Performance artist pundits as a breed are an ethics stain on public discourse. These are the glib, often attractive loud mouths who make their living selling books and getting speaking fees for being outspoken and outrageous. Many of them, not all but too many, don’t really hold the some of the opinions attributed to them. They calibrate what position is most likely to attract rage, controversy and publicity, and issue statements with the Machiavellian calculation of a hedge fund investor. Prominent examples of this slimy, manipulative breed are Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Bill Maher, Candace Owens, James Carville, and today’s topic, Ann Coulter, who might be the most cynical of them all.
She is not dumb, however. Occasionally she is even perceptive, as much as I hate to admit it. This was one of those times.
Coulter was one of the guests on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” show and announced that she knew that the shooters at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl parade were “of color,” because, with the the mainstream media’s news and public opinion manipulation proclivities, if the shooters were “white males…we’d know their identities by now.” Coulter told Maher (whom she used to date at at one time—perfect) and fellow guest Van Jones that the lack of public confirmation of the shooters’ identities was a sure signal that they weren’t white men. “They wouldn’t tell us about the, transgender woman that shot up the Christian school for, what, like a year?” Coulter said. “Oh, San Bernardino out here. Remember the crazy terrorist Muslims? That’s when I first noticed. Hm, they’re not telling us who it is. It’s not a white male! The longer they go without telling you, it’s not a white male.” When Maher emphasized to his audience that the identities of the shooters had not been officially confirmed, Coulter said again: “We know.”
That’s Lyndell Mays above, the first of the alleged shooters to be identified. Of course, Coulter didn’t “know” what she was so certain about and had a fair chance of being right even if she was guessing. However, the phenomenon she was flagging is real: the Left’s opportunities to exploit any tragedy involving guns is vastly enhanced when the shooter is a white male, so the cognitive dissonance scale can be weaponized to tie the Second Amendment to toxic masculinity, white supremacy, systemic racism and Donald Trump. Coulter correctly identified one aspect of biased and untrustworthy mainstream media reporting, and the phenomenon would be worth marking even if the K.C. shooters had turned out to be two guys as pale as Wonder Bread.
Still, I wish Ann had been wrong. This will just encourage her.
Ethics Alarms 
Was he wearing that oppressive white hoody during the shooting?
Maybe his hoodie made him do it.
Coulter is not, by a long shot, the first to ever make this observation. She’s just one who can do so without losing her job. Another giveaway is if there IS an initial identification, but it’s just “youths”
It’s giving her far too much credit to describe her noticing this phenomenon as being particularly perceptive. It’s blatant, it’s obvious, and it’s been going on a long time. Try reading a news piece about rampant gun crime in a poor black neighborhood – it’s amazing how the perpetrators practically disappear. If you were an alien anthropologist studying humanity through our news media, you would probably conclude the shootings were being carried out by autonomous, sentient firearms created by the NRA, and released in poor neighborhoods to hunt people of color.
That Coulter noticed is unremarkable. That people like Maher pretend not to is what’s noteworthy here.
There was a gender-bender mass shooting at a Christian school more than a year ago? I’m only familiar with the Nashville one, one year come end of March.
Also remarkable how little is known about the Mandalay Bay white male.
Indeed, Maher is astute enough to recognize this practice, too, if he were willing to admit it. Plenty of people have known for a few years now that lack of names and photos quite often means the shooter is in a minority group. Coulter is just saying it aloud.
Stating a common practice as a general proposition is not the same as announcing with certainty that the practice is being employed in one particular case. That’s always risky, indeed reckless. Any single instance is speculative by definition.
You do need to look at the percentages. This isn’t a ‘it sometimes happens’. This has been noticed for awhile and I don’t think I have ever seen this logic fail. When there has been a shooting, I have never seen them refuse to describe the shooter and it was a white, heterosexual male. When you have discovered a rule, you are just following the rule. Now, they are likely to describe a shooter as white when they aren’t white, but I haven’t seen them describe a shooter as black when they are white. Rules. It is like the New York grocery store shooter. He was a ‘white supremacist’. Well, he was an environmentalist that though overpopulation was destroying the planet. Since blacks have more children than whites in America, he decided to kill some blacks. It is fine when Planned Parenthood does it.
The Left is doing everything in its power to radicalize white people because once a significant number of them have said “enough” and start doing something to resist the apparent effort to isolate, stigmatize and eventually remove white people, then the Left can scream “see we warned you!!! now we must do something!”
Radicalized? I have to wonder what that would even look like. Back in the early 2000s, people used to refer to the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hutchins as “militant atheists,” and I would marvel that, in order for an atheist to be “militant”, he need do nothing more than point and laugh. A Muslim wasn’t “militant” until he had strapped on a suicide vest or flown a plane into a building.
