The White House counselor chided reporters
Kellyanne Conway says journalists should shut up and pray.
Kellyanne Conway has a message for media covering last week’s New Zealand mosque shootings: dial back the scope of coverage.
During a Fox News appearance on Saturday, the White House counselor chided reporters for what she said she viewed as a politicization of the Christchurch massacre in which at least 50 people were killed by an alleged attacker who appears to have shared a manifesto online about his hatred for Muslim immigrants.
“They insert themselves ― ‘I must speak! I must say something!’” she said of journalists. “No, you don’t. You can actually shut up and pray for people and wait for the authorities to make their judgments.”
She says, while the guy she works for flings shit at “the authorities” 50 times a day.
But more to the point, journalists aren’t supposed to shut up, or to pray for people (though they’re free to do that on their own time, of course). They’re supposed to “say something” – that’s their job, and it’s a necessary and indeed valuable job.
The claim that the massacre in Christchurch wasn’t political is jaw-droppingly callous. What else wasn’t political? The massacre in Charleston, the one in Pittsburgh – the ones in Rwanda, in Srebrenica, in Cambodia, in My Lai, in Warsaw, in Nanking, in Armenia, in Amritsar, at Wounded Knee?
Massacres are always political; of course they are. What the hell else would they be? Just random happenings?
But she has to pretend, doesn’t she, because of the pile of infected matter she works for.
Mustn’t look too closely at motivations and u\inspirations. Can’t have journos connecting the dots and coming up with a picture of Trump now, can we?
I would say some of the school shootings weren’t particularly political, but I agree that older shooters almost always have a political end in mind. As this shooter did.
This shooter thinks Trump is an incompetent idiot. All he likes about Trump is his white supremacy.
Bugger me. The killer emails politicians his manifesto explicitly laying out the social and political aims that he is hoping to achieve as a result of his actions and Conway tries to tell people not to ‘politicise’ it?! Tell her from me that:
1. This is political.
2. The people of New Zealand and Christchurch specifically both expect and demand a political response.
3. She is clearly a hypocrite who wants “free speech for me, but not for thee”.
4. While the victims were religious, and so are a fair number of New Zealanders, most of us are not and she can stick her demand for prayers right up her jacksy where they’ll do exactly as much good as mouthing them to the air in general.
As von Clausewitz said of war, it is politics by other means. Its extreme form is state terror, which it is always a prop designed to hold back a social avalanche.
Massacres are never carried out by occupying troops against friendly populations. At the same time, NZ was a bit slow off the blocks enacting the same sort of gun laws that Australia gained in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre. But I expect that situation will be rectified quick smart after Christchurch..
Always political? Certainly they can’t happen without political effects, but there’s plenty of religion in the background. Perhaps not in Christchurch, but certainly in Atlanta and Pittsburgh.
John @5: Yes and there are a lot where religion and politics are mixed; I’ve read a number of accounts of the Oklahoma City bombing to believe that both were a factor.
But the religion that was in the background was and is political.
Most religion is political, really. Individuals can have apolitical mystical beliefs, but religions as such mostly can’t manage that.
John, I see religion and politics as inherently linked. Individuals interpretation and practice of their religion inevitably influences their politics and vice versa.
Take David Tipple, a controversial gun dealer in New Zealand. I understand from a post on Patheos [1] that he is/was a member of the SDA. In 1992 some thieves tried to steal property from a shed on his farm. Tipples fired a shot(s) at them as they fled. While not convicted (which is a surprise frankly), he was censured by the NZ SDA for his comments about using force to defend his property being a God given right. He received support from a faction of the US SDA Church though, who saw it very much his way.
[1]
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/kiwimormon/2016/08/our-divided-community-american-mormonism-new-zealand-mormonism-and-the-question-of-war/
SDA = Seventh Day Adventist?
Are SDA and LDS (Mormon) the same thing?
Nope. I have little idea what SDAs are but I know they’re not Mormons (official name Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).
maddog1129
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_Church