Framing the narrative of the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting
The Colorado Springs shootings have afforded the media and the left many opportunities to criticize the right, but one of the most creative is this type of article, headlined “After two days of silence, GOP candidates respond to Planned Parenthood shootings.” Initially, the Republican candidates were widely criticized for not speaking out immediately. Then, once they issued statements condemning the killings, their previous silence was still given pride of place.
How about assuming that they were waiting at least a short while to find out what actually happened—who the victims were, whether they were chosen randomly or targeted, why they were shot, and where—before issuing statements that they would later have to retract? Was the shooter a crazy guy shooting wildly at people in a parking lot that happened to be near a Planned Parenthood office, as well as a strip mall and grocery, and did he then run into the Planned Parenthood office to take shelter and keep shooting people in the parking lot from there? Or did he target Planned Parenthood, and if so, was it from political conviction or some other reason?
First reports were that no one in the clinic was hurt, and the only named victims—such as Garrett Swasey, the police officer killed—were shot while in the parking lot. We’ve since learned the names of the two other fatalities, but not where they were killed, nor where the shooter was when it happened—was he inside the facility shooting at people inside? Outside shooting in? Inside shooting out? Did he go from one mode to another, and in what order? Ever since the shooting I’ve been searching for some clarity on these facts, but so far all I’ve discovered are conflicting reports (none of them official) or silence. However, the bulk of the evidence so far (subject to change, because this is tentative) seems to indicate that he probably began outside (not necessarily near the office) in the mall parking lot, shooting people outside, then ran inside the office and continued shooting from there.
One of the dead has been identified as Ke’Arre Stewart, 29, a male Army veteran, who was there accompanying a friend to the clinic. The circumstances of his shooting are unclear, but according to his brother (and I have no idea how accurate his report is, or on what it is based), Stewart was shot outside the clinic, having gone outside to use his cellphone.
The second fatality was Jennifer Markovsky, a 36-year-old mother of two who was “at the Planned Parenthood clinic supporting a friend.” Does “at the clinic” mean in the Clinic? In the parking lot? Near the clinic? That could matter in terms of the shooter’s motive, but the MSM either doesn’t know the details, or is being very sloppy about the details (purposely or accidentally).
A statement by the shooter to the effect of “no more baby parts” has been fastened on by an eager media and gotten tons of play, for obvious reasons: it’s near-perfect for the preferred narrative that connects the Planned Parenthood videos to these murders. But the truth seems much more vague:
A law enforcement official also told the Associated Press that Dear made a “no more baby parts” remark following his arrest Friday. The official said the remark was part of a rambling statement that investigators are parsing to understand the reasoning.
The law enforcement official who recounted Dear’s statement spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not allowed to publicly discuss the ongoing investigation. The official said the “no more baby parts” comment was among a number of statements he made to authorities after his arrest, making it difficult to know his specific motivation.
Murders like these are terrible events that all sides, and virtually all people, deplore. But in the current climate they are made into political weapons long before the facts are out. For the Republicans, MSM questions about these shootings are like a minefield they must be prepared to traverse, a series of traps based on suppositions and innuendos and half-facts. For the most part the police are properly slow and cautious in releasing information, but leaves the MSM plenty of time to weave their story. If corrections have to come later (as with Columbine or Sandy Hook, where the media was initially wrong about a great deal), most people won’t read them and will be on to the next cause célé¨bre. By then the imposed narrative will have solidified in their minds, never to be dislodged by subsequent revelations, even ones that tend to discredit it.
Personally, I’d like to wait for facts, whichever side or cause (or lack of cause) the shooter espouses. But there’s hay to be made with these shootings, and so those who are out to make it can’t afford to wait.
[NOTE: And by the way, if the shooter turns out to have attacked Planned Parenthood intentionally because of a political anti-abortion motive, does that mean that no one can expose an abortion clinic’s wrongdoing for fear of a vigilante killing? Or, to take it one step further and into far more absurd territory, does that mean that Salinger shouldn’t have written Catcher in the Rye (the book that inspired Mark David Chapman), and Jodie Foster should have been nicer to John Hinckley, because these things motivated the assassination of John Lennon and the nearly-successful attempt on Reagan’s life, respectively?]
[ADDENDUM: I wanted to add that another purpose of setting the initial media narrative before the facts come out is to plant the narrative so firmly in people’s mind that it invalidates later officially-released facts that might contradict it. For example, this occurred in the Zimmerman and Michael Brown cases. The result is that, when police release the official reports, or when juries render their verdicts, if those things don’t dovetail with the previously-developed MSM narrative then it sets the stage for rage and riots, and gives the left even more opportunity to whip people up to leftist activism.]
