When an unmistakable embarrassment to liberalism occurs, a standard establishment press fallback tactic is to accuse conservatives of some form of incivility — and if there really isn't one, to make up a story about it anyway.
That's exactly what Bloomberg Businsessweek's Paul M. Barrett did on Tuesday in covering the NRA's reaction to the arrest of California State Senator and ardent gun control advocate Leland Yee on gun trafficking charges. The story's headline claimed that the group did "a victory dance." Barrett's content claimed that it was "gloating" and "strained to veil its pleasure." In truth, the group was doing nothing of the sort — unless the speech police now believe that making any kind of obvious observation about a liberal's failure is inherently unfair:
NRA Does Victory Dance Over the Woes of a California Gun Foe
It’s tough to blame the National Rifle Association for gloating over the humiliation of Leland Yee. A Democratic state senator in California, Yee has long been a darling of gun-control proponents and a foe of the gun lobby. Now he stands accused of selling his political connections in a gun-trafficking scheme. Oh, the irony.
... On its website, the NRA strained to veil its pleasure at Yee’s predicament:
“Being good Americans, we take the position that anyone who is arrested and charged with multiple crimes is innocent until proven guilty. That’s more than California state senator Leland Yee has done for gun owners in the past. In August 2012, Yee said, ‘No one will convince me it’s anything other than a joke to say that having multiple clips and semi-automatic weapons that can shoot 100 or more bullets at a time is necessary in this state or in this country, it’s ridiculous.’”
... In happier times, the Brady Campaign, a leading gun-control group, named Yee to its Gun Violence Prevention Honor Roll. From here on out, the folks at Brady will need to do better background checks on potential political allies ...
Anyone who claims to see any form of gloating or classless behavior in the above NRA excerpt or in its entire remarkably restrained press release is just making things up.
But I guess there's nothing wrong with hardened leftists like Barack Obama doing a "victory lap" while falsely advertising the achievement of an enrollment goal which will mean nothing unless virtually every enrollee pays their premiums. Double standard: obvious.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
