Loose Canons
“The Boston Globe has suspended columnist Kevin Cullen without pay for three months after inconsistencies were found in his remarks following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing,” the Associated Press reported.
What Did He Do?
“Cullen likely fabricated some anecdotes he shared in interviews after the bombing, which killed three people and injured hundreds more,” the report elaborated. “The review also noted an uncorrected error in one of Cullen’s marathon bombing columns but didn’t find signs of fabrication in other works.”
“Likely fabricated some anecdotes?” He made stuff up that wasn’t true? Isn’t that what we used to call a “lie?”
Other sources offered more details. MassLive.com cited WEEI-FM a few months earlier when Cullen had been placed on paid administrative leave, citing his reporting as “wildly inaccurate.” Host Kirk Minihane called it the “worst case of journalism” he has ever seen. It is “100 percent fiction.”
That the Globe says it can’t find other “signs of fabrication” is itself hard to fathom for gun owner rights advocates familiar with the wildly inaccurate assertions their former golden boy has offered its readership about firearms.
“If you see something, shoot something,” Cullen “advocated” in a February column ridiculing the right of teachers to have the means to defend themselves and children entrusted to their care.
That’s a tactic straight out of communist “community organizer” Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals (Alinsky, incidentally was the subject of Hillary Clinton’s senior thesis at Wellesley College). It’s Rule 5 out of 13 in a book acknowledging “Lucifer” as “the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom,” and it says:
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”
It’s clear from Cullen’s snark attack he has mastered the technique every bit as much as he has reportedly mastered the art of fabrication.
“I’d even go a step farther,” Cullen wrote, dissing President Donald Trump’s call for armed teachers as a way to deter and defend against “gun-free school zone” atrocities. “I’d arm the students.”
He continued along this vein down to arming elementary school students and kindergartners, all the while obviously impressed with his own “wit.” Cullen’s thinly-veiled intent, of course, was to insinuate gun rights advocates demand everyone, including criminals and those incapable of responsible gun use to be armed (instead of under appropriate custodial supervision) and lawfully armed adults would cause “collateral damage” because we’re not trained professionals.
Speaking of those, why not consult Paul Van Blarcum, Sheriff of Ulster County, New York?
“I think the people that are out there who do carry concealed right now are at least as proficient with their weapons as police officers are,” Sheriff Van Blarcum told America’s First Freedom magazine. “Actually, my deputies have to qualify with their pistols twice a year and for many of them that’s all the shooting they do; whereas, people who chose to carry are typically into guns, so they shoot more and are probably even better with their weapons than most cops are.”
Not that Cullen is interested in experienced opinions, especially when he’s got more disinformation to spread …
“And what’s all this wussy talk about outlawing bump stocks, like the one that guy in Las Vegas used to convert his semi-automatic rifle to a machine gun?” he continued. They don’t of course, a reality ATF has recognized in past rulemaking, before political pressure was applied to contradict its own past rulings and previous court testimony. (By the time this magazine hits the newsstands, the public comment period will have closed leading to a determination on the proposed rule change.)
It’s clear using language like “high falutin’ edumacators” and adopting a phony rustic language when expressing an intentionally distorted, cartoonish and stupid gun owner point of view that Cullen is resorting to another often-used tactic, characterizing us as hicks. The presumption is anti-gun males like him are more sophisticated. Such arrogant prejudice actually shows them to be ignorant provincials, further corroborating the truism that for “progressives,” every day is Opposite Day.
The biggest lie, of course, is hidden in Cullen’s building on a “tweet” originally posted by Courtney Sheppeck, principal of the K-8 Murphy School in Boston:
“I can’t even believe we are even talking about arming teachers! We do enough! Now we’re cops?!!#insane”
No one is demanding that of teachers (although the militia of “the whole people” envisioned by the founders as “necessary to the security of a free State” didn’t exclude educators (just, per George Mason, “a few public officials”). What we’re saying is each of us has an unalienable right to keep and bear arms, and the choice to do so may not be morally (or constitutionally) denied us by those who would rather see their countrymen defenseless than properly armed and prepared.
Cullen’s fabrication is but one example. Most of the “news” media establishment deserves the same indictment for playing fast and loose with “canons of journalism” requiring “truthfulness, accuracy [and] impartiality.” Some of that is no doubt due to incompetence and laziness, but the fact remains there are many “media professionals” with widely amplified voices who know exactly what they’re doing.