Ah wish she’d trimmed her beard a tad!
On Sunday, the Associated Press revealed that officials involved with the Colorado Springs shooting have sealed the warrants and will not not disclose why Robert Dear allegedly went on a shooting spree, killing three people.
The AP added:
Police say in a statement Sunday that they are sealing the warrants related to the case against 57-year-old Robert Lewis Dear. They say they are not providing information on the weapon used in Friday’s shooting, a timeline of events or a motive of the suspect.
That will continue to stoke speculation about what led to the shooting that killed a police officer and two other people. Dear is scheduled to make his first court appearance Monday afternoon.
The news was buried in an article about the three shooting victims.
There is something about her.
The MSM is so, so partisan. It is all about crafting a liberal narrative. And it works too.
And the Left will attempt to, and succeed, of getting unbelievable mileage out of drawing a moral equivalence between this Dear guy, and a tiny handful of other lunatics with the relentless and ubiquitous murders committed in the name of Islam.
This one lone insane person, and regardless of what his motives were, the least we can conclude is that he’s clearly a crackpot, makes the pro-life movement, in the light of the MSM narrative, every bit as bad as 1400 years of Islam warring against civilization. You can guarantee this will the subject of many Facebook memes.
We are truly in an Orwellian world.
The German socialists, Japanese imperialists, Soviet communists, Chinese Marxists, South African progressives, etc., were similarly anxious to prevent or obfuscate reporting of their final solutions and clinical cannibalism.
Never again, right?
Perhaps not until it’s conservative Jews.
Hopefully, moral sanity will prevail over the left-wing led quasi-religious pro-choice cult.
ConceptJunkie:
Welcome to The Twilight Zone, or, in modern parlance, The Penumbra.
Where quasi-religious cults are established by the State, and morally insane people have a sincerely held belief in spontaneous conception. The scientific naivety of liberals is unparalleled.
As for clinical cannibalism at Planned Parenthood et al… Well, that deserves its own category under morally insane. A truly progressive or generational liberalism that recalls humanity’s all too frequent indulgence in unprincipled ideologies.
Trigger Wars. The People strike back. It’s for the babies, literally.
Part of the problem is that we have no way of holding media accountable for misinformation, besides the usual boycott. MSNBC has so few viewers at this point, their raison d’etre is to spew disinformation so a boycott wouldn’t do anything to them anyway.
The question is: how do we hold them accountable? How do we punish them in a meaningful way for irresponsibility/propaganda?
NeoNeocon: “does that mean that no one can expose an abortion clinic’s wrongdoing for fear of a vigilante killing?”
Yes. This is the whole point of the K-12 self-esteem games once they get to college, are vindicated, and then made normal. It started a long time ago when it became verboten to criticize, even if truthful and or factual, in any way that demeaned or lessened the victim (usually female according to the class that the group that protects abortion the most), to make her fail in life (as a patriarchal conspiracy).
Its well believed by the adults being cranked out for decades that trigger phrases and lack of safe space can cause such things — and even failure to warn people of the presence of triggers is traumatic.
Trigger warning
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning
Trigger warnings are customary in some feminist and other Safe spaces. They are designed to prevent unaware encountering of certain materials or subjects for the benefit of people who have an extremely strong and damaging emotional response (for example, post-traumatic flashbacks or urges to harm themselves) to such topics. Having these responses is called “being triggered”.
Miller-Young? anyone? anyone?
Miller-Young’s excuse for her deed: that she was “triggered” by images in the protesters’ materials, which reportedly included graphic pictures of aborted fetuses
Here’s what the officer said she told him:
to return to neoneocons question, it appears that you cant talk about it at all. No one can even think of who may be triggered from either side into action and be the real one to blame for the outcome. [do note how it resembles the past PC custom of not saying or discussing certain subjects in front of women]
These professors are making it so by teaching their charges to react in certain ways that appeals to their sensibilities as the past rules did before someone told them they dont, and adopt the position that what happens is not the fault of the self, but the fault outside the self.
[edited for length by n-n]
Artfldgr:
My question that you quote was indeed rhetorical. I realize that’s part of the purpose of the left’s approach here.
The msm reminds me of a crowd that storms into a store the moment the doors open on Black Friday trampling anyone in its path. In the case of a shooting spree (except urban black gang warfare) the msm tramples on the dead bodies to push their anti-2nd narrative. They are just as sick in the head as the shooters.
The blogosphere pushes back and so does Fox News but for apolitical people and LIV, the MSM narrative carries the day.
