Amy Bishop, UAH Shooter

Ever since Obama won the presidential election and the Democrats assumed full power, there has been a seemingly never-ending string of events, comments, gaffes, and situations from the left which have passed by virtually unnoticed by the media and blogosphere, any of which would have caused major shitstorms had they come from the right. From the Rangel/Reich discussion of keeping white males from taking stimulus-funded jobs, to the President palling around with domestic terrorists and felons, to Harry Reid’s “negro dialect‘ comment of a few weeks ago…it goes on and on, usually to the refrain of “can you imagine if a conservative had done/said that?”

On the flip side, it’s also not the least bit uncommon to see the left take the slightest, most innocuous little thing done or said by a conservative/republican and blow it w-a-y out of proportion (ie the Palin hand notes thing), very often reaching and perpetuating outlandish conclusions not even remotely grounded in fact, or to find and highlight a connection, no matter how slight, between a person who’s done something heinous and conservative efforts/personalities. Like this. It happens all the time; the conservative blogs have gotten very good at calling out those who would misrepresent a given situation, and setting the record straight.

Unfortunately, some conservative bloggers have actually begun employing the very same tactics, and that is what I am writing about this evening.

By now, everyone knows about Dr. Amy Bishop, the University of Alabama in Huntsville biology professor who killed three of her colleagues and wounded three others this past Friday during a faculty meeting.

Earlier this evening, Glenn Reynolds posted about something he found at the web site ratemyprofessors.com, where some anonymous poster – presumably one of her college students – stated that Bishop was a socialist:

This class was great. Bishop makes the class interesting by talking about her research and her friends research. That speaker she had for class was hard to understand but smart. She expects alot and you need to come to every class and study. She is hot but she tries to hide it.And she is a socalist but she only talks about it after class.

Reynolds’ point as I understood it was that if there had been something in Bishop’s past that had linked her to conservatism, the TEA party movement, etc…, the connection would probably have been trotted out and used by the left-wing blogosphere and/or media in some manner to disparage the right.  He was not, by any stretch, using the ratemyprofessor post as evidence that the shooter actually was a socialist.

While one might question the need to even bring it up in the first place, I don’t believe Reynolds’ intent was malicious.

But then we have Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit. I’ll state for the record that I read his site pretty much every day and often post direct links to his articles. His sensationalist streak is well-known to his readers, but his information is usually high enough quality to overlook the melodrama. Tonight though, he crossed the line.

Here’s the headline from Gateway Pundit:

Socialist Professor Amy Bishop Who Killed 3 Profs Yesterday Shot & Killed Her Brother in 1986 …UPDATE: Dem Rep. Delahunt Made Call to Release Bishop in 1986!

Is this what we’re doing now, taking the unsubstantiated statement of some anonymous college kid from the ratemyprofessors website and posting it as pure, uncontested fact? Isn’t this exactly the same type of thing we give the lefties hell over?

Hoft has been around long enough to know better, but instead ran full speed ahead with his “Socialist Professor” headline in what can only be described as an incredibly reckless and irresponsible manner, especially considering the considerable size of his readership. To make matters worse however, the headline has now been picked up and run verbatim by other so-called conservative bloggers who seemingly lack the intellectual capacity to recognize the problem with the headline, and who are apparently too lazy to perform any fact-checking of their own.

There is no excuse for any of this. As a conservative blogger, I am both embarrassed and ashamed at the events that are transpiring this evening.

It’s bad enough when the left does it, but we’ve learned expect it from them (OK, not all of them, but enough). That’s why, by and large, they have the credibility problems they do. We do -not- need this from our own side, and we should therefore be just as hard if not harder on so-called conservatives who find it acceptable to spread this type of unsubstantiated sensationalistic bullshit. It undermines our credibility across the board and should not be tolerated, no matter how well-respected the source.

I haven’t even touched on the sheer repulsiveness of politicizing these murders in the first place, but suffice it to say that I find it unconscionable, and so should you.

Let us not forget that three families will be burying their dead in the coming weeks. They, the victims who’ve survived, the children of the shooter…all whose lives were touched by this senseless tragedy can use our prayers.

…..

-Cnation