Bob Costas

Washington Post TV writer Lisa de Moraes wrote that Daily Show host Jon Stewart "shot himself in the foot" when interviewing NBC's Bob Costas on Monday night's show. They discussed all the fuss Costas caused by pompously editorializing during a halftime break on NBC about how handguns never accomplish anything good.

Costas told Stewart he’d been let off the hook when “Newtown happened.” He said Newtown, “as horribly tragic as that was, if it did redirect the debate and people are now at least somewhat more willing to think about this rationally and compassionately…then that is a good thing.” Don't you love how liberalism equals rational and compassionate thinking? The Post writer reported Stewart pulled the gun on his own foot by bringing up pop culture:

The media agenda against guns is nothing new. But recent mass shootings have encouraged supposedly neutral journalists to push for gun regulation instead of reporting the facts surrounding the tragedies.

One thing the media seldom mention is that both the Newtown and Aurora shootings occurred in gun free zones. In the Clackamas Town Center Shooting in Oregon, however, a gunman was stopped when someone with a concealed carry permit intervened. There were only two casualties in this shooting which received little media attention. If this incident was mentioned, the concealed carry part of the story was almost completely ignored.

Salon magazine this afternoon is asking the silly question, Why can Limbaugh speak, but not Costas?

It is Rush Limbaugh who is banned from speaking, not Bob Costas.Salon’s David Sirota has a long introduction to his argument (which you can read here) that boils down to this:

Bob Costas appeared on the O’Reilly Factor Wednesday night in an effort to explain his ill-informed comments about guns that he made over the weekend. Quoting a local sport’s writer, Costas said that the Kansas City linebacker who killed himself and his girlfriend this past weekend would still be alive today “if Javon Belcher didn’t possess a gun.”

Bill O’Reilly invited Costas onto his show to clear away the “confusion” that has resulted from his comments.  But rather than set the record straight, Costas only made things worse. Gun Owners of America has analyzed the top seven bone-headed or factually inaccurate statements that Costas made on the O’Reilly show.  The top three are listed below:

The National Rifle Association and guns in general have taken a lot of media criticism in the wake of last weekend's murder-suicide involving Kansas City Chiefs football player Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend.

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre pushed back Thursday telling USA Today Sports, "The one thing missing in that equation is that woman owning a gun so she could have saved her life from that murderer."

Two days following his controversial comments on the “gun culture” in America, Bob Costas appeared on MSNBC’s Last Word w/ Lawrence O’Donnell to not only defend himself but to double-down on his statement during Sunday night's halftime coverage of Sunday Night Football.

O’Donnell, who announced that he loved the Costas tirade and the Jason Whitlock column which prompted it, provided Costas with the perfect venue to defend himself without answering any scrutiny for the other side of the gun control debate.  [See video below page break.  MP3 audio here.]   

On MSNBC's The Ed Show Monday night, New York Times sports columnist William Rhoden defended NBC sportscaster Bob Costas's controversial comments, made during halftime of an NFL game Sunday night, on the murder-suicide committed by Kansas City Chief player Jovan Belcher, even agreeing to the idea that the NFL commissioner try to ban players from owning guns.

Costas had quoted an anti-gun screed by sports columnist Jason Whitlock, in part: "Our current gun culture ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead. Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it." (Video below.)

In a video posted at the Daily Caller by Jeff Poor (HT Hot Air), Fox News's Greg Gutfeld went after Bob Costas's opportunism and hypocrisy on gun rights in the wake of the Jovan Belcher tragedy. He also took on Jason Whitlock's inexcusable characterization of those who believe that the Constitution's Second Amendment means what it says and insist that our government to continue to act as if it does as racists.

The video and a transcript follow the jump (internal links added by me; bolds are mine):

You could see this one coming and hardly a surprise that it came from Ed Schultz.

On his radio show yesterday, Schultz was talking with a caller about Kansas City Chiefs' linebacker Jovan Belcher killing his girlfriend and committing suicide over the weekend when Schultz made a predictable suggestion (audio) --

Football Hall of Famer Joe Namath called out NBC's Bob Costas on Monday's Piers Morgan Tonight for gratuitously inserting his pro-gun control views into a NFL telecast: "As a football fan, I'm not up to that kind of a halftime take. There is a time and a place for it, and I wasn't pleased about that."

