But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.What exactly has Krugman been smoking over there at the New York Times building? Have you not been paying attention to the news, as reported by your own paper? Heck, have you even bothered to do a Google search of James Von Brunn. You'd be disabused of the notion that somehow conservative media is to blame for the murder of security guard Stephen T. Johns.
There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.
Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.
And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.
Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox News’s new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or not, millions of Americans get their news — and it gives daily airtime to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration camps as part of the Obama administration’s “totalitarian” agenda (although he eventually conceded that nothing of the kind was happening).
But let’s not neglect the print news media. In the Bush years, The Washington Times became an important media player because it was widely regarded as the Bush administration’s house organ. Earlier this week, the newspaper saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President Obama “not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself,” and that in any case he has “aligned himself” with the radical Muslim Brotherhood.
Let me do the research that Krugman clearly refuses to do since it would severely undermine his thesis. Brunn was previously imprisoned for attempting to take over the Federal Reserve. He's a convicted felon who spent six years in prison and who needed a psych evaluation as well. He believes in more conspiracy theories than one can possibly imagine. He's anti government, anti Semitic, anti Christian, and a conspiracy kook that thinks that the Jews run the government, were somehow responsible for 9/11 (which was also a government conspiracy), Christianity is a hoax, and most recently believed that Obama was hiding his true background.
That doesn't quite fit with Krugman's narrative about conservative media. After all, he's been espousing anti Semitic claptrap for decades. He's been anti government for decades. The one overriding issue with Brunn is his hatred of Jews.
That has nothing to do with the conservative media. It has nothing to do with the media at all. He's an anti-Semite to the core, and that's been his driving force for decades.
And that core belief was there well before the so-called conservative media even existed.
As to the whole nonsense about the DHS report, Krugman again hasn't been reading his own paper. The leaked DHS report on right wing extremism (and it was entitled as much so left wing terrorist groups were not included) was ambiguous and vague and DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano expressed regret at its publication, but on the aspect of former military somehow linking up with right wing extremists, the concern was that former Gulf War, Iraq, and Afghanistan veterans would be ones to profile for, not veterans from World War II. After all, who could see an 89 year old geezer as the profile of a terrorist?
Instead, Krugman is basically attacking individuals like Glenn Beck. I can't say that I've ever watched or listened to Beck, but various clips of him show that he's unhinged, but no more so than someone like Keith Olbermann, who is a leftist who gets a fraction of Beck's audience.
As to the Washington Times, might I remind Krugman that the New York Times has repeatedly been kissing the ass of President Obama, and did everything possible to see that Obama was elected, including running nonsensical stories about GOP candidate John McCain and a supposed liason with a lobbyist that existed nowhere except in the demented minds of the reporters who got the editors at the Times to run with the story.
I might even remind Krugman that CBS once tried to throw the 2004 election for John Kerry with the bogus Rathergate documents. It took bloggers to not only uncover the deception, but those media outlets did all they could to push the fake but accurate meme, despite the overwhelming evidence that they were concocted and Dan Rather and his producer Mary Mapes purposefully overlooked the questionable circumstances of the documents and ran with the incendiary story because of overwhelming Bush-hatred.
That the Bush Administration sought a solitary mouthpiece to get its own opinion out there in the face of an overwhelming liberal media doesn't show malfeasance on their part, only that the media isn't doing its job.
Krugman is merely playing his own part - one hit wonder.
Perhaps he should stick to the economics, because his grasp of the facts, particularly in this instance is sorely lacking.
UPDATE:
Here's a copy of Brunn's criminal complaint, which notes that Brunn was charged under 18 USC 1111 (first degree murder) and 18 USC 930 (murder at federal facility), both of which are punishable by the death penalty. The crime was also videotaped, which means that the incident will be available for the jury to view.
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