Passing The Buck

(Above: Officer Garrett Swasey, one of the murder victims at last Friday's Planned Parenthood shooting.)

Every time a Muslim extremist kills someone, moderate Muslim leaders are hauled in front of the TV cameras, and a reporter indignantly demands why they aren't speaking out more forcefully against Islamic terrorism.

But what happened last Friday when a right-winger killed three people, including a policeman, and wounded three others at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs last Friday? Not a single priest or minister was asked for a similar denunciation.

I did see one pro-lifer being interviewed on CNN: a congressman from Illinois named Adam Kinzinger. He uttered not a peep of regret, much less condemnation, and nobody at CNN asked him why not. Instead, he said Planned Parenthood is the one that should apologize.

It's the same pattern everywhere you look, no matter what the issue. Nobody asked a minister to denounce Randolph Linn when he tried to burn down an Islamic Center in Toledo last September. Or Frazier Glenn Miller when he murdered three people at a Jewish community center in Kansas in 2014. For that matter, no rabbis were called on to denounce the right-wing Jewish settlers who kidnapped a 16-year-old Palestinian boy last year and burned him to death.

When a police officer is murdered, the brass and police unions inevitably blame the Black Lives Matter movement, as if all blacks everywhere are responsible for the misdeeds of one. But if a white person murders blacks, as Dylan Roof did in Charleston, South Carolina, he's labeled just a troubled loner.

Notice a double standard here? The rhetorical deck is stacked against the underdog, and the media are complicit in this up to their ears.

And the politicians are even worse: They completely duck the issue. After news of the killings in Colorado Springs broke last Friday, here's what the Republican presidential candidates had to say on Twitter:

Marco Rubio: "Stay warm this winter with our new cold-weather bundle. Shop now and save!"

Rand Paul: "Visit the Rand Paul Store for the best Black Friday deals! Shop now and support the campaign!"

Jeb Bush: "I’ll reverse the failed Obama/Clinton foreign policy. Read my new op-ed in New Hampshire’s ConMonitorNews."

Carly Fiorina: Linking anti-abortion rhetoric from Republicans to the attack on the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs is just “typical left-wing tactics.”

Donald Trump: "The reporter who pulled-back from his 14 year old never retracted story is having fun. I don't know what he looks like and don't know him!"

Ted Cruz: The shooter was a "transgendered leftist activist."

Ben Carson, Lindsey Graham, Chris Christie and George Pataki and didn't say anything.

But maybe I shouldn't be too critical. After all, they have to worry about their base, and that base is in full-tilt gloat mode, as evidenced by this tweet: "No sympathy for any pregnant female who was injured in the Planned Parenthood shooting that was there to get an abortion. She deserved it."

 Excuse me, but aren't these the same people who keep saying "All lives matter?"

 To his credit, John Kasich said he was praying for the victims, as did Clinton, Sanders and O'Malley. And Mike Huckabee said, "What (the shooter) did is domestic terrorism."

But no one except President Obama addressed the real issue: What concrete steps are we prepared to take to make sure this doesn't become the new normal?