Friday's Absurdity of the Day: The Media Jumps to Protecting Alec Baldwin
Well, this seems like kind of a big deal…
So, Alec Baldwin killed one person and injured another with a “prop” pistol on a movie set outside of Santa Fe, NM on Thursday.
I love the term “prop” pistol. If a pistol fires live ammunition, it’s a pistol, for crying out loud. But every media report on this story is using the term “prop” pistol as a means of assuring us all that Baldwin, a loyal leftist hothead dimwit, is just an innocent bystander in a terrible tragedy.
And maybe he is. I have no information otherwise.
It’s the assumption by the media that pisses me off. Baldwin, after all, is the guy who spent four years bashing Trump and imitating him in really bad, unfunny SNL skits. Thus, the assumption among all the woke nitwit Gen-Zers or whatever we’re calling the under-30 crowd these days is that this particular old boomer is actually one of the good guys, and so must be protected in their stories.
The NY Times story on the shootings linked above is a great example. You have to read all the way down to the 20th paragraph - long past the point where 90% of short attention-span Times readers will have moved onto some other shiny object - before you see any mention of Baldwin’s chronic anger management issues and run-ins with police. You must read all the way to the very end to be reminded that he was arrested by NY City police in 2018 and charged with assault after beating up some guy on the street outside his home.
Again, Baldwin may be completely innocent here and I have no information otherwise. But imagine if the actor involved in this particular incident had been a conservative actor - say, Bruce Willis - who had shot two people on the set, killing one.
Anybody believe Willis would receive the benefit of the doubt from the NY Times or any other media outlet in America? Anyone think the pistol would invariably, without exception, be identified as a “prop”? Anyone think you’d have to read all the way down to the very end of the story before getting a recounting of any run-ins with the cops that Willis may have had during his life (he has had none to my knowledge, but then, Willis is not a raving lunatic with anger management issues)?
What if this had happened on a Mel Gibson movie set? Think you’d have to wait to paragraph 20 of a NY Times story to read a recounting of all the unsubstantiated allegations of Gibson being an anti-Semite, a recounting that would have been written by some Israel-hating 28 year-old Times fake reporter fresh out of Columbia J-School?
Yeah, no. That Gen-Z reporter’s editor would ensure that those allegations against Gibson or any past sins by Willis become the lede in the story.
But for Alec Baldwin, those very real sins and very real police record are tossed in at the very end, an afterthought that allows the Times to build the narrative that they are irrelevant to the tragedy that took place on his film set. The Times had to include that information, mind you, in order to maintain the pretense that it is still some semblance of an actual “news” organization - it’s the emphasis, or lack thereof, that matters here.
Alec Baldwin may well be completely innocent here, and I have no information otherwise. But any pistol that fires live ammunition is a damn pistol, not a prop, and any real news organization would take care to identify it as such, regardless of the political leanings of the person who fired it.
That is all.
There is no circumstance where Alec Baldwin is innocent. He, and he alone, is responsible for the results of discharging a loaded weapon. He, and he alone was responsible for knowing whether or not a weapon in his custody was load or not. He should be charged with negligent homicide.
The problem is the vilification of the NRA. If these people would have taken an NRA approved gun safety course this beautiful talented wife and mother would probably be alive. Everyone who has taken these courses knows EXACTLY what I mean.