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.]
