Fox News Manages To Tie San Bernardino Shooting to War On Christmas And Benghazi
You just knew that the moment the two perpetrators of the horrific San Bernardino shooting were identified as Muslims of Middle Eastern descent, Fox News and the rest of conservative media were going to run with the idea that the mass killing was the work of ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism. This much was a given. However, did you also know that Fox was going to tie this tragedy two of their favorite subjects — the War on Christmas and Benghazi?
Yep, during a segment Thursday morning on Fox & Friends, co-host and cheap mannequin Steve Doocy spoke with forensic psychiatrist Micheal Welner about the shooting and what we know so far. As is typical with Fox — and pretty much all of cable news — a whole lotta speculation centered on a certain narrative was tossed about. In Welner’s opinion, it was a given that this shooting was all about radical Islam and, for some reason, the state of feminism in Muslim culture. Meanwhile, the Dooce wanted to know if this had anything to do with Christmas.
After Doocy asked Welner if the shooters targeting a Christmas part had to do with symbolism, meaning that the radical Islamic terrorists were trying to attack Christianity and the sanctity of Christmas, Welner somewhat agreed that is could have been symbolic. However, he stated that typically mass shooters and terrorists are looking to rack up high body counts. He then invoked Benghazi when talking about the shooters’ motive, because why the fuck not.
From the show’s transcript, courtesy of Media Matters:
STEVE DOOCY (HOST): You know, doctor, for folks who are just getting up the way it went down according to the people who were at this Christmas party yesterday, this guy was an inspector for the health department. He was at the party a couple hours and then he left. Came back with her and then they shot up the place. Clearly, if they’re wearing body armor and go-pros, and they’ve been building pipe bombs at home, this was not a spur of the moment thing. My question to you is this, it was a Christmas party. Do you think that —
MICHAEL WELNER: That’s right, that’s right.
DOOCY: Could have been a motivation? It’s symbolic because it’s a Christmas party.
WELNER: Well, it’s symbolic, but the point of mass shooting and terror is to create spectacle, and in the United States you create spectacle by a high body count. You have a party, you have a lot of people together, you have some people drinking who will be disarmed, and you have people in a room, and you are able to kill many very, very quickly. Look, I worked on the Holmes case, this is precisely why Holmes picked the theater. Because you had people who were there, he could kill many people. And absolutely the idea of getting notoriety is part of it. But in this case, it’s notoriety for a cause. And we spoke about the idea of the ideology. How far would you go. And the idea of these spectacle crimes, they’re used as a recruitment tool. I think it’s very important for us to move on from the idea of questioning this, and questioning that. Because it becomes as absurd at some point as saying, well, this was a video as the cause of Benghazi. The fact that we allowed ourselves to be misled by the idea that a video was responsible, it had so much of a destructive impact on the national discourse. If we just acknowledge realities, then we can solve problems in the future, and enhance public safety.
Seriously, what do Christmas and Benghazi have to do with this shooting? Nothing, honestly. But Fox has to push their specific agenda, and there are certain buzzwords that need to make it on the air on a daily basis. So we end up with this horseshit disguised as news. And just to hammer the idea further, legal analyst and Roger Ailes mouthpiece Peter Johnson, Jr. showed up on the program to say the shooting represented a “literal War on Christmas.”
Sigh.
Below is video of the segment, courtesy of Media Matters:
