The One With Aldacron

When there is a tragic story that dominates the media, and thereby the attention of the general public, several morons inevitably step into the middle of it all and attempt to use the event to further their own agendas. The Virginia Tech shooting is no different. So far, at least three scumbags have jumped all over it.

First, there was Debbie Schlussel. Her post has been edited to reflect more recent reports on the shooting, though much of the original bile is still there. Before any information on the shooter was released, she was speculating that he was a Pakistani Muslim, based on initial reports that he was Asian. Her reasoning? A stunning display of logic, that:

* The murderer has been identified by law enforcement and media reports as “a young Asian male.”

* The Virginia Tech campus has a very large Muslim community, many of which are from Pakistan (per terrorism investigator Bill Warner).

* Pakis are considered “Asian.”

And then:

Why am I speculating that the “Asian” gunman is a Pakistani Muslim?
Because law enforcement and the media strangely won’t tell us more
specifically who the gunman is. Why?

So according to her, when the authorities don’t release the identity of a killer, assume he’s a Muslim. This sort of despicable hate-mongering is to be expected from someone like Schlussel. She ranks right up there alongside other notable conservative bigots like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. I’m no fan of any religion, and criticize them all quite frequently. But what Schlussel did here was to take advantage of this shooting to further her own agenda of demonizing Muslims. And even though we have since learned that the shooter was not a Muslim, that doesn’t deter her:

Even if it does not turn out that the shooter is Muslim, this is a
demonstration to Muslim jihadists all over that it is extremely easy to
shoot and kill multiple American college students.

I would call her a straw-headed ho, but PZ Myers has a more intelligent name for her.

The second despicable human being to come crawling out of a pile of feces and make the shooting his own was anti-videogame crusader Jack Thompson. He wound up on Fox News as an “expert” on school shootings and, predictably, blamed the tragedy on violent video games. The only thing Thompson is expert at is making an ass of himself. He currently is facing disbarment in Florida for perpetual stupidity. Despicable he may be, but Thompson, much like Alberto Gonzales, really isn’t relevant anymore.

So Schlussel has the anti-Muslim agenda covered and Thompson’s got the anti-videogame agenda taken care of. Enter Ken Ham, who has twisted the shooting to further his anti-evolution agenda (yeah, the same swine who’s behind the Kentucky Museum of Absolute Idiocy, the one that makes your IQ drop 50 points when you walk through the door). Dig this:

We live in an era when public high schools and colleges have all but
banned God from science classes. In these classrooms, students are
taught that the whole universe, including plants and animals—and
humans—arose by natural processes. Naturalism (in essence, atheism) has
become the religion of the day and has become the foundation of the
education system (and Western culture as a whole). The more such a
philosophy permeates the culture, the more we would expect to see a
sense of purposelessness and hopelessness that pervades people’s
thinking. In fact, the more a culture allows the killing of the unborn,
the more we will see people treating life in general as “cheap.”

Not only is he attacking evolution here, he’s attacking atheists. If I could talk to Ken, I would assure him that, contrary to his expectations, we atheists lead lives that are quite full of both purpose and hope. It’s people like him who take hope away in the name of an antiquated belief system that has no place in the modern world.

I’m expecting the Westboro Baptist Church loonies to come out and start blaming the shooting on homosexuals before too much longer.

Technorati Tags: Virginia Tech, school shootings, Debbie Schlussel, Jack Thomposn, religion, politics