Our professional talking class wasn’t particularly interested in an infanticidist butcher with an astonishing rap sheet: He gave preferential treatment to whites over blacks; he infected women with venereal diseases from dirty equipment; dealt drugs on the street out of his clinic; employed unqualified teens to serve patients and administer drugs; taught them how to snip infant spines with scissors; and he coldly, savagely killed hundreds of born, viable babies, while negligently killing at least one mother.
In the end, the “House of horrors” was brought down inadvertently by a federal drug bust.
The indictment against Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell defies even a sinister imagination. The indictment of the national media, on the other hand, defies originality; they ignored a story that didn’t fit their agenda.
Actually, it’s worse than that. The Philadelphia infanticide story is like Benghazi: Big Media is violently allergic to anything that diminishes its heroes or its heroic causes.
But this? Where were eager reporters and stories about the slaughter of hundreds of black babies born alive in a Philadelphia butchery? Where are shocking reports of snipped spines, amputated feet in formaldehyde jars, bloody floors, wailing humans spending their last terrified seconds before a whiskered ghoul knifed, cut, or scissored them? Or just dumped them in a toilet.
Where are the talking heads condemning this depravity? Where is the president solemnly calling for us to do better as a nation?
Whether you consider yourself pro-life or pro-choice, the savagery on record here is anti-human. But there’s been little in the national papers, near total silence from the networks. No honest rationale can defend the blackout.
It’s worse than just looking away. It exposes several shades of hypocrisy.
Consider how the media would treat an undeniable monster in any other line of work. Imagine, say, a West Philly gun seller whose contempt for law and humanity horrifies all decent citizens, including other gun sellers. He laughingly sells to children; to drug dealers; he gives tips on the most lethal or the most painful parts of the body to shoot. He ignores all required standards.
One day, an illegal buyer walks out the door and shoots a mother and baby. The gun dealer is on trial for murder.
Do you think, perhaps, the networks would find him extraordinarily relevant to the rest of the firearms industry? A morality tale with important lessons? An occasion to demand new laws and stricter regulation of gun sales?
Think they would swarm his trial? Think he would instantly become the face of every advocate for the right to bear arms?
Of course they would. Of course he would. It's not even a question.
Then, too, there’s the whole matter of how liberals view state regulation of human activity and exchange. Usually they love it. It’s a positive good in all respects. Except, oddly, for the field of terminating human embryos.
For some reason, in that exceptional case, statists understand the negative effects of oppressive state intervention. “Don’t ask; don’t tell; don’t look closer” is the guiding light.
Next time a progressive tells you that more government oversight, licensing, regulation, inspection, and accountability is a good thing for consumers; that it will increase quality, access, and affordability, ask them if that applies to abortion. When they scream “no,” ask why their objections don’t apply to every other voluntary exchange people engage in.
Big media’s maneuvering here is an especially sordid piece of the story. They looked away as hard as they could, until social media, and then a few brave cable commentators and print journalists blew their cover. The networks are still AWOL, but print was forced to respond. Dragged to the story, though, they still aren’t really covering the story. Rather, they’re covering their favorite subject: the media.
Why didn’t we cover this more? Here are our theories on that. Here are some rebuttals to those ridiculous, non-credible excuses. But wait, some outlets actually did cover the story. So, we aren’t really, totally guilty of the charge of cover-up.
Yes, they are guilty. This is a squalid story of evil, cruelty, and horror of an enormity seldom paralleled in American life. It touches on race, abortion, class, and public health oversight. It somehow didn’t reach the public’s consciousness until activist outcry forced the issue weeks into the trial.
Public consciousness. That’s the threshold that deniers of media bias either don’t appreciate or willfully ignore. It’s not enough on any issue to say “Look! Online source X wrote an article about this! See? We’re on the job!” Or “But, Magazine Y reported these charges when Gosnell was arrested!”
When the talking/writing class wants to beat Americans over the head with something, the frenzy is inescapable. The deranged Cindy Sheehan stalks George Bush. Pottery is broken in Iraq’s war zone. Michael Vick is a dog torturer. Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut. Republicans hate women and want to steal the contraception from their purses.
When the liberal class of talker/writers thinks something is worth knowing about, we won’t escape knowing what they think. But Philadelphia’s own Auschwitz of the Innocents is not something they felt was worth knowing about.
Shame.