the process of dropping out of school.

After an onslaught by bloggers over the Internet on Friday, ABC news issued a correction.

"An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado tea party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect," said ABC News in a statement. "ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted."

We all make mistakes. But this one smacks of political bias. And when you add political bias to the rush of breaking news, as seems to have happened here, things get stinky.

An earlier skin-back by ABC suggested the network was hoping to blame social media. "Several other local residents with similar names were also contacted via social media by members of the public who mistook them for the suspect," an earlier ABC statement said.

Really? So ABC blames Facebook and Twitter? What would David Brinkley do?

What happened Friday fits into a theme being pushed of late by the political left and supporters of President Barack Obama:

That conservative groups opposed to the ever-increasing power of federal government are angry, that such anger is irrational, that conservative talk radio feeds the anger and therefore, criticism of Obama is dangerous. If only conservatives had the decency to calm down before a monumental presidential election in November, things would be so much nicer.

Of course, that's all political horse poop. You can almost see the magic thumbs of David Axelrod grabbing a handful to shape the action figures who'll star in those "angry voter" stories to come.

In 2008, there was plenty of anger on the Democratic side, and much despair among conservatives, who'd been betrayed by the big-government excesses of the corporatist GOP establishment, which has since tried to co-opt the tea party movement. Back then, American journalism generally portrayed voter anger as the legitimate expression of an electorate exhausted by endless war and a terrible economy.

Now that Obama seeks re-election, as the wars continue and the jobless rates get much worse, and as the economy flops listlessly in the mud, the menu has changed. Such anger is no longer legitimate. It's bothersome and noisy, might just be murderous. How convenient.

President Clinton pushed this theme after the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing in 1995. In a bid to silence his critics, while oozing sincerity, Clinton argued that conservative talk radio was to blame for the angry mood.

Two years later, the late and great essayist Christopher Hitchens was taking part in one of those year-in-review panel discussions. Though Hitchens was a man of the radical left, he was one of my favorites because he refused to play the partisan bobo for anyone. The panel discussion touched on Princess Diana, and how then-Prime Minister Tony Blair politicized her death.

 

"George Stephanopoulos spends weekends in my apartment building because he comes down for 'The Week Without David Brinkley' or whatever that TV show is now called," Hitchens had said. "We had a drink around the time of the Diana business, and he said, 'Hey, Tony Blair's doing brilliantly isn't he? This is his Oklahoma City.' Those guys think about things that way."

Yes. those guys do think about things that way. Not about evil as a real presence, but as something symbolic, evil in the abstract, as a device to be used to political advantage.

It's still only July, a lifetime until November.

jskass@tribune.com Twitter @John_Kass

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Broad Brushes Paint Wide Swaths

When In Doubt - Thousand Foot Krutch

We sat upon your bed.

You said the things you said
And I could not believe that you seem so naive.
We exchanged our poetry.
You seem to think a lot like me.
I'll guess I just assumes that we could talk about most anything.

Then, I asked have you ever felt abandoned?
Felt so lost that you were stranded.

Just like all the walls are closing in...

And, you were left inside?

Have you ever felt like your days were numbered?
Stuck under a tree in thunder?
Seems to be no way out!
But, there is One when in doubt.

Ready for another day.
Slowly, watched ya waste away,
Havin' fun, bein' cool
Like we did in high school,
Elementary romance feelin' nervous at the dance.

Crack a smile, hold it down,
Whatever the circumstance.
Sex, drugs, hadda be cool.
All the things we learned in school.
Typical teenage machines.

Anyone, tell me what this means?
I could learn, I could try,
Never really had an alibi.
Wish I did, that's no lie.

Everybody's asking...

Why?

When you feel like you can't fly,
You gotta know I got the answer for ya, baby.
Drives ya crazy, it's not over.
There's so much more to life than this.

Why?

When you feel like you can't fly,
You gotta know I got the answer for ya, baby.
Drives ya crazy, it's not over.
There's so much more to life than this.

Things seem so hallucinary.
In the corners of my mind they scare me.

I know ya never meant to desert me.
Just like ya never really meant to hurt me.

Then, I asked have you ever felt abandoned?
Felt so lost that you were stranded.

Just like all the walls are closing in...

And, you were left inside?

Have you ever felt like your days were numbered?
Stuck under a tree in thunder?
Seems to be no way out!
But, there is One when in doubt.

Why?

So much more to life than this...