Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJune 10th, 2009
Today’s shooting at the American Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., coupled with last week’s murder of Dr. Tiller in Wichita, Kansas — both by right wing extremists — has not gone unnoticed by other groups who are also potential targets, including members of the LGBT community. Many LGBT advocacy groups and community organizations are now on high alert. Darrel Cummings, chief of staff at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center said this to reporter Karen Ocamb:
“Our security is fully staffed and on high alert. We, like other groups targeted for right wing hate rhetoric and violence, are always in the mix. When the hate and attacks and rhetoric on the right increases, so does the danger to our own community. We might have been spared a death, but we haven\’t been spared harassment and hate speech and other form of physical assaults around the marriage issue.”
Dan Savage has this succinct rundown on the Holocaust Memorial shooter:
James Von Brunn is a “revered elder statesman” to right-wing extremists, a Neo-Nazi, a “birther,” a white supremacist, a contributer to right-wing-rant-site FreeRepublic.com, and… a painter.
The term “birther” refers to right wing extremists’ allegations of a conspiracy to conceal President Barack Obama’s “true” birthplace. They allege that he wasn’t born in the United States and therefore is not eligible to be president. (Factcheck.org has the truth about Obama’s birth certificate. See also PolitiFact.) Fox News hasn’t done much to squelch those allegations. It’s sister site, Fox Nation, continued to raise the question again just a few weeks ago. But with these two shootings in just the past two weeks, even Fox News reporters are pulling back from the brink — and expressing alarm at the emails they get from their own viewers.
Shepard Smith: I read a lot of email around here, and the email to me has become more and more frightening. It’s not a new thing. It’s been happening over the past few months. It’s been happening, you know, to some degree since the election process went along. I mean we had a woman, we had a black man, we had, you know, we had a lot going on. And there are people now who are way out there on a limb, and I think they are just way out there on the limb with the email they send us, because I read it. And they are out there. I mean out there in a scary place.
I’m going to read to you a little bit, and I’m not going to read the name, but this is, I promise, a representative sample of the kinds of things that we get here.
“Shepard. How dare you tell us to get over Obama not being a U.S. citizen? Where is the birth certificate? Where? He won’t show it. So why are you so trumped up to believe it? I cannot stand Hussein. He’s a socialist Marxist who is at fast rate destroying our country.”
If you’re one who believes that abortion is murder, at what point do you go out and kill someone who’s performing abortion? Well I think we just learned for the killer of Dr. Tiller. If you are one who believes these sorts of things about the President of the United States — and I can read a hundred of them like this!
Other reporter: Thousands.
Smith: I mean from today! People who are so amped up and so angry for reasons that are so absolutely wrong, ridiculous, preposterous. Yet they are mad, and they’re very mad that I just called it preposterous.
Other reporter: Well if anybody wants to know the level of anger or whatever you want to call it, crazy, just take a spin around the blogs out there on the Internet, and take just half an hour and go out through and randomly see what’s being said out there. It’s frightening on a lot of different levels. And part of the problem I think is they’re feeding each other.
Smith: They are.
Other reporter: People are not going out there and…
Smith: Their own web sites feeding each other…
Other reporter: Right.
Smith: … the same bunch of fact, of hate that’s not based in fact, and it’s ginning itself up and I guess if that’s what you want to do with your time, maybe that’s what you do. But more and more it seems like people are taking extra step and getting the gun out.
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David C.
June 10th, 2009
Fox commentators and Fox “News” would never do anything to encourage anything like these recent atrocities of course. No, it couldn’t have anything to do with them fanning radical right-wing passion. Why, butter wouldn’t melt in their mouthes.
Are Smith and his colleagues that out of touch with reality?
Jason D
June 11th, 2009
Does Shep not know who he works for? Fox News all but sponsored the Tea Party Protests.
Swampfox
June 11th, 2009
Everyone has failed to mention the Muslim nutcase who murdered one soldier at a recruiting station in Arkansas…….. and, only hoped that he could kill more. I am one of those that are disgusted with both Democrats and Republicans when it comes to free-wheeling Federal Government spending issue.
Ben in Oakland
June 11th, 2009
One wonders at biblical truths: “as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
aka, karma.
Swampfox
June 11th, 2009
I watch Fox News. I have never heard anyone support the idiocy over Obama’s birth certificate. Harry Jackson, who I vehemently disagree with, was on O’Rielly tonight. He said that he is receiving death threats for his fighting the recognition of gay marriages in the District of Columbia. I believe him. We all need to tone down the rhetoric.
Timothy Kincaid
June 11th, 2009
Swampfox,
Don’t assume that “death threats” are really actual death threats. The last several times we’ve heard this claim it turned out to be things like, “you should just kill yourself and get out of your misery” or “wait until you’re dead and have to face God over your hate” or even “you’re going to eventually lose because people like you are dying off and younger people are supportive”.
The didn’t turn out to be threats at all. Mostly anti-gays are more than willing to lie and turn any comment about death into a “threat”. It serves their cause.
Swampfox
June 11th, 2009
Timothy, perhaps you are right. However, I believe we can both agree the last thing we need is for someone such as Jackson to be assaulted or killed.
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