Shameful to attack these kids.
Right-wing media attacks outspoken Florida school shooting survivors By Joel Connelly, SeattlePI
Updated 2:01 pm, Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Outspoken student survivors of last week's Parkland, Florida, massacre now find themselves under verbal fire from the political right, and described as pawns and stooges of the media and gun control advocates.
Attacks on the Florida students' anti-gun violence movement range from the condescending to false and vicious claims on the media.
They bespeak fear of a student movement growing across the country. At the very opposite end of America from Parkland, Bellingham witnessed Washington's first student protest at noon on Wednesday.
"Genuine grief I can sympathize with. But grief organized for the cameras -- politically organized grief -- strikes me as phony and inauthentic," author/pundit Dinesh D'Souza wrote on Twitter earlier this week.
"Do Not Let the Children Lead," read a National Review piece by onetime Seattle Times columnist Michelle Malkin.
"Those who question the logic, efficiency and wisdom of the latest left-wing 'children's crusade' face accusations of 'hating the children'," Malkin complained. The students are being manipulated by "ideologically stunted liberal professors," she charged.
Ex-Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Sheriff David Clarke, a high profile political supporter of President Trump, sees in students' protest the hands of a Hungarian-born billionaire human rights advocate who is a devil figure to the right.
The gun safety protest has "George Soros' fingerprints all over it," Clarke charged. "It's similar to how he hijacked and exploited black people's emotion regarding police use of force incidents into the COP HATING Black Lives Matter movement."
Nonsense, the students from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School have responded to such claims.
"I'm not getting paid for this, I want to come out here on behalf of my city and my town and just spread the message on behalf of those who can't," survivor Rachel Cantana told CNN on Tuesday night.
"I'm going to make sure that those 17 innocent people who had their lives taken from them did not die for no reason. No one's paying me to do this. I'm not a crisis actor."
With some critics, the students from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School appear tooarticulate. Abuse has focused on David Hogg, a high school senior who videotaped fellow students during the attack.
Rocker/reality TV personality Ted Nugent, a National Rifle Association board member, tweeted of Hogg: "It's all THEATER: Florida high school shooting survivor caught on video rehearsing scripted lines, coached by camera man."
A YouTube video appeared Wednesday, entitled "David Hogg the Actor" charging that Hogg was a "crisis actor." It was later taken down for violating YouTube's policy against "harassment and bullying."
"The video should never have appeared in Trending," YouTube said in a statement.
On CNN's AC360, Hogg responded by saying: "I am not a crisis actor. I'm someone who had to witness this and live through this and I continue to be having to do that. I'm not acting on anybody's behalf."
Donald Trump, Jr., appeared on Twitter to endorse an allegation that Hogg, 17, had been coached by his father, a former agent with the FBI.
An aide to Florida Republican State Rep. Shawn Harrison emailed a reporter, charging (without evidence): "Both kids in the picture are not students here but actors that travel to various crisis (sic) when they happen."
Underlying the scattershot attacks on new media is fear: The students are gaining a foothold on the national consciousness which will be tough to dislodge.
Fox News prime time pundit Tucker Carlson complained: "They are using these kids in a kind of moral blackmail, where you are not allowed to disagree or you are attacking a child -- which is, of course -- I can speak for myself, the last thing I would ever do as a father of four."
After directing verbal fire at the students -- "Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs" -- one critic hastily declared a cease fire on Wednesday.
"While it aimed at media manipulation, my tweet was insensitive to students who lost friends in a terrible tragedy: