The media's leftist double-standard in the coverage of Dr. Tiller's murder and in the non-coverage of the Marine recruiter's murder is blatant, but not surprising.
Dr. George Tiller was murdered by a single shooter as he attended church Sunday in Kansas. Dr. Tiller is the most notorious abortionist in the country. He performs late-term abortions for cash, some 60,000 viable babies terminated in the womb at the hands of the "doctor". He was, in short, a monster. The label "Tiller the baby killer" was accurate. Which, however, does not justify his murder.
If you've followed the pro-life movement for the last twenty years, and I have, you know two things. First, the mainstream pro-life movement seeks to end abortion through legal and peaceful means, not by assassination of abortionists. Second, the movement has been engaged in decades long attempts at stopping Doctor Tiller through the courts and grand juries, not through shooting.
That one deranged person took it into his own hands to end the life, and practice, of the doctor is a tradgedy and is not the fault of the pro-life movement.
That was not, however, the position that the mainstream media took in reporting the story. They took the leftist position and named as accomplices in the crime everyone who has ever criticized abortion in this country. Everyone who called Tiller a murderer, or his practice an abortion mill, helped pull the trigger in their tale.
But several abortion-rights activists questioned the sincerity of anti-abortion leaders who have been condemning Tiller's murder while denying that their movement fosters extremism.
"It rings a little hollow to me," said Stephanie Poggi, executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, which helped women pay for abortions at Tiller's clinic. "Anyone in the anti-abortion movement who has called abortion providers murders or called abortion a holocaust — any of those kind of vilifying statements — helps create the conditions where something like this can happen."
MSNBC hosts all featured stories linking Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, and the pro-life movement in general to the murder. Keith Olberman even called for a "quarantine" of Fox News for it's complicity in the crime. Way over the top!
And they got an assist from the Obama administration. President Obama issued a statement decrying the "heinous" murder. Attorney General Holder dispatched U.S. Marshalls to guard abortion clinics around the country.
Here's where the double-standard comes in...
The day after the murder of Dr. Tiller, a young Marine in a recruiting center in Arkansas was gunned down by a lone shooter. A Muslim convert who had travelled to Yemen to study Jihad and was angry at the U.S. military for it's crimes against Muslims. A deranged shooter, in the same vein as Tiller's killer.
Did the leftist MSM go into high dudgeon to connect the leftist activist groups that have been harrassing military recruiting offices in the U.S. for the last few years? Code Pink, for example, which has a permanent protest site in Berkely California from which they launch daily assaults calling the U.S. military murderers and predators? Or the leftist city leaders there who granted Code Pink the parking spot from which to conduct their harrassment of the recruiters?
Note: I happened to be in Berkeley for business a few months ago, where I took the picture on this post. I was personally harangued by the bully with the megaphone just for standing on the sidewalk looking at them. I was a white male, so surely I was an oppressor. I engaged in a half-hour of civil dialogue with them - enough to witness deranged agitators in the flesh.
Did the MSM cover the Marine's murder? Barely.
Did MSNBC get their lather up to denounce the leftist activists who have called the recruiters murderers at full volume as accomplices in the shooter's crimes? Not hardly.
Did the President issue a statement decrying the murder of one of the troops he commands? No.
Did Attorney General Holder dispatch guards to Marine Recruiting Stations? No.
It's a glaring double standard. The left that controls the media sees accomplices everywhere in Dr. Tiller's murder, but none in the Marine's murder by an actual Muslim terrorist.
That's instructive.
For the record, the only people responsible for the two murders are the shooters. MSNBC's rants about O'Reilly notwithstanding.
