Plutocrap

As predictable as the sunrise in the morning, a great scalded-cat cry arouse from the gun nuts almost before Bob Costas got done committing the vile sin of suggesting that maybe it should be harder to buy a gun than it is to buy a bottle of booze. They are screaming for Bob’s head, of course. But so far, Costas isn’t backing down. Nor should he. The NRA is a paper pistol, and it’s way past time to send these money-grubbing extremists packing. A sensible discussion on the insanity of assault weaponry (and yes, a pistol absolutely qualifies as an assault weapon, unless you want to argue with me that you can hit a rabbit with a handgun. If you can, please forgive me, and could we be buddies?) proliferation is long overdue in this country. I appreciate Costas giving it another kick start.

Lock and Load, Bob.

We’ve long known that attacking lax gun control in America in a frank fashion on network TV can seem like a third rail in our media politics—even after, for example, movie theater audiences are shot up, or a US congresswoman gets a bullet in the head. Now Bob Costas, the longtime NBC sports host and commentator (who has spoken his mind before) is illustrating this anew.

Surely, by now, you know that Costas, in a brief halftime appearance during an NFL game on Sunday night, seemed to call for stricter limits on guns in the aftermath of the murder-suicide caused by a Kansas City linebacker (he shot the mother of his new baby then killed himself in front of his coaches at the stadium). Actually, Costas did little more than read from a strong newspaper column on the subject.

This provoked an incredible outpouring of vitriol from the usual gun nut and right-wing sources, including a serious drive to get Costas fired. Fox and Friends aired a loopy segment which suggested that the killer might have just as easily strangled his girlfriend (with his mother a few feet away) and then, I guess, strangled himself in front of his coaches. Someone on Twitter responded to one of my comments on this by accusing Costas of “treason.”  Megyn Kelly at Fox said, hey, O.J. Simpson killed his wife with a knife!

Love this Politico lead:

Herman Cain, Ted Nugent and Michelle Malkin were among a wave of conservatives who sacked NBC broadcaster Bob Costas on Twitter on Monday after he offered support for gun control on a ‘Sunday Night Football’ halftime segment on the broadcast of the Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game.

Howard Kurtz concluded at The Daily Beast: “Costas came down firmly in favor of gun control, and he’ll have to live with the consequences.”  I guess he could have just as easily written, “America has come down firmly for guns, and tens of thousands every year will have to live with the consequences.”

Bill Carter of The New York Times last night talked to Costas about his controversial halftime commentary. Costas now says, “I am emphatically not backing off from anything I said.” He called for “a combination of enlightened legislation and controls, coupled with an adjustment in our attitude toward guns.”

He added, “Common sense tells us the culture is overrun by guns and that many people who possess them are dangerous or careless.” He also rejected criticism of his comments as inappropriate for a football audience.

He said the criticisms of his commentary “hold no weight with me” because the same people saying that that was an inappropriate time and place to talk about the gun issue “would have thought it was fine if they agreed with what I was saying.”

 

Yes, they would have. Like they always do. You can only talk about what THEY want to talk about, and this time of they year it’s the “War on Christmas.” Costas ran afoul of the ideological line, and you don’t do that. They’ll demand your head.

Thankfully, he has basically offered his head to them. I hope others will see this example and consider standing up themselves. I’m tired of America’s #1 terrorist organization having everyone scared to death to point out that stupidity is stupidity. The hell with the NRA.