Bobby Jindal launched into an epic rant in a blog post this morning, shaming the Oregon shooter's father and demanding an apology for him for being such a failure as a parent.
It's all culture's fault, don't you know? Let's take it point-by-point.
We glorify sick and senseless acts of violence in virtually every element of our pop culture, and we have been doing that for at least a generation.
Yes, like passing open carry laws, celebrating open carry parades, and glorifying guns to the point where they become a representation of manhood and toughness instead of deadly weapons that rob families of loved ones and people of their lives. That's what Jindal does. The rest of us just have to live in that sick culture.
Our movies and TV shows feature a continuous stream of grotesque killing of every kind imaginable. And this is true of virtually every genre, from horror to drama to comedy.
Yet no mass shooter yet has a history of re-enacting television shows. This one goes up with the "blame the video games" excuse.
We celebrate and document every kind of deviant behavior and we give out awards to producers who can push the envelope as far as possible. Rape, torture, murder, mass murder, all are cinematic achievements.
See above. Those who glorify torture and murder mentored Jindal, lest we forget. Think about the name Dick Cheney, who has received any number of awards from the right-wing award-givers for endorsing and implementing torture and mass murder of people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our music does the same thing, we promote evil, we promote the degradation of women, we flaunt the laws of God and common decency and we promote it all and we flood our young people with it.
Yes, ask NRA spokesman Ted Nugent about promoting the degradation of women, Bobby.
We have generations of young boys who were raised on video games where they compete with other young boys around the country and the world to see who can kill the most humans. We make it so fun, so realistic, so sensational.
Oh, look! It's the video game excuse.
We devalue human life, we have no regard for the sanctity of human life in any regard, from the unborn, to the old, and to every single person in between, we devalue it and act as if we have almost no regard for humanity.
Is this a confession? Because other than fetuses, Bobby Jindal has no regard for human life. If he did, he would have expanded Medicaid in his state instead of leaving poor people to die for lack of health care.
Our families are a complete mess, and we have raised tens of millions of young boys who will never become real men because they have no values whatsoever, they have no truth in their lives, and they have no regard for common decency.
Yet Jindal and his ilk have no problem characterizing entire groups of people as "anchor babies", "illegals", and "degenerates" because they're inconvenient political realities.
Oh, we make sure that we stop them from bullying at school, but we are completely fine with them watching people get murdered and raped on the internet after school, and we are willing to let them go to the basement and join a fantasy world where they pretend they are killing people for 2 hours after school.
I totally agree that we shouldn't let our kids watch Fox News after school. As for the video games, refer to my response above.
Then Jindal gets to the meat of his rant. For you see, this isn't about "society," this is about one father and his opposition to guns and how that makes him a big pussy failure when it came to parenting. Speaking of why Ian Mercer said he didn't know why his son got a gun and did what he did, Jindal wrote this:
Of course he doesn’t know. You know why he doesn’t know? Because he is not, and has never been in his son’s life. He’s a complete failure as a father, he should be embarrassed to even show his face in public. He’s the problem here.
He brags that he has never held a gun in his life and that he had no idea that his son had any guns. Why didn’t he know? Because he failed to raise his son. He should be ashamed of himself, and he owes us all an apology.
When he was asked what his relationship was with his son, he said he hadn’t seen him in a while because he lived with his mother. Case Closed.
Never mind that mom is a wingnut with a pretty big case of gun hubris. Never mind considering that there might have been circumstances like mom choosing to have her baby even when dad didn't want to, because mom didn't believe in abortion. Never mind any of that, because really, it's just that dad's fault. Because Jindal says so.
I wonder if he said the same thing about Rand Paul's son when he was arrested for drunk driving. I somehow doubt it.
He wraps it up with this:
Meanwhile, the shallow and simple minded liberals will continue to blame pieces of hardware for the problem, and they will long for the days before firearms were invented.
It seems pretty simple to me. Even if all the cultural pressures contributed to the shooter's frame of mind, without guns he would not have shot 9 people dead. Without gun culture he might not have felt free to shoot 9 people dead. And in other countries where gun laws are stricter, those same angry young men who live in similar cultures manage to get through their anger without shooting people dead.
Shaming Ian Mercer won't change anything, but shaming Bobby Jindal and the rest of these lunatics for sucking the NRA's teat might.
[h/t TalkingPointsMemo]