And I see no reason why these “radicalized” whites would need to do anything more than point and laugh. As it was with the puritans of old, the woke scolds thrive on the conceit that they are smarter, wiser, more moral, more evolved than us plebes, and it cuts them to the core when their beliefs are exposed as foolishness and publicly laughed to scorn.
I think he means this
https://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/atn-thor-5-xd-lrf-1280×1024-4-40x-smart-hd-thermal-rifle-scope-with-rangefinder?a=2295262
and this
https://www.budsgunshop.com/product_info.php/products_id/157938/barrett+m107a1+rifle+.50bmg
and this
https://www.ar500armor.com/family-defense-system.html
These may seem extreme, but they are pretty mainstream now for those who can afford them. For the rest of us, it is just like browsing in Porsche showrooms.
I am not denying that there is some credibility to this argument, but in the case of the shootings in Kansas City, the identity of the first two shooters was not revealed because they are minors. The two shooters who were responsible for the death of Lopez-Galvan were identified later, I’m assuming because they are adults. And they’re black. Again, I admit there is reluctance to identifying offenders who are minorities, but I don’t believe it is applicable in this case.
Excellent point, Jan. And neither Bill nor I were quick enough to point that pout.
Kyle Rittenhouse, Nick Sandmann – both minors, both white. We knew almost immediately who they were.
I believe I already stipulated that the point is valid. My comments were directly relevant to the shootings in Kansas City, where they apparently handled the situation ethically. Your examples only point to the unethical practice of our law enforcement and judicial system that identify minors prematurely, then try them as adults. And in Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse is considered an adult.
Holden Armenta was only 9 and they reported on him. You can say this is the media, not the police, but the media had images of the people being arrested and they didn’t show those. Poor Holden doesn’t get that benefit because…well…you know.
.This is like all the agencies that say ‘we can’t comment on pending investigations’ despite holding numerous press conferences each month on pending cases.
How do you know they handled the situation ethically? How do you know they didn’t look at the facts and say ‘We can’t let people know the perpetrators were black, or that they have long criminal histories, so lets say we can’t reveal ANYTHING about them because they are underage’. If they were white, they would have said ‘The suspects are teenage white supremacists and this is a suspected hate crime, but their identitities can’t be revealed because they are underage’.
Kyle Rittenhouse was charged with the possession of a firearm by someone under 16. Are people under 16 considered adults in Wisconsin?
As much as people on this blog love to be confrontative, I will not argue about this. What I know is that the two boys first arrested were minors and they were not identified. The two adults, when arrested, were identified. Whether it would have been handled differently if they had been white, you don’t know and I don’t know. I have stated that I agree that there is a reluctance to identify suspects who are minoritiesl or have a political agenda. I don’t know what you want me to say, but I will say this: the situation in Kansas City was handled in an ethical manner as far as the facts are known. Let’s give credit where credit is due. As far as I’m concerned, this discussion is over; I have nothing more to say and will not engage in “what ifs.” And Jack wonders why people with differing opinions are abandoning this blog.
From what I can find out, Kyle Rittenhouse was 17 when he shot those people in Wisconsin and in Wisconsin, he is considered a minor. If my sources are wrong, I would be happy to be corrected.
Sorry, I misspoke. In Wisonsin, a 17-year-old is considered an adult.
I find it ridiculous that someone can grow up suddenly by crossing a state line. This should have been solved decades ago my a consensus biological determination of when a citizen should be considered mature enough as matter of law to sign binding contracts, obtain a gun, have sex with an adult, vote, buy liquor, and so on.
If it were up to me, I’d take the number back to 21.
I agree.
Their youth is the stated reason, but is it the actual reason? You no doubt know the name of Ethan Crumbley, a different mass shooter who was also underage. There didn’t seem to be any reticence to identify (and publicly demonize) white boys who had done nothing worse than stand there grinning, like Nick Sandman.
Why should we be reluctant to identify minors who commit felonies? I can understand we might not want to paint a kid who may have committed a first offense misdemeanor as a criminal so that one mistake does not tar him or her for life. However, we immediately identify people accused of some type of crime against a child before adjudication. Do we not destroy the lives of these accused if they were found innocent? Of course we do because we argue that the threat by that person exists. The accused’s innocence is immaterial. Therefore, if a juvenile has a history of criminal activity then identifying him or her because that kid poses a threat is no different than the unmasking of adults who were accused of heinous crimes against children.
Living in WI, I paid close attention to these stories (guess which ones relate to Kyle Rittenhouse and which to Darrell Brooks):
The AP: A white, 17-year-old police admirer was arrested Wednesday after two people were shot to death during a third straight night of protests in Kenosha
Reuters: Five Dead as SUV Sped Through Wisconsin Christmas Parade
The Guardian: Amid protests over police shooting of Jacob Blake, two people were killed in attack allegedly carried out by white vigilante gunman.
CNN (via twitter): Waukesha will hold a moment of silence today, marking one week since a car drove through a city Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring scores of others…
I could keep going. It would be laughable if it weren’t so cowardly.