Namath also hinted that gun control efforts were ultimately futile because of humanity's unpredictable nature: "I think there's always going to be a problem dealing with firearms, with knives. It's the animal we are that cause the problems." [audio available here; video below the jump]

Jim Axelrod filed a completely one-sided report on Tuesday's CBS This Morning linking the Jovan Belcher murder-suicide to a lack of gun control inside the NFL  – and in the country in general. Axelrod turned to only pro-gun control advocates as talking heads – Brady Center flack Marcellus Wiley, NBC's Bob Costas, and New York Times sportswriter William Rhoden.

Rhoden blamed the widespread availability of guns in the U.S. for sportsmen getting involved in violent incidents: "Why do athletes love guns? Well, the reality is that this is a gun culture. Lots of people - and lots of people with money - own guns." The correspondent also outlined that liberal newspaper journalist "says the issue of guns and athletes is about youth, money, and perceived power." [audio clips available here; video below the jump]

On Sunday, NewsBusters broke the story about NBC's Bob Costas blaming guns for the previous day's murder-suicide by an NFL football player.

During a Grapevine segment involving the incident on Fox News's Special Report Monday, host Bret Baier quoted NewsBusters' associate editor Noel Sheppard (video follows with transcript):

CNN took Bob Costas' gun control rant and ran with it on Monday. The clip of the NBC sportscaster decrying handguns ran multiple times during the morning coverage and again on Monday afternoon, with anchors hoping gun control legislation is in the works.

Anchor Brooke Baldwin remarked "perhaps Congress is listening" after her guest advocated tougher gun laws. Piers Morgan went on another Twitter rant about the need for more gun control. Anchor Carol Costello asked if the incident should "cause us to rethink gun control?" 

Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple jumped to the defense of Bob Costas in a Monday morning blog post entitled, "Bob Costas, please keep spouting off." While Wemple avoided stating whether he agreed with Costas and Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock on gun control per se, he made it perfectly clear he had a low view of the average Joe at home wanting to escape the world for three hours watching a football game.

This is "the mentality of the sports consumer," Wemple groused, "Give me the game, the X's and the O's, the instant replays, the halftime highlights and leave the rest of the world out of it." But, "NFL players live in our society and are bound by our laws. The things that they do affect the public beyond whether their teams cover the point spread," Wemple argued, concluding (emphasis mine):

In an appearance on Monday's America's Newsroom program on Fox News, veteran sportscaster Jim Gray at first expressed what seemed like absolute agreement with NBC's Bob Costas regarding the need for more gun control in light of the horrific Jovan Belcher murder-suicide on Saturday.

In what turned into a sanctimonious lecture during halftime programming on Sunday Night Football, NBC's Costas endorsed an anti-gun screed by Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock. Asked for his thoughts by Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, Gray wholeheartedly agreed with Costas and Whitlock, but then oddly backtracked just as the interview was concluding [ video (via MRCTV's Ian Hanchett) and transcript below ]

Kansas City sportswriter Jason Whitlock loves to stoke controversy. So after he blamed Jovan Belcher's murder-suicide on the "gun culture" -- inspiring NBC Sports lecturer Bob Costas --  in an interview with Roland Martin, he added fuel to the fire by claiming "the NRA is the new KKK."

Apparently, black youths are "armed" by the NRA, and they're also responsible for loading up black neighborhoods with drugs:

NewsBusters reported Saturday the tragic murder-suicide involving a Kansas City Chiefs' football player and his girlfriend.

During halftime of NBC's Sunday Night Football, Bob Costas chose to lecture America about how guns were to blame for the incident concluding, "If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Not only did NBC's Bob Costas fail to honor the slain 1972 Israeli Olympians with a moment of silence when he had the opportunity as he covered Friday's Opening Ceremonies at the London Olympics, but Costas has offended Britons with his decision to air a Michael Phelps interview rather than televise a tribute to the victims of the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks in London.

The Daily Mail of London has the story (excerpted below the page break):

The Olympic Games, which begin this week, is an exhibition of the sportsmanship, teamwork, and the competitive spirit that make sports so enjoyable. But for many in the media, sports is just another excuse to engage in divisive political commentary. The sports media transform an apolitical past-time into a forum for their own politics.

Progressives have actively attempted to remake the Olympics into a celebration of their own political ideals. From calls to make the summer Games “a forum for the promotion of LGBT rights,” to criticism of the International Olympic Committee as “the 1 percent of the 1 percent,” lefties care less about the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat than using the world’s biggest sporting event to pound for their pet causes.