The manager of a business in West Nyack, N.Y., Caryn McBride, was receiving vaguely menacing "negative correspondence" and phone calls. At least twice she made reports to police, in one case telling them "she was worried because an email writer wondered 'what McBride would get in her mail now.'�"
The cops told her there was nothing they could do, for the communications were not true threats and thus "did not constitute an offense." That didn't reassure McBride, who was understandably worried that the missives might have come from a dangerous criminal. So she decided to protect herself with guns.
As the Rockland County Times reports, McBride is the Rockland editor of the Gannett-owned Journal News, a rival newspaper based across the Hudson in White Plains. "Due to apparent safety concerns," the Times reports, the Journal News "decided to hire RGA Investigations to provide armed personnel to man the location." The Times "has not investigated" whether the paper's headquarters is also protected by men with guns. (White Plains is in Westchester County, outside the Times's circulation area.) Nor has the Journal News reported anything on its own hiring of armed guards.
Under normal circumstances, a company's lawful security arrangements would hardly be newsworthy. But as we noted Monday, the Journal News provoked the bitter backlash that so frightened McBride by publishing a report in which it named residents of the two counties who have done exactly what the Journal News has now done: lawfully availed themselves of their rights under the Second Amendment.
The article, titled "The Gun Owner Next Door: What You Don't Know About the Weapons in Your Neighborhood," was accompanied online by a database listing the names and home addresses of all pistol permit holders in Westchester and Rockland counties. (The Times reports that officials in Putnam County, north of Westchester, "have since announced their intention to not comply with the Journal News' request for the names and addresses of pistol permit holders").
The story began with an alarming anecdote: An old man "approached a female neighbor on the street and shot her in the back of the head" last May. "What was equally shocking for some was the revelation that the mentally disturbed 77-year-old man had amassed a cache of weapons--including two unregistered handguns and a large amount of ammunition--without any neighbors knowing."
Enlarge Image
Close Associated PressGannett's headquarters in McLean, Va.
By way of explaining its rationale for providing the permit data, the paper quoted John Thompson, who directs something called Project SNUG at the Yonkers YMCA: "I would love to know if someone next to me had guns. It makes me safer to know so I can deal with that. I might not choose to live there."
The Journal News never got around to explaining how the commission of a violent crime with an unregistered gun could justify stigmatizing and invading the privacy of citizens--including many retired policemen, according to the report--who have complied with the law and obtained permits for their firearms. And if the public has a "right to know" when the fellow who lives next door has a gun permit, why doesn't the same right apply to those who live and work near the Journal News's offices?
This column does not begrudge the Journal News for exercising its Second Amendment right to armed self-defense. But doing so after attacking law-abiding citizens for doing exactly the same thing is the most stunning display of media hypocrisy we've seen since the "civility" frenzy of early 2011.
And speaking of "civility," the Des Moines Register has published a column calling for the assassination of top U.S. government officials. "I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control," writes Donald Kaul. "And if that didn't work, I'd adopt radical measures."
That "radical measures" line is a tip-off that Kaul's call for lynching McConnell and Boehner is meant somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Like the emails to the Journal News, it's not an actual threat. But there are some things you don't joke about. And Boehner is in the line of presidential succession, making this the sort of "humor" that invites a visit from the Secret Service.
It's hard to know just how much of Kaul's column is serious. His demand to "repeal the Second Amendment" probably is. What about his call to run roughshod over the First? "Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal," he suggests. "Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did."
He continues, referring again to the National Rifle Association: "I would also raze the organization's headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that's optional." The 2011 civility scolds got exercised over metaphors (Sarah Palin's map) and figures of speech (Michele Bachmann's saying she wanted supporters to be "armed," with information). By any standard but a purely partisan one, Kaul's violent fantasies and "jokes" are far worse.
Kaul declares: "Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right." Too many of our fellow journalists see free expression as a privilege that belongs to them rather than everybody's right. The editors of the Journal News evidently view armed self-defense that way, too.
If at First You Don't Succeed Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who took office 50 years ago tomorrow, died Dec.�17, just weeks short of that anniversary. Robert Byrd's death in 2010 left Inouye, who lived to 88, as the longest-serving senator and the chamber's president pro tempore, an office customarily held by the most senior senator of the majority party. The new president pro tem is Vermont's Sen. Patrick Leahy, elected in 1974.
The president pro tem is third in the presidential line of succession, after the vice president and the House speaker and before the secretary of state. Assuming that Obama's nominee of the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam for the last office is confirmed, that means Joe Biden, Pat Leahy and John Kerry will all be within the number of heartbeats that can be counted on one hand away from the presidency.
Then again, think about this Wall Street Journal report on the "fiscal cliff" negotiations, which finally yielded a deal last night:
With negotiators finally making progress toward averting the fiscal cliff, President Barack Obama on Monday staged a public appearance that for a few anxious moments seemed to derail the talks.The event was part progress report, part pep rally, as the president announced that a deal was "in sight." At the same time, he put Republicans on alert that he wouldn't let them "shove spending cuts at us" that would hurt middle-class families and said future deficit deals would require more tax increases. He poked fun at lawmakers, saying that "with this Congress," a big deficit reduction deal "was obviously a little too much to hope for at this time"--implying the White House was just a bystander.�.�.�.Some Republicans said the appearance smacked of an election campaign. With the fiscal cliff deadline only hours away, and a tentative agreement hanging by a thread, they said the president's time would have been better spent negotiating.How did they get a deal? The president "left the hardest negotiations at the end of the process to Vice President Joe Biden."
That's right, in this administration Biden is the adult in the room.
Confessions of a Leveler Last week Jamelle Bouie of The American Prospect, filling in for Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent, penned a noteworthy commentary on the fiscal-cliff battle. He began by predicting that the U.S. "will probably 'go over' the 'fiscal cliff,'�" which turned out to be only technically accurate, since we will be over it only until the president signs the bill the House enacted last night.
