Tuesday, July 24, 2012

YES, LET'S BAN ALL GOVERNMENT AID TO STUDENTS BECAUSE ONE RECIPIENT WENT NUTS

Oh, for crissake:





I don't just blame Drudge for this bit of idiot bait. I blame WNEW, a CBS news radio station in D.C., which posted the linked story, based on AP reporting. Drudge didn't pull that detail out -- it's WNEW's lede:
James Holmes Received $26K Grant From Bethesda-Based National Institutes of Health

James Holmes, the alleged gunman in the recent theater shooting that left 12 dead in Aurora, Colo., was previously awarded a $26,000 federal grant.

WNEW News reports that Holmes was awarded a prestigious grant from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

It gave the graduate student a $26,000 stipend and paid his tuition for the highly competitive neuroscience program at the University of Colorado in Denver. Holmes was one of six neuroscience students at the school to get the grant money....
Somebody at WNEW undoubtedly knows that rabid government-bashers on the right will eat up a story like this, a story that says an evil, horrible person was sucking on the government teat. Never mind the fact that most of us want the government to encourage education and science, and that Holmes absolutely seemed to be a deserving recipient until he took leave of his senses -- anything that stirs the blood and reinforces the prejudices of Randian rageaholics (even if some of them are part of the hypocritical "keep your government hands off my Medicare" crowd) is good journalism by modern standards, i.e., it pulls in an audience.

So, are the wingers going to be calling this massacre Obama's fault soon? Are they going to say he stole your tax dollars and gave them to a killer to buy massacre weapons? Thanks a bunch, WNEW.

****

UPDATE: Clayton Cramer and Instapundit spread the stupid.

4 comments:

Victor said...

Did the FCC pass some law that all broadcast media must emulate right-wing talk radio, FOX "News," and Drudge?

Tom Hilton said...

I was joking to Jody that conservative takeaway from Aurora would be that guns aren't dangerous, smart people are.

I'm not sure I was that far off...

Cathie from Canada said...

Everyone has known for the last week that he was a PhD student on scholarship. So I think this story and the publicity it is now getting is actually part of the larger NRA "conspiracy theory" that Obama engineered the Aurora shooting as an excuse to confiscate everyone's guns.
No doubt the emails are flying and next it will be "discussed" on Fox.

Philo Vaihinger said...

It would be funny if it weren't so serious.

A guy on scholarship slaughters people with a semi-automatic assault rifle using a high-capacity magazine.

Costello says to Abbott, "Let's ban high-capacity magazines."

"No way," says Abbott. "That's a basic freedom."

"Then let's ban assault rifles," says Costello.

"No way," says Abbott. "People need them to hunt."

"Well, what can we do?" asks Costello.

"Ban scholarships," says Abbott.