Topic: Media Research Center
Add Brent Bozell's voice to those in the ConWeb uncritically touting the Matthew Shepard revisionism of Steve Jimenez's book on Shepard's death. Bozell writes in his Sept. 27 column:
Jimenez argues after years of research and interviews that Shepard and his killers Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were deeply involved in drugs. Not only that, they may not be straight men. McKinney presented himself as a "straight hustler," turning tricks for money or drugs, but others say he's bisexual. A former lover of Shepard's claims Shepard and McKinney had sex while doing drugs in the back of a limo. As Hicklin recounted, "A manager of a gay bar in Denver recalls seeing photos of McKinney and Henderson in the papers and recognizing them as patrons of his bar. He recounts his shock at realizing, 'these guys who killed that kid came from inside our own community.'"
The media don't have to accept this theory whole. But after the countless stories claiming Shepard was a victim of an anti-gay hate crime, shouldn't they cover it? But it shouldn't be surprising that the liberal media have completely ignored Jimenez.
[...]
The Shepard gay hate crime victim story was exposed as false ... almost 10 years ago.
ABC's "20/20" took apart the legend in 2004. Elizabeth Vargas told Bill O'Reilly that the prosecutor in the Shepard case never believed it was a hate crime. Instead, it was about drugs: "Aaron McKinney, according to Aaron McKinney himself and to several other witnesses, was coming down from a five-day methamphetamine binge. He freely admits he not only used methamphetamine but dealt them, sold them. Five days up with no sleep, strung out on drugs, desperate to buy more, desperate to rob somebody to get money to buy more drugs."ABC did not consider that McKinney was a lover of Shepard's.
Bozell doesn't mention that Jimenez was a producer of that 2004 ABC segment. He also doesn't mention that not only has McKinney denied having sex with Shepard, he mounted a "gay panic" defense at his trial.
Bozell demands that we accept Jimenez's revisionism, but he doesn't explain -- or even breathe a word of -- the holes in Jimenez's logic because it conforms to his "watchdog" organization's anti-gay agenda.
