Topic: Media Research Center
With the May gun massacre at an outlet mall in Texas, the Media Research Center continued its pattern of refusing to actually talk about the gun's central role. Nicholas Fondacaro tried to steer things toward mental health, not guns, in a May 8 post:
Following yet another mass shooting where the shooter showed warning signs of struggling with his mental health, on Monday, the ladies of ABC’s The View denied that there was a mental health crisis in America as they turned their nose up at efforts in Texas to address it. They even went so far as to suggest mass shooters weren’t mentally ill and wildly assert that “war weapons” and murders only exist in America.
After playing a soundbite of Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott vowing that his state was “working to address that anger and violence by going to its root cause, which is addressing the mental health problems behind it,” the cast sat silently in disgust.
First to speak up was faux conservative co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, who chided that “[t]here's a disconnect between what the American public wants to see on gun safety and what elected officials in Washington and states want to see.”
Fondacaro then played games with polls:
Citing an outlier poll from Fox News, Farah Griffin opined that “87 percent of Americans support background checks for guns.” Background checks already existed and are required in all states, they're federally mandated. She also boasted that “81 percent support raising the minimum age to get a buy a firearm to 21,” which would effectively make many adults second-class citizens who can’t exercise their constitutional rights.
Meanwhile, a recent ABC News Washington Post poll lost month showed growing oppositionto so-called “assault weapon” bans. Interesting how they ignored that one.
That's right -- Fondacaro is trusting a poll from the hated "liberal media" instead of his beloved Fox News because it better fits his narrative. Oh, and he also raged at co-host Sunny Hostin for being "mentally unstable and racist" because he doesn't understand how metaphors work.
A few hours later, he lashed out at "The View" again, this time for pointing out reports of the shooter's white supremacism despite apprently being of Hispanic heritage:
As a follow-up to their earlier conversation on Monday where they denied that mental illness played a key role in mass shootings, even proclaiming that the mentally ill were immune from committing mass shootings, the radical cast of ABC’s The View dove to a new level of lunacy as faux-conservative co-host Ana Navarro proclaimed that blacks and Hispanics were not “immune” from “being a white supremacist.” It’s an accusation that has been leveled at black and Hispanics just for voting Republican.
Returning from a commercial break that ended a heated shouting match between co-host Sara Haines and Sunny Hostin, moderator Whoopi Goldberg whined about the focus on mental health. “We're talking about the insanity of people not recognizing that there are very specific issues,” she said. Of course, the issue she wanted to focus on was race.
“Race apparently turns out to be an issue in a lot of these killings,” she proclaimed, citing the Charleston, South Carolina church shooting from 2015. “We've seen it. People getting shot because they're black. We've seen people getting shot because they're there. We've seen them getting shot because they're Latina.”
[...]
Hostin, a taunch racist, was “glad” Goldberg “brought up the race” angle. And without providing evidence, she pushed the narrative that the Hispanic man responsible for the Allen, Texas shooting was a white supremacist. “But this shooter who happened to be Hispanic and Latino, which is very bizarre to me, had a white supremacy moniker on him,” she said.
Fondacaro then whined that an authority on law enforcement was referenced:
Before doing her habitual quotation of FBI Director Christopher Wray, she lashed out at those who call out her racism. “And so, you know, Christopher Wray – These are not my words. So people don't start with the I’m a race-baiter crap!” she spat.
“Christopher Wray said the biggest threat to our democracy is white supremacy and domestic terrorism. He testified before Congress,” she declared before lashing out again, this time at Republicans for trying to tackle mental health instead of curtailing gun rights, saying they “should be ashamed of themselves.”
Also latching onto the race angle, Navarro made her proclamation on white supremacy. “Look, being Hispanic or being black does not – or being anything, does not make you immune from being racist, from being radicalized, from being a white supremacist, from being evil, from being homicidal,” she asserted.
Fondacaro waited until the final paragraph of his post to concede that Navarro "was right that non-white people can be most of those other horrible things she listed; particularly racist." But he immediately played whataboutism by whining that "she wouldn’t dare call out Hostin for her history of making racist remarks."
In fact, the shooter had Nazi tattoos and a fascination with neo-Nazi ieology, so Fondacaro looks like slightly less of a clown for making his concession. Fondacaro didn't want to talk about that any further, though.
Then it was time to move on to other anti-gun control narratives, with a post by Curtis Houck cheering how a Republican congressman enter the "far-left lair" of "CBS This Morning" to spout those narratives. Houck even dismissed the fact that one massacre victim's face was blown off, callously declaring that it "would be the case with any gun if they’re shot point blank or enough times."
The vast majority of Americans are not as weirdly blase about gun violence as Houck.
