A few weeks ago, a loon in Arizona demonstrated that an unsuccessful assassination attempt on a Democrat politician is Big News, while a successful assassination of a Republican-appointed federal judge is Small News. But as it turns out, another attempted assassination of a Democrat politician a few months ago was No News. Behold, the attempted assassination of Missouri Governor Jay Nixon:
On September 14, 2010, Casey Brezik, a 22-year-old Metropolitan Community College student … who suffered from schizophrenia, stabbed MCC-KC dean Al Dimmit Jr. in a hallway by the computer lab where Nixon was to speak about a half hour later at the Penn Valley College campus in Kansas City’s Penn Valley Park. In the scuffle College Chancellor Mark James wrestled with Brezik and was also nicked. According to press reports Brezik told police that he thought he had stabbed Nixon. Brezik had worn a bulletproof vest to school.
I had not heard a single thing about this until *today*. Now, why would this have fallen so far beneath the radar, when Loughner has been all over the TV for weeks? Well, I can think of two reasons. First, note that the job was done with a knife, not a gun. Hard to use this to push for “common sense gun control laws.” Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, are the bits of info about Brezik I left out of the description above:
Casey Brezik, a 22-year-old Metropolitan Community College student and anarcho-communist… Press reports indicate Brezik had an anarchist symbol tattooed on his right hand and a star, hammer and sickle tattooed on his left hand.
Kinda hard to spin this as a Tea Partier spurred on by mind control rays emitted from Sarah Palin. Thus: not news.
And to add extra interestingness to the tale, read the comments at “Anarchist News dot org,” in a thread calling for support of this attempted murderer.
Plus: look up the news about Arizona state Rep. Frank Pratt. Makes for interesting reading… and for interesting pondering. “What if he was a D, not an R?”
One Response to “When is a US political assassination *not* interesting?”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
The guy looked African-American, which factors into mainstream media agenda. I think the knife was the key element that kept this one out of the public eye.
We don’t know, however, exactly what the governor said after the fact. He may have asked that it not be reported.
I do hope they remember him, as the anarchist site asked. Killers need to be recognized so that similar lunatics can be identified and controlled. But how will the Ideal Society do that? How can the progressives admit that there’s a profile of a potential killer? To them, we’re all alike, differentiated only by opportunity provided by government.
Have a nice day.