Fox News Breaks from Sikh Temple Shooting for Regularly Scheduled Hate Rhetoric

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Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:31 am

While most of the media interrupted regular programming to report on the tragic shooting at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, you’ll be pleased to know that Fox News provided breaking news coverage from 1-3 PM ET, then continued with its regularly scheduled hate campaign for an hour from 3-4 PM. Topics of great debate: How the media took Willard’s cultural superiority comment out of context. How homophobic Chick Fil A is poor and misunderstood; however Conservatives never protest anyone they disagree with (right, tell that to the Dixie chicks) and how the “librul” media never pays attention to the issues conservatives care about. yada, yada, yada. Ok, at least they acknowledge that coverage of a shooting at a Sikh Temple doesn’t matter to conservatives. Got it.

To their credit, they did manage to put a story on this tragedy on their website. They even managed to throw in a few facts.

Fox News resumed breaking news coverage, after their bloc of regular programming. Call me a skeptic, but somehow, I suspect that if this tragedy occurred at a “Christian” Church Fox would have been all over it from when the story broke. They would have had their various talking spokes models referring to Liberal persecution of the holier than though, perhaps with a smattering of the Obama administration’s alleged war on Christianity etc.

I’m still waiting for Mitt Romney to act like a serious contender for the Presidency by at least making a standard statement conveying his sympathy for the families of the dead, or if nothing else, at least the police officer who was shot- a veteran of 20 years. (Editor’s Note: the Romney campaign put out at statement after 4 PM ET.) Perhaps he could use this moment to point to the danger of Michele Bachmann’s hate rhetoric and that of others on the far right. But, I’m not holding my breath – not for the statement and definitely not for a public condemnation of the hate rhetoric that comes from the far right.

There was a time that when a tragedy happened in America to Americans, politicians on the right at least pretended to give a damn. But now that WASPcentric thinking is all the rage (in more ways then one), the deafening silence regarding this shooting is so loud that we are forced to face the reality that unless you are pale and male, you just don’t matter to this version of “Conservative.”