Still exploiting tragedy for political gain

December 12, 2007

Yesterday, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins blamed the “secular media” for Matthew Murray’s shooting rampage in Colorado on Sunday, which left five dead, including the gunman. Murray, 24, had been raised in “a deeply religious Christian household,” but apparently overcome by mental illness, he snapped and gunned down innocent people — a tragedy Perkins sought to exploit to advance his political agenda.

A few hours later, another religious right powerhouse, Gary Bauer, sent a similar message to his supporters.

There are several disturbing parallels to the Virginia Tech massacre. First, it appears as though his final online post occurred between the two attacks. Second, despite his upbringing, he was clearly motivated by an intense hatred for Christians, just as the Virginia Tech murderer was. In his last online message, Murray reportedly wrote, “You Christians brought this on yourselves. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.” It is worth noting that this hatred of Christians is constantly promoted by the radical Left – on their websites and in their books, articles etc. (emphasis added)

OK, name one. Highlight some of these multimedia liberal examples in which progressives “constantly promote” violence against Christians. If Gary Bauer wants to back this smear up, terrific. At that point, he’d only be guilty of taking advantage of a horrible tragedy to take a cheap shot at Americans he disagrees with. But I have a hunch he can’t back it up — Bauer wants to exploit the tragedy with baseless demagoguery, which is crass and ugly, even by the religious right’s low standards.

What’s striking is that Perkins and Bauer seem to be part of a larger victim complex.

Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House, a prominent far-right blog, pointed to a Christian majority that’s feeling under siege — and more than a little sorry for itself. (via Oliver Willis)

[F]undamentalist Christians are still the target of an insidious bias in the news media as well as Hollywood. And the question that must be asked in the wake of the Colorado church shootings is does all this create an atmosphere of permissiveness that enabled the shooter? […]

Given the spate of lawsuits brought by atheists and others who seek to remove Christian symbols and the outward manifestations of Christian beliefs from the public square along with attacks in media and on the internet, is it any wonder that Christians feel themselves besieged?

Remember, we’re talking about this in the context of a deranged young man with access to firearms, who grew up in a deeply religious Christian household, attended church services for years, and was homeschooled for religious reasons. And yet, somehow, this madman was poisoned, at least part, by a secular culture that disdains fundamentalists? This tragedy generates questions about state-sponsored Ten Commandments displays?

I can appreciate the notion that in the wake of a tragedy, people are looking for answers. A sick young man with a gun murdered innocent people, and it’s tempting to want to extend the blame beyond just the guilty individual. Perhaps it helps us make sense of the senseless.

But for conservatives to lash out at the culture, the media, and secularists is sad and misguided. Matthew Murray was sick. Blaming the left is no more reasonable that blaming his conservative Christian upbringing.

Perhaps it’s best for Perkins, Bauer, and others to simply show some compassion, refrain from absurd finger-pointing, and simply extend sympathies to the victims’ loved ones. Is that really too much to ask?

hatred of Christians is constantly promoted by the radical Left – on their websites and in their books

As is so often the case with the right, it is all in the (self-serving, tautological) definitions. Anyone who does not agree with you “hates” you. Anyone who is not quite as far right as you on the issue you are talking about today is with the “radical Left.”

Therefore, when Christopher Hitchens writes “God is Not Great,” it doesn’t matter if he makes his case calmly, rationally or carefully — he doesn’t just disagree with the premise, he hates Christians (not even Christianity or Christian theology, mind you; he hates the Christians themselves). And it doesn’t matter that he is essentially a right-wing warmonger on international issues, he must be part of the “radical Left,” because really who else would hate Christians anyway?

To people like Perkins and Bauer, the fact that sane people don’t bother to argue against Through the Looking Glass logic simply means that they always win so they must be right.

  • “But for conservatives to lash out at the culture, the media, and secularists is sad and misguided.”

    But they do it all the time (see comments immediately post-9/11 attacks) and it is very successful in bringing in the benjamins from their poor, deluded, confused, ignorant ‘flocks.’ It’s all about the benjamins.

  • [F]undamentalist Christians are still the target of an insidious bias in the news media as well as Hollywood.

    Uh, what? How many Apocalypse movies have their been in the last thirty years out of Hollywood? How about Constantine? Stigmata? End of Days? The Prophecy (I,, II, and III)? It’s at least 9, if you count all the Damien / The Omen movies.

    And what about that Crusades movie (can’t remember the title) that came out a few years ago?

    And what about Mel Gibson’s recent movies (The Passion of the Christ, and that anti-non-Christian movie, Apokalypto)?

    And what about the long history of pro-Christian movies (for instance, Ben-Hur, a Jewish-nationalism movie that apparently had to be draped in heavy Christian over-tones just to make it to the big screen)?

  • I understand that applied to missionary school but was rejected. Think that may have something to do with it?

