When fanatical acts aren’t worthy of mass media reporting

We all know that, in spite of the fact that fringe left wing ecoterrorism is listed by the FBI as the number one domestic terror threat we face in America, the news media rarely if ever saturates their airwaves, their Internet pages, and their news papers with stories about it, nor do we see massive pundits and politicos lining up to express their outrage. Of course, this doesn’t mean that those pundits and politicos condone the militant environmental acts – just that, in the scheme of things, they don’t see the problem as widespread enough to make an issue out of it.

Contrast that with they do widespread reporting on acts of fringe right wing violence, case in point. We’ll be hearing about the murder for George Tiller for weeks, with hypocritical left wing pundits, politicos, and news reporters alike talking about how this is “concrete evidence” of how “crazy” all pro-lifers are. Just like Bill Clinton did after the OKC bombing, they’ll blame right wing “crazies” for being “accessories” to lone acts of violence by a few fringe nutballs.

Also, contrast that with the wall to wall coverage we received of cop killer Andrew Mickel, a far left winger who gunned down Officer David Mobilio, 31-year-old husband and father of a toddler, in 2002 in order to “bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country. Now I’m coming forward, to explain that this killing was also an action against corporate irresponsibility.” It was a rampage he wanted to continue, but didn’t get the chance to because the cops read his confession on left wing Internet websites and caught him.

Oh – that’s right, there was no wall to wall coverage of Mickel’s heinous act. Bob Owens explains:

There are some of us in the center-right blogosphere who came down heavily on Mickel for his politically-motivated assassination of an innocent police officer, but the national media largely ignored Mickel’s conviction in a death penalty case, probably because of the fact that they helped shape the terrorist he became, and because he was a living example of the worst extreme of their ideology.

Now that a man identified as Roeder has murdered infanticide specialist George Tiller, the media finally has a politically motivated assassination it can get behind and hype. They will try to portray as some sort of representative example of a much wider group, just as noted conspiracy theorist Andrew Sullivan reflexively did, even though the last murder of an abortionist occurred more than a decade ago.

As I noted earlier, nobody gains from such politically-motivated murders, and I can only wonder how the powers that be will try to use this tragedy to their advantage.

I’m not wondering. It’s already started.