But here's the revealing part:
Democrats--and liberals, in particular--care about economic inequality as much as they do growth.�.�.�.Rhetoric aside, there's no doubt Democrats know that--barring a hike to pre-Reagan levels--there's not much revenue to gain from restoring upper-income taxes to Clinton-era levels. And when it comes to deficit reduction, full employment--and robust growth--is the best solution. If upper-income tax hikes serve a purpose, it's to slow the income gains of the wealthiest Americans, who--for the past decade--have reaped the lion's share of gains from economic growth.Isn't Bouie acknowledging that Republicans are the pragmatists and Democrats are the ideologues--more interested in punishing those they see as unjustly well-off than in doing what is best for the nation as a whole?
Metaphor Alert
- "It was the more seasoned leaders who read the tea leaves, [who realized that such a bill would never pass, and would only gummy [sic] up the works. The GOP was checkmated."--John Zogby, Forbes.com, Jan.�2
- "But the financial reality of higher education is merely the tip (albeit a painfully sharp tip) of the proverbial iceberg. An even larger engine of change is that extraordinary but common-as-dirt reality that we see all around us but whose power we underestimate because it has become part of the taken-for-granted furniture of our lives. We mean the Internet."--The New Criterion, January issue
Out on a Limb "Krauthammer: Obama Showed 'Incredible Arrogance' in 'Astonishing' Press Conference"--video title, RealClearPolitics.com, Dec.�31
We Credit George W. Bush "Obama Takes Credit for Biden's Fiscal Cliff Deal"--headline, Washington Examiner website, Jan.�1
Then Obama Will Eat Them "House Republicans Don't Like the Dog Food, but Probably Will Eat It"--headline, PowerLineBlog.com, Jan.�1
2.1875 of Them Are Earmarked for Sen. Warren "Manufacturer to Bring 70 Jobs to Cherokee"--headline, Cherokee Tribune (Canton, Ga.), Jan.�2
Longest Books Ever Written "Why 2013 Is Going to Be Awful"--headline, Salon.com, Jan.�1
A Horse Is a Horse, of Course, of Course "The Man Who Said 'Nay'�"--headline, New York Times, Jan.�2
That Makes Me a Saaaaaaaaad Panda "Panda Blood May Be Source of Future Antibiotics"--headline, KDVR-TV website (Denver), Jan.�2
The Lonely Lives of Researchers "Researchers Get Closer to 'That Itches,' Not 'That Hurts'�"--headline, LaboratoryEquipment.com, Jan.�2
Amazon Has Them for as Little as $2,399 "Middleby Buys Viking Range for $380 Million"--headline, The Wall Street Journal, Jan.�2
Hey, Kids! What Time Is It? "Time for David Gregory to Apologize"--headline, Puffington Host, Jan.�1
Questions Nobody Is Asking
- "Will Yoko Ono's New York Times Ad Help Bring World Peace?"--headline, Guardian website (London), Jan.�1
- "Clergy: Would Jesus Pack Heat? NRA: Do Pastors Pack Any Clout?"--headline, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec.�31
Too Much Information "Why Chuck Hagel's Gay Problem Is Getting Worse"--headline, Puffington Host, Jan.�2
Everything Seemingly Is Spinning Out of Control "�'This Is Joe Biden and I'm Your Buddy'�"--headline, Politico.com, Jan.�1
News You Can Use
- "Consistency, Regular Brushing Key to Children's Dental Care"--headline, South African Press Association, Dec.�31
- "New Old Dating Tip: If You've Got It, Flaunt It"--headline, New York Times, Jan.�1
Bottom Story of the Day "Many Not Making New Year's Resolutions"--headline, Boston Globe, Jan.�1
Selling Gun Owners Short Todd Hartley, who writes a column called "I'm With Stupid" for the Aspen (Colo.) Times, has another antigun proposal, which we hope is tongue-in-cheek:
Do you remember a few years ago when people were buying millions of Hummers? To me, those Hummer owners were a lot like gun owners. They had an inflated sense of their own self-importance, and they thought owning a massive tank-like vehicle made them somehow more virile and masculine. Then the rest of us pointed out that owning a Hummer was an obvious sign of a person making up for a physical shortcoming, and Hummer went out of business virtually overnight.Hmm, that might have had something to do with high fuel prices. But anyway, Hartley wants to stigmatize gun owners by propagating the following message: "If you own multiple guns or feel the need to possess a military-style assault weapon, it's because you have a small penis."
He anticipates the most obvious objection:
Now, I know a lot of you are probably saying to yourselves, "But Todd, plenty of women also own guns. What about them? Do they have small penises, too?"My answer to that question would be: yes. Yes they do. Women who own assault weapons have tiny penises, just like their male counterparts.Sounds as if somebody wasn't paying attention in sex-ed class. Meanwhile, London's Guardian reports that "hundreds of women in Delhi have applied for gun licences following the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman by six men in a bus in the city last month." That news makes Hartley's little joke even less amusing.
Follow us on Twitter.
Join Fans of Best of the Web Today on Facebook.
Click here to view or search the Best of the Web Today archives.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michele Schiesser, Brian Warner, Taylor Dinerman, Eric Nelson, Eric Jensen, Rod Pennington, Chris Papouras, Hillel Markowitz, Richard Belzer, Paul Schlereth, David Hallstrom, Irene DeBlasio, John Guaspari, Zack Russ, Miguel Rakiewicz, Douglas Levene, Herbert Sorock, Aaron Davidson, Julia Kirby, Greg Askins, Bob Walsh, Daniel Lippman and Charlie Gaylord. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
No comments:
Post a Comment