In the leftist pile-on blaming the Tucson shootings on the right, the collective voice of Hollywood was muted. Some, like Jane Fonda and Michael Moore, were among the notable exceptions, but most, including many normally outspoken liberals, were silent. Hollywood's instinct for self-preservation makes many wary of anything that resembles the issue of whether John Hinckley's attempted assassination of President Reagan was in any way related to Hinckley's obsession with Martin Scorsese's movie Taxi Driver.
Even after it became abundantly clear that the shooter was mentally disturbed rather than politically motivated, leftist politicians, pundits, and bloggers proclaimed that things like crosshairs on a campaign map of political districts and militaristic metaphors like "don't retreat, reload" were subliminal calls to violence and political killings by even the apolitical among the deranged. It's a matter of "climate," they claimed.
Were these people expressing sincere conviction or betraying a despicably ghoulish opportunism? If they truly believe their claims and that the purveyors of this language and imagery must be held accountable and act responsibly, why aren't they confronting Hollywood for presenting the killing of politicians in a favorable light? The answer is that such principles don't apply to their political allies!
Read it all at American Thinker.