I’ve seen a few people point to this as A decent timeline of the shooting based on real time and after action media reports
Christoper B:
Thanks–that’s better than anything I’ve seen, but I assume we’ve gotten some false information and things will be revised. But that link substantiates what I’ve learned and what I’ve suspected from the start, which is that the was a lot of random shooting in the parking lot that served many buildings, and then the shooter later went into the PP building, but it seems no one was hurt there.
It may turn out that PP was his target, but there’s no way to come to that conclusion at this point. And yet, of course, that’s the entire thrust of the narrative so far.
My line today has been “Ah, so you are saying the government should have suppressed the news about Planned Parenthood so that vulnerable people don’t get overexcited?”
So far, I’ve been able to shrug, sigh, and walk away from every response to that.
Like we say here in NC, “The boy ain’t raht.” http://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2015/11/28/suspected-planned-parenthood-gunman-unmoored-wnc/76498458/
neo raises a very salient point, one that I had not considered before. Rather than summarize the point that has interested me, here it is again — in case anyone is in a hurry and may be skipping over neo’s ADDENDUM:
BEGIN PASTE
[ADDENDUM: I wanted to add that another purpose of setting the initial media narrative before the facts come out is to plant the narrative so firmly in people’s mind that it invalidates later officially-released facts that might contradict it. For example, this occurred in the Zimmerman and Michael Brown cases. The result is that, when police release the official reports, or when juries render their verdicts, if those things don’t dovetail with the previously-developed MSM narrative then it sets the stage for rage and riots, and gives the left even more opportunity to whip people up to leftist activism.]
END PASTE
I don t think thr MSM can make as much *hay* as they would like to, consider all the *killing* going on at the clinic!!!!
Leftys have no moral high ground here. (I do deplore this loss of innocent by standers) but we cannot expect that
mentally ill persons will not react to *abortion* publicity!
The Colorado governor says that the Planned Parenthood shooting is due to the rhetoric of “talk radio” and “bloggers.”
The cop killed was a pro-life pastor.
The bearded perpetrator identifies as a woman.
The media lies are amazingly effective. My brother, a paleocon Air Force vet, 57 years old, said to me, “I don’t think it makes sense for the Republicans to outlaw abortion altogether,” which is what the media liars had persuaded him was the point of the Planned Parenthood videos (which he hadn’t seen).
I was taken aback, then I replied with a couple of terse descriptions of what was IN those videos, and he was shocked. I reminded him that They. Lie. All. The. Time.
Find it interesting that today the University of Chicago shut down their school due to a threat against white students and white police, I believe. This was all in connection with the Laquan killing. How strange that the media is not blaming the #blacklivesmatter movement for inciting violence in Chicago.
Honestly, I think most normal, thinking people recognize this junk and dismiss it. I am glad the police have been pretty silent in Colorado Springs. The same was true in Oregon. It shuts down the media and lets the situation cool off. Better to focus on the court hearing when it happens…that is when the truth and facts come out and the event is separate from the emotions of the shootings themselves.
When the police play into the media’s hands, we get the crap that floods out on Twitter and elsewhere.
FYI, notice that we have gotten no further details on the black man who killed his former co-workers in Virginia? Nobody cared to dig into that guy’s life beyond a few minor pieces. Where was his family? Where was anyone to talk about what this man was like? Why he would do such a thing?
The same is true for the Middle Eastern kid who stabbed people in California. There were bits and pieces about a possible connection to ISIS. Disappeared as if nothing happened.
Anyway, I’m sort of glad there is NO news about this man. He was crazy. That’s about all we need to know. Start a dialogue about improving mental health and changing laws so that family have an easier time committing someone. That is more useful.
“This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt ‘victimized’ by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13,” Piper explained in his letter posted to the school’s website. “It appears that this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love! In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.” (snip)
“I’m not making this up,” he continued. “Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic! Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims! Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them ‘feel bad’ about themselves, is a ‘hater,’ a ‘bigot,’ an ‘oppressor,’ and a ‘victimizer.’”
Dr. Everett Piper, President
Oklahoma Wesleyan University
http://www.okwu.edu/blog/2015/11/this-is-not-a-day-care-its-a-university/
[there is only one group that used victim politics until recently]
given that being male and showing maleness is a crime. and since they teach the normal state of the oppressed is victim-hood… these kids cant be oppressors, that’s evil so they have to be victims and the state must have total power to fix things for them.
mollynh, 5:27 pm — “I don’t think the MSM can make as much *hay* as they would like to, consider all the *killing* going on at the clinic!!!! Leftys have no moral high ground here.”
mollynh, I reckon you’re equating your moral frame of reference to theirs, and arriving at a conclusion different from what might be expected, because (I reckon) you are in fact imposing your moral frame of reference on them. Their moral frame of reference is different from yours.