    What a backwards country we live in… amazing. The world is passing America by because we are being held hostage by a small group of people whose views are more in line with the dark ages than the age of reason, which produced men like our founding fathers.

    It’s almost as if these people enjoy playing the victims; I bet in their minds they see themselves like the Christians of ancient Rome, persecuted and slaughtered. The problem is, they have the mindset of the ancient Romans, and it is the ‘secular media’ and we progressives who espouse the true teachings of Christ, namely tolerance, equity, help for the needy, etc.

    My what a few thousand years can do.

  • “Highlight some of these multimedia liberal examples in which progressives ‘constantly promote’ violence against Christians.”

    ok. i’d like to smack gary bauer upside the head.

  • What’s striking is that Perkins and Bauer seem to be part of a larger victim complex.

    I’m hoping that’s rhetorical flourish because this entire movement is BUILT on a victim complex.

    These “persecution Christians” can only feel like they’re doing their part if they are being actively persecuted for their beliefs. Why? Because the Bible tells them that when they work in Jesus’s name they will be persecuted for it. Nevermind that the Bible is discussing the facts on the ground for Christians ca 100AD (where you would suffer ACTUAL persecution for being Christian for a variety of reasons), the Bible is supposed to be the Word of God, perpetually relevant, and always personal. So it MUST be speaking of modern day persecutions directed against YOU. If you aren’t being persecuted it must be because you aren’t being Christian enough.

    So the movement guys need to create persecutions and their followers need to see it. And they need to see it everywhere in all walks of life. The “War on Christmas” is a persecution of Christians that fills this need. As is anyone who doubts Christian orthodoxy in a loud manner (such as Dawkins) because they need persecutors. Meanwhile the movement guys rake in the cash from their “persecuted” followers to “defend the faith” from the heathens.

    The whole movement has been built around this persecution dynamic since at least the mid-80s. Falwell was a master of it – as were Jim Bakker and Oral Roberts.

  • I’m not so sure that Mr. Murray’s actions cannot be traced back to his fundamentalist upbringing. The chorus of blame would surely be loud and long if his parents were hippies left over from the ’60’s. Agreed that it is nonsensical to draw conclusions without knowledge of the man’s individual circumstances, but it is possible that a troubled young soul was denied effective help by his cloistered religious upbringing. It’s possible that the only solutions offered for his confusion were prayer and rejection of the sinful world. And when the Christians rejected him for “health reasons” it is possible that he found a scapegoat in the narrow, judgmental environment that had poisoned his access to a larger world without offering him a positive alternative.

  • MWAAHAHAHA! That’s right Talevangicals! The evile libruls can control what you do. Just like the devil we serve, we lurk and wait for a moment of weakness to make you do things you’d never do without provocation from unseen forces of nastiness! Better be ever vigilant, because your ability to control us is non-existent but we’ve got you by the short n’ curlies. Look around, is anyone among you weak? Seems weak? Cries, looks sad, frowns at anything (except libruls), yawns too much, has scuffed shoes, or wrinkled clothes? Better cast him out before we make him pick up a gun and start shooting.

    By the way, our favorite hobby is making you all engage in sex acts that you find morally repugnant. So lock yourself up in a room and barricade the door with Bibles or one day you’ll sneeze at the wrong time and wake up on the floor of a public toilet or wrapped up in two wet suits. Of course, if that does happens you can just tell your congregants you’re in the thrall of Librul Forces.

    And hope you haven’t gotten them so worked up they burn your arse at the stake.

    xo

    The Libruls

  • I also forgot:

    Rosemary’s Baby,
    The Seventh Sign (with Demi Moore),
    and the TV movie The Stand, which is now re-run on TV constantly.

    Also there was a recent movie (I can’t think of the name) from the past year or two that featured a female antichrist.

    If you throw in end-of-the-world movies that don’t have explicitly Christian themes (all of the one’s I’ve mentioned so far did, or fit with the Christian model of an antichrist!) there are at least a couple more, such as 28 Days Later and the new Dawn of the Dead movie.

  • Here’s a link for anyone who ever claims the religious right is shut out of Hollywood ever again.

    Also, I was wrong, there were four The Omen movies, not three.

  • As usual, it’s reverse projection from the fundie morons, who simply thrive on fastasies of “oppression” in a world where churches can be found every couple of blocks, and all currency has religious propoganda inscribed on it.

    And I can only imagine the screaming if Atheists began selling a game where the players ran around killing Christians if they wouldn’t denounce Christianity, but of course the opposite has already happened:

    …Gamers pit battles between the paramilitary Christian Tribulation Force and the grey, faceless Global Community forces of the Antichrist, said to be modelled on the United Nations.

    If the Christians fail to convert others to their religion they must kill them in order to progress to the next level, dismissing any other form of religion…

    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article660906.ece

  • What they mean isn’t that religious right Christians are shut out of Hollywood. It’s that they want everyone who writes a movie to think just like them.

