By Lucas White
In a city that was built by the Mafia, that still largely exists for the purpose of gambling, there occurred this weekend an event which might be thought correlative. Gun violence.
The Constitution of the nation is now “under fire” in light of the October 1st Las Vegas attack, a ten-minute fish-in-a-barrel snipefest by a single man, which killed 59. It happened at the Route 91 Harvest music festival, which soon saw its country music fans doing the “watermelon crawl”, as they were fired upon from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay resort.
Many of the victims might reasonably be assumed to have fit into Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” — “irredeemable” and “not America” by her demented words spoken on September 9, 2016. Yet, she seemed conveniently interested in their lives the morning after they lost them, as she took to Twitter to politicize their deaths for her party’s purposes in their never-ending spat with the NRA. She posted, “The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots. Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get.” Many knowledgeable in firearms soon corrected her apparent misunderstanding, by explaining that a silencer does not make a gun anywhere near inaudible but simply lowers the volume. The device might bring a 150-decibel gunshot down by 25 decibels, preventing hearing damage but not obscuring an active massacre.
Then, in an appearance that was four weeks early, former congresswoman Gabby Giffords used her Halloween-face at a press conference in front of the Capitol. Rolling out her ready-made campaign on the very next day, she tried to fan the flames of the hysteria, citing the 2011 Tucson shooting that left her even uglier than before. “I know this feeling of heartbreak and horror too well,” Giffords bitched. With her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, standing by her side, every man watching could not help but think, “He does too Gabby. Believe me, he does too.”
As if it could not get any worse, the biggest splash in the sewage pool was then made by one, Jimmy Kimmel, ABC’s late-night talk show host. Once seen as a maverick, he now is clearly “working for the boss”, namely the mundane and predictable liberal establishment. Just a couple of weeks earlier, he pushed their propaganda to keep the Obamacare disaster going, claiming that Senator Bill Cassidy’s new bill did not “pass the Jimmy Kimmel test”. With all his economic learnings, the comedian was concerned about the possible exclusion of preexisting conditions. Perhaps if a family totals their car without car insurance, they might hire Kimmel to defend them in court against Allstate, as they claim a right to buy car replacement coverage after the fact. With his witty jokes and sincere tears, he might sway the judge to get the cruel company to buy them a new car, rather than “discriminate” in favor of those who bought the insurance beforehand.
Flushed with his new accolade, now blabbering as not just an ass-clown but as a media-approved political ass-clown, Kimmel could not have had a better opportunity handed to him than a mass-shooting in his hometown of Las Vegas. After naming President Donald Trump, Senator Mitch McConnell, and even press secretary Sarah Sanders, Kimmel said, “they should be praying for God to forgive them for letting the gun lobby run this country, because it’s so crazy”. Then, while showing a graphic of 56 profiles, said “These are the faces of the senators who, days after the shooting in Orlando, voted against a bill that would have closed those loopholes. These are the 56 senators who didn’t want to do anything about that.”
For ten minutes, Kimmel dramatically continued his teary disposal of wisdom upon his audience, including such gems as “your prayers are insufficient” and “it’s not enough to send your love and prayers”. Other makeup-crusted entertainers followed suit, sadly even Conan O’Brien, whose monologue, though much less pompous than Kimmel’s, included political counsel against some forms of gun ownership. One wonders if Bozo the Clown, had his show not been cancelled, might have lectured children on his conceptions of gun legislation, just before playing the Grand Prize Game.
Putting humor and humorists aside, the proverbial search for “blood on the hands” might rightly be viewed as ending in the boardrooms of the very media services that are accusing everyone else and denying the efficacy of God. ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, Google, Yahoo!, and their affiliates did in fact do something after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. They made mass murderer Omar Mateen’s face and name famous worldwide, instantly and relentlessly thereafter. It was then easily proliferated by Facebook, Twitter, and Google’s YouTube.
It was just what Mateen wanted. He did, after all, make two self-identifying 9-1-1 calls during the shooting and, still not feeling secure in his fame, called News 13 of Orlando and said, “I’m the shooter. It’s me. I am the shooter.” Soon enough, every mainstream media news outlet had his facebook selfies ready for viewing by the masses — the ultimate advertising package for a narcissistic lunatic. Mateen had all of five Facebook profiles and posted on the site before and during the attack. He even searched Facebook for “Pulse Orlando” and “Shooting” while he was making it happen.
Omar Mateen, the murderer of 49, was clearly motivated by the possibility of self-aggrandizement through media. The other motive that he claimed during the calls, in the postings, and in his words to the victims was support of the Islamic State. Not surprisingly, the media and social media attempted to minimize his blatant assertions of ISIS-affiliation, and to instead try to portray him as motivated by sexual-insecurity or even racism. Yet, the very last motive that they would have ever disseminated discussion of, or supported legislation against, was the aforementioned first and most obvious. To admit that Mateen wanted media coverage would have been to take at least some responsibility, rather than trying to deflect all of it to his weapon of choice.
The method of mass murder is, in fact, always a choice, of which there are many suitors. To completely legislate one away, if that were possible in a world where criminals do not follow the law, would in no way eliminate the massacre act but merely alter the means. Whether by truck as in Nice, by knife as in Kunming, by airplane as in New York, or by bomb as in Oklahoma City, the vulnerability of man will often succumb a crowd to the decision of one or a few.
As police search for a motive for the new killer, ABC and their media friends have already made Stephen Paddock a household name. The scramble to publicize his face resulted in a closed-eyes shot being mass-distributed at first, until a more handsome photo was found. “What we know” articles spread like wildfire, with Mr. Paddock’s personality, interests, and life story carefully articulated. “Common sense”, as Professor Kimmel is apt to cite against others, might suggest that making an instant celebrity out of anyone who shoots up a crowd, might lead others to shoot up crowds. Yet, it must realized that, using Kimmel’s crass analogy, ABC has “their balls in a money clip”.
Rather than risk losing out in the sleazy competition, ABC always chooses to cast away any such notions of cause and effect. After all, if they find themselves as part of the cause, it would be rather bad for ratings to be the one network that refuses viewers their selfish demand for a name, face, and biography of the latest rising star in the world of terrorism. Instead, they and their lapdogs hop onto the cause that fits the liberal disposition, that of blaming the gun, so as to hopefully, somewhere down the line, further emasculate the entire population with anti-gun laws. Their coalition of financiers, with their allied liberal special interests, would have it no other way. As for the next fifty people who are killed by someone at least partially motivated by fame, just know that, by the words of the poet Jimmy Kimmel, “someone has opened a window into hell” and they “won’t do anything about this”.
Aleppo Free Press 