Crazy Person Does Crazy Thing, Craziness Ensues

So a guy walked into the Discovery Channel headquarters, made it clear to its occupants—and soon to the rest of the world—that he suffered from crippling mental illness, stuck around for a few episodes of American Chopper and Dirty Jobs, and was just about to enjoy a two-hour block of Cash Cab re-runs when he was shot and killed. Now that everyone has taken a moment to thank their deity of choice that no one else was hurt, we can move on to the fun part.

James Jay Lee,^[1] it turns out, was fairly opinionated—his belief system appears to have been an angry mess of environmentalism, hatred of human beings, and misunderstanding of the basic function of cable television.^[2] It goes without saying (and yet, I can't resist saying it) that this story offers countless angles just waiting to be exploited in the name of ideological rhetoric.

Here are a few angles I've been able to identify, in ascending order of ridiculousness:^[3]

If he was a conservative lunatic, you just know the liberal media would blame the big-name conservative commentators for inspiring him.

[I]magine, if you will, what would be going on today if this man had listed a book by Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity or Mark Levin on his website. You can be absolutely drop-dead certain that the ObamaMedia would be teeming with experts telling all of us that this was the inevitable result of all the hatred spewed by those extreme right-wing talk radio hosts and Obama haters.

Eh…maybe. Then again, given Lee's bizarre talk of “anchor baby filth” as a major contributor to environmental problems, I think the basic pre-requisites for blaming right-wing talk radio hosts have been met, but I don't see anybody doing it. (And considering the sites I looked at to write this article, I can’t imagine that such an implication would’ve escaped my attention.)

The bias of the liberal media knows no bounds—now they're trying to portray this guy as a conservative.

In a blog post titled “Purported Eco-Terrorist Angered Over ‘Immigration Pollution And Anchor Baby Filth’,” Think Progress, apparently without shame, named “anti-immigration” sentiment the culprit.

A website that reveals its ideological slant right there in its name published something consistent with that slant?^[4] I'm shocked!

There go the liberals again, being hypocritical.

One failure of logic is to generalize from the anecdotal to the whole. Conservatives, who know rules of logic…understand this.

…

Lefties generalize from anecdotes unless the crazy person is one of their own (and yes, that was just a generalization). Then, of course, the crazy is an "outlier."

Bonus points for acknowledging the inherent problem with generalized accusations of over-generalization, but still, the insistence that conservatives don’t do exactly the same thing is exceedingly silly.

Someone in the liberal media reported that this guy was inspired by Al Gore! It's a miracle!

Wednesday’s CBS Evening News, without Katie Couric, uniquely amongst the broadcast network evening newscasts tied Discovery Channel hostage-taker/bomber James Lee to Al Gore.

So, it’s wrong to blame public figures for their roles in inspiring the crazy actions of crazy people, but it’s good that at least one of the major networks was able to overcome their liberal bias and mention Al Gore’s tangential connection to this fiasco. Alright.

This is just further evidence that liberalism inevitably leads to an act of insane desperation that puts innocent lives at risk and results in a gruesome, public death.

Stuff enough malignant lies into the brains of unhinged halfwits and it is only a matter of time until you end up with a few cases like James Jay Lee.

…

As Lee illustrates so floridly, liberal environmentalism is not just foolish and irritating: it is an antihuman and therefore evil ideology. Anyone who takes it seriously is a potential maniac.

Ah, Moonbattery, the brick wall that common sense eventually crashes into after it veers off course and stubbornly refuses to turn back.

1. Is anyone else reminded of the Simpsons episode where Homer finally discovers that his middle initial, J, stands for Jay? Yeah, I didn't think so.

2. According to ABC News, Lee's manifesto is "interspersed with references to esoteric philosophers, childish language, misspellings, and capital letters." My God! What kind of monster intersperses capital and lowercase letters within the same document?

3. As measured on the ridiculometer, which is logarithmic.

4. In contrast to the objectivity we expect from, say, RedState.com, which has a perfectly neutral name.