Okay, enough abstraction; where I’m going in plain English is:
The shooter shot someone who was a fully developed human being. The “*killing* going on at the clinic” is the snuffing out of lives that are fetuses, not at all fully developed.
You (mollynh) make no moral distinction between the two, for reasons that may be moral or religious or a combination.
The lefties to whom you refer do make that moral distinction. For them, one is a fully developed human life, and the others are mere, disposable fetuses.
In the lefties’ moral frame of reference, the fetuses’ lives are not fully developed human lives, and so, in the lefties’ moral frame of reference, there is a clear distinction: one is indeed a human life, and the other simply is not.
Therefore, in the lefties’ moral frame of reference, they (the lefties) are fully entitled to the moral high ground. In your (mollynh’s) frame of reference, in which there is no moral distinction between the fully developed human being and the fetus, neither side gets to claim the moral high ground.
MJR,
A baby (note I shun the term fetus) can most certainly feel pain somewhere around 20 to 25 weeks of gestation. So abortion is indeed murder after the first 4 months plus a few weeks. Suger coating with descriptions of fetus versus baby does not make it sanitary. 1st degree homicide is 1st degree homicide.
Good points MjR but I dont think all the Left does that callous write off. Some were raised in homes of Faith & a conscience can remain with you no matter how you try to get rid of it.
Perhaps this incident will give them some pause. And it is an excellent rebuttal to give them the digging reminder
“Its an awful situation but there is killing going on in there
too & that can set wacky people off”
Then they *got nuthinn* quick & snappy to come back at you with & you leave em slack jawed.
Meanwhile, today was another “normal” day at Planned Parenthood when somewhere around 800 American “refugees” were killed between the womb and the world.
So, the liberal frame of reference is that an undeveloped or less developed human life is a viable candidate for the final solution or clinical cannibalism (a “green” solution).
That does bring back a lot of history.
Then there is the sincerely held belief in spontaneous conception, which is promoted by scientifically naive individuals, and exploited by men and women with a god-complex, or who just want to enjoy environmental stability.
Truly bitter clingers from the scientific dark ages.
It’s not surprising that they demand privacy for their activities. The reporting of their cult’s rites must cause them some anxiety, if only that they will be marginalized or excluded (not pro-choice, but on principle) from decent company by morally sane men and women.
That said, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. Once, repent. Twice and more, send them into combat against the Islamic State. They can reduce, reuse, and recycle each other. We can even turn off the cameras to ensure their privacy.
We have just crossed over into The Penumbra.
If the killer had hollered Allahu akbar as he shot folks near/from the PP area, how would our MSM and lefties (but I repeat myself) react?
That would be two sacred cows in conflict. Oh bitter day!
The left is taught that the fetus is not a person until a woman, the mother grants the baby personhood, until then, its not a person. its about the power of women to decide who is a person and who isnt.
OldFert Says:
November 30th, 2015 at 8:56 pm
If the killer had hollered Allahu akbar as he shot folks near/from the PP area, how would our MSM and lefties (but I repeat myself) react?
That would be two sacred cows in conflict. Oh bitter day!
…Despite the heroic actions of the police on the scene, some on the left are using the fact that Dear was not killed as evidence of racial disparity in the treatment of black and white suspects.
parker (7:48 pm), I used the term “fetus” because I was trying (hard) to place myself in the leftie moral frame of reference. I *never* use the word otherwise.
mollynh (7:53 pm), your point is well taken. The idea that *someone* does hold that there is killing of humans going on, is sufficient to “set wacky people off”.
In case anyone is triggered, just remember, right characterization, wrong problem set. Don’t run amuck, because you will be aborted… and probably sodomized and cannibalized, too.
And don’t puff the hallucinatory dragon. Not in Colorado or anywhere else it is legal. You don’t know what is has been laced with. Keep Colorado weird, or is that Portland?
Morally sane people of the world, unite!
the fetus is not a person until a woman, the mother grants the baby personhood
I’ve come across a slightly different characterization. A human life is priceless (e.g. intrinsic value) until a woman and her abortionist or planner appraise its value taken as a whole, by individual body parts, clumps of cells, etc.
It’s a tragicomedy that takes place in The Penumbra.
A different take. The media and the left (one and the same) never misses a chance to excoriate conservatives for politicizing a tragedy. So the GOP candidates waited a couple days to avoid that appearance,. Not that this ever stops Obama from doing the same or the media for failing to call him on it.
So what do they get for waiting? Blasted for staying silent for 2 days. When you hold the microphones in the media, academia and government, you always get to set the narrative. That’s why I agree that the Kochs should stop wasting their money on candidates and start buying media instead. And perhaps more academic outlets that are based on real discourse, the actual sciences and history might change the course of doom we are on.