Glenn Beck: UAH Shooter Killed Profs Because She Was A 'Left-wing Extremist'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Glenn Beck was really unhappy on his show today about that New York Times piece on the Tea Parties because it portrayed a movement in the thrall of 1990s militiamen -- accurately, we might add.

Though Beck didn't think so:

It's painting the Tea Party movement as a bunch of racist, militia-loving, Birther-supporting, Branch-Davidian-sympathizing, civil-war-starting whack jobs, you know what I mean?

Beck set out to demonstrate that the far more serious problem when it came to violence was the "anger" being stirred up by President Obama.

How does he prove this? By blaming the recent shooting rampage by a University of Alabama-Huntsville professor on her "far left" political beliefs:

The intellectual curiosity of the New York Times is boundless, except when they wander too far over to the left. Then they seem to get -- 'I don't want to face that, I'm getting sleepy over here on the left'.

Maybe I missed it, but I haven't seen the New York Times connect the dots from the actual violence from the left! Like the latest nutjob -- a professor from Alabama who killed three colleagues. Yes, there she is.

The Boston Herald reports that "A family source said Amy Bishop, a mother of four children - the youngest a third-grade boy, was a far-left political extremist who was 'obsessed' with President Obama to the point of being off-putting."

It's weird. When it's a nut on the left -- isolated incident, we're still looking, we have no idea what that was. Nut on the right? Hah! 'I have no evidence that they're connected at all, but the violence is troubling parallels here to the old white teabagging hatemongers.' You know, with their walkers.

Well, it's true that Amy Bishop was a liberal Obama fan. But then, so were her victims. All three of the slain colleagues were nonwhite, and one of them had decorated his office door with Obama signs.

Beck is claiming a causal connection between Amy Bishop's "far-left" political beliefs and the shooting rampage that simply doesn't exist.

Perhaps we can leave the question of motive to eyewitnesses:

We were 12 all together (including the shooter) sitting around an oval table in a modest size conference room . There were only one door to enter/exit. The shooter was a disgruntled faculty member who didn’t get tenured after several appeals and a law suit. About 30min into the meeting, she got up suddenly, took out a gun and started shooting at each one of us. She started with the one closest to her and went down the row shooting her targets in the head. Our chairman got it the worst as he was right next to her along with two others who died almost instantly. Six people sitting in the rows perpendicular were all shot fatally or seriously wounded. The remaining 5 including myself were on the other side of the table immediately dropped to the floor. During a reload, the shooter was rushed, and we pushed her out the hall way and closed the door. Thereafter we barricaded the door and called 911.

Indeed, there's no indication whatsoever that the shootings were politically motivated. All signs indicate this was about Bishop's disgruntlement with having been refused tenure.

That's in stark contrast to the right-wing extremist violence -- especially when the angry propagandists at Fox have a hand in it.

For instance, when Scott Roeder walked into a Kansas church and shot Dr. George Tiller -- a man who had been viciously demonized by Bill O'Reilly for the better part of the three years preceding -- there was no question that he did so as a political statement, as well as for political reasons: He believes abortion is murder, and he was willing to murder to stop it.

Similarly, when Richard Poplawski shot three Pittsburgh police officers this spring, it was because he believed President Obama was conspiring to take Americans' guns away. It was a classic violent law-enforcement encounter with right-wing extremists, of which there have been no shortage for the past decade and more. Of course, it didn't hurt that Poplawski had been whipped up into this violently paranoid state by Glenn Beck, among others.

Oh, and how did Glenn Beck respond then? Why, these guys (like James Von Brunn were just plain vanilla nutjobs!

Disgusting hypocrisy, thy name is Glenn Beck.