Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine, and now Boston

Well, I heard someone try and call in to the sports station the first day, and start railing about how the Boston Marathon explosions were a result of liberal immigration policies, but he was cut off – entirely appropriately – and I didn’t get to hear more of his thought. One of the announcers wondered briefly if Tax Day had anything to do with it, then shrugged off his own comment, noting that there really wasn’t enough data.  So he tipped his hand what his prejudice might be, but then consciously backed off.  That’s reasonable.

Steve Sailer asked for comments and got lots of irony, about how various unfavored groups were going to be blamed.  There were a few attempts to make serious guesses from the very limited information, none of which were too convincing. There are also some conspiratorial stories circulating about it being an inside job, or the police at least covering up some important info, but none of it has reached me.  There are just dismissive references to it on the news occasionally.  No one at work has speculated about it in my presence, or even mentioned it.

The great contrast to this is the initial commentary at MSNBC:  Patriots Day: Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine,and now Boston.  Cara Maresca had that up within hours of the blasts, and it’s still one of the footnote sources over at Wiki.

This is not a guy calling in to a radio show.  This is a news outlet.  How is this not evil? Patriots Day is a holiday in Massachusetts and Maine only.  The Waco timing was chosen by the government, and I don’t see where Koresh was right-wing. Unless it is a pretty rank prejudice that they were religious…and they had guns…and well, you know….Oklahoma City was two days after Patriots Day she notes, and I have never heard anyone connect it to that holiday.  But gee, it’s in the same week.  Columbine was specifically chosen because it was Adolf Hitler’s birthday, 4/20, and I don’t know where the right-wing comes in there, either. Wasn’t there some belief among evangelicals that Christian kids were especially targeted, as they were at other shootings?

So actually, none of them had any connection to Patriots Day.  How is this not evil, for a news source to incite hatred on the basis of no evidence whatsoever?  One more reason to suspect the suspicions of the SPLC as well. Maybe Patriots Day is important to some groups, but the news never came to me. (I buried Paul.)

******

People do remember.  My office-mate mentioned last week how that guy (Jared Loughner) who shot that congresswoman (Gabrielle Giffords) had a poster in his room put out by Sarah Palin, of the congresswoman in the crosshairs of a rifle scope, which showed incitement to violence by conservatives.  Except it’s not true.  Multiple sources insinuated that Palin’s map of the US on her website, with 20 congressional districts won by McCain but represented by Democrats shown in the crosshairs, was equivalent to same. But it seems different to me*, and Loughner never saw it anyway. People remember the feeling, and don’t always read carefully.

*If you want to think it is the same, fine, I suppose.  How would you then interpret Obama’s statement “If they bring a knife to this fight, we bring a gun?”