    But they have to lie, because arguing for conformity doesn’t sound good. It makes them sound sympathetic if they claim they’re being persecuted. Real slimy people, eh?

  • Here’s novel idea, quit getting in my face, quit spewing your hate, quit re-interpreting the Constitution, quit telling how to live, quit raping alter boys, quit covering for criminals, you spreading lies, quit bilking your followers, quit telling me what god thinks, quit with the infinite hypocrisy, quit with the war on xmas, quit hiring anti-gay leaders who are gay, quit kicking young boys out and blaming me when they come back and shoot up the place up, quit pissing on the down trodden, quit being so god damn condescending, and I will quit hating you.

    Here’s another novel idea, start acting like christians and people won’t hate you. FYI, Jesus was a bleeding heart liberal, he surrounded himself with the poor and unfortunate, not politicians and big business. Jesus didn’t have a private jet, a mansion, and he sure as hell never beat anyone, physically or mentally, in the name of god. Grow up already.

  • and he sure as hell never beat anyone, physically or mentally, in the name of god.

    Well, he did lay the smack down on people selling crap in temple.

    Matt 21:12

    And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

    Could there be any parallels between what pissed Jesus off then and mega-churches that have restaurants and video arcades and God knows what in them?

  • Dale, which of my comments would you prefer not be posted on this blog or that right wingers not get the chance to see or left-wingers not get the chance to think about, and maybe even pass on to the right wingers?

    STFU, man.

  • This is part of a larger problem that extends the globe. Like Zeitgeist said above, “Anyone who does not agree with you “hates” you. Anyone who is not quite as far right as you on the issue you are talking about today is with the “radical Left.”” This is pretty much what Al Queda has been telling their recruits for years. In fact, as I am writing this, it seems to me that this kind of brainwashing, this instilling of deep feelings of persecution by others where none actually exists is very similar to the symptoms of paranoia that can accompany acute schizophrenia. Maybe extremism and and mental illness are related, but then you just have another problem: which came first; the chicken or the egg?

  • TAIO.
    Did Jesus really do that, or did Mathew re-write history ??

    The Rock says, “A smack-ith down-ith does not equal-ith an old fashion beating from the Rock.”
    Trust me, the Rock knows.

  • Maybe extremism and and mental illness are related, but then you just have another problem: which came first; the chicken or the egg?

    You can take an otherwise sane nice person and with the same type of prep work terrorist organizations use make him believe things, condone things and commit acts that he would otherwise find repulsive. Look at Nazi Germany, look closer to home at the practice of lynching. Those people weren’t mentally ill. They were just … people. Scary, no?

  • Let me get this right: neither his genes, nor his upbringing, nor his parents, nor infection had any part to play in his mental illness…it was the “secular media” that drove him mad?

    But guess I’ll have to defer to Dr. Tony Perkins. What!!! he isn’t a Psychiatrist??!!… or any sort of Dr.? Just another con man?

    Wish we did have a truly secular media…then maybe something besides pap and propaganda would be on my TV. Maybe oodles of nifty science programs….and real news that doesn’t revolve around disfunctional actresses and maybe even a few progressives would be invited to “Meet the Press”.

  • comment #5 (citizen_pain) suggests that Murphy applied to the missionary school but was rejected. This is not quite the case. He actually spent quite some time at the school (at least months), but exhibited “strange behavior”, like tossing in his bed at night and hearing voices, then telling others that the voices didn’t talk about them because they were “good”. But that’s not why he was kicked out–he was shown the door less than a week after performing too “dark and disturbing” songs at some in-fest (one by Marilyn Mason, the other by Linkin Park, I believe). So being schizophrenic was not a problem for these guys–it’s just the kind of missionaries they want. But evil rock songs are grounds for dismissal.

    Now, one has to wonder what kind of missionaries we are talking about here. The group seems to be somewhat cross-denominational. Just recall the nine missionaries that were busted by the Taleban shortly before the US invasion and were sentenced to death for carrying suitcases full of Bibles despite clear prohibitions. All were eventually released, but that seems to be exactly the kind of job that young Murphy was being groomed for.

    It appears, Murphy shot the wrong Christians–he should have started at the top.

  • Seems to me, given the man’s background as a thoroughly indoctrinated Christian just like the guy at Nickel Mines, PA, that it would make more sense to blame that indoctrination. On the other hand, given that God punished the US with 9/11, possibly he is now punishing the Christianists for their blasphemous distorsion of what Christ taught. That makes as much sense as anything Bauer and Perkins have said.

  • Isn’t there some Christian Video game (I think, if memory serves, connected to the long series of “left behind” books) where the Christians seek out and kill all the non-Christians?’
    There are certainly plenty of examples of Christians promoting violence against non-Christians.

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