Rachel Madd(C)ow's disparagement of 'Gunwalker' scandal devoid of honor, facts

Via NC Renegade

Kurt Hofmann

St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner
VERBATIM POST

With Attorney General Eric Holder potentially facing a vote for contempt of Congress on the House floor as early as next week, administration apologists are pulling out all the stops in their efforts to heap scorn on the very idea that there is a scandal, and on everyone who is trying to get to the bottom of it. So desperate are they in these efforts that not even disgustingly insulting the courageous whistleblowers and families of the victims of the "Project Gunwalker" atrocity is beneath these champions of the "progressive" cause.

MSNBC's (employers of Chris Matthews, naturally) Rachel Maddow has devoted at least two segments this week to snidely expressing her pompous superiority to anyone who is outraged about this abomination. Wednesday night, she and New York Times anti-gun columnist Bob Herbert shared several minutes of chuckles about the investigation, and also devoted some time to impugning the character of blogger Mike Vanderboegh, who first brought attention to the scandal beyond the readership of the Cleanup ATF discussion forum.

That was not enough for Maddow, though. She followed that up with a nearly 20 minute monologue that continued her attacks on Mr. Vanderboegh, but was mostly devoted to expressing derision of Fox News and its viewers. Both segments, in fact, featured a background emblazoned in large all caps: "WHAT YOUR UNCLE WHO WATCHES FOX NEWS ALL DAY IS ALL WORKED UP ABOUT."

The thrust of her argument is that only Fox News viewers, in all their inbred, redneck glory, care about the U.S. government knowingly, deliberately arming brutally violent drug syndicate gunmen. Oddly enough, Maddow never once mentioned that the first mention of the scandal in the mainstream media came not on Fox, but on the CBS Evening News, on February 23. Well, technically, FOX could be said to have beaten CBS by about a day, when it ran an interview with Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt, who tried to talk about the scandal, but Fox host Megyn Kelly shut that discussion down.

Even the fact that CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson has recently received the Edward R. Murrow award for her "Project Gunwalker" coverage was apparently not worth Maddow's mention.

Maddow, by the way, perhaps reserved her most caustic scorn for the idea that the "Gunwalker" debacle was a scheme to justify more restrictive gun regulation. This "conspiracy theory," according to Maddow, could only have sprung from the twisted mind of Mike Vanderboegh, given mass media credence by Fox News, and believed by that station's insipid viewers.

Again, though, she ignores that CBS has presented proof that "gunwalked" guns were used to justify more draconian "gun control." You will never hear that from Maddow, though. She, instead, would have you believe that the Department of "Justice" had no thoughts of more oppressive "gun laws," and was instead merely engaged in "Underpants Gnome" police work.

Maddow will hope viewers don't ask how anyone in law enforcement would have thought this plan would have helped interdict gun trafficking, when not only was the Mexican government left in the dark about the operation, but the BATFE's own personnel in Mexico were, as well. She hopes no one asks how a gun trafficking interdiction plan could have involved ordering BATFE agents to break off surveillance of the suspected traffickers. She certainly hopes no one thinks to ask how a plan that could only "track" the guns by finding them next to dead bodies could possibly be seen as a sensible way to reduce violence.

Success of the government's plan could only be built on hundreds or thousands of dead Mexican bodies (but we're the racists, apparently), which is why leadership was "giddy" when they found a spike in violence directly stemming from the operation.

That's not a Vanderboegh conspiracy theory, Ms. Maddow, and nor is it Fox News propaganda. It's the facts--the very facts your commentary so conspicuously ignores.

See also:

• A journalist's guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part One
• A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker-Part Two
• A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Three
• A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Four
• A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Five
• A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Six
• A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Seven
• A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Eight
• A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Nine
• A Journalist's Guide to 'Project Gunwalker'-Part Ten
• Let's be clear--the only thing 'botched' in 'Project Gunwalker' was the cover-up
• 'Conspiracy theory' goes mainstream--'Gunwalker' was for 'gun control'
• Fast and Furious rhetoric insensitive to whistleblowers and victims
• Fast and Furious: Whom Are They Kidding?