As media outlets were filled with hysteria in the wake of several demonstrators carrying firearms to an anti-Obama rally in Phoenix last week, one cable network in particular — MSNBC— has drawn the ire of defenders of the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms. The Bellevue, Washington-based Second Amendment Foundation has accused MSNBC “of using deceptively-edited video … to invent a racial stereotype in its on-going effort to demonize and marginalize American firearms owners as ‘racists.’”
According to the Second Amendment Foundation, MSNBC reporter Contessa Brewer played the race card while reporting on the presence of a man with an AR-15 rifle at the rally: “Yes, there are Second Amendment rights, for sure, but also there are questions about whether this has a racial overtone. I mean, here you have man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waist.” Second Amendment Foundation founder Alan Gottlieb observes: “What MSNBC purposely did not reveal with the doctored video is that the man carrying the sport-utility rifle was an African-American…. MSNBC knows the man was black, yet all they showed in a brief film clip was a close-up of the rifle against the man’s neatly-pressed dress shirt. It was impossible to tell the man’s race.”
It has already been observed that “the visuals associated with this particular incident may have been initially perplexing to victims of FDS [Firearm Derangement Syndrome]; the “gun-toting” individual whose presence at the protest has sparked the press’s histrionics is a young, African-American male — shouldn’t all ‘gun-toting’ men be required to be middle-aged white men (preferably Iraq War veterans) whose neighbors describe them as ‘loners?’ It’s a shame when the visuals confuse the narrative for the purveyors of American preprocessed political opinion.” According to the Second Amendment Foundation’s assessment of MSNBC coverage, it seems that a solution has been found which resolves the confusion of the narrative.
Gottlieb believes that MSNBC is linking such ‘racial’ ‘gun-totting’ to an imminent threat to President Obama: “It was even suggested during the segment by MSNBC culture critic Toure that it would not be surprising ‘if we see somebody get a chance and take a chance and really try to hurt’ the president. By irresponsibly fomenting this kind of racial divisiveness through the use of edited video, MSNBC is not simply reporting news, it is provoking a reaction. If any harm comes to the president, MSNBC’s hate-mongering should be blamed.”
Photo: AR-15s
