Topic: CNSNews.com
Interesting how right-wingers are desperate to shoot down any suggestion that political rhetoric played a role in influencing Arizona shooter Jared Loughner, but they're all too eager to blame it on music lyrics.
Following in the footsteps of WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi (who blamed the punk band Anti-Flag) and the Media Research Center's Brent Bozell (who blamed the metal band Drowning Pool), Bozell underling Terry Jeffrey plays the blame game in his Jan. 19 CNSNews.com column, this time singling out the band Slipknot.
Jeffrey is shocked that the band "calls its fans 'maggots'" -- even though it's really no different from, say, Glenn Beck calling his audience "sick, twisted freaks," and we don't recall Jeffrey being terribly bothered by that (his fans certainly aren't). Jeffrey also quotes from an article describing the band's appeal: "Slipknot's lyrics articulate isolation and frustration. Mostly, though, they articulate rage." Which makes it just like anyother aggressive metal band.
Jeffrey curiously singled out Slipknot, even though he named another band Jeffrey allegedly listened to, the Mars Volta. He doesn't explain why; perhaps he decided that a band employing disturbing imagery and wearing grotesque masks is much more easily demonized than a progressive-rock band who wrote an entire album about an adoptee's search for his biological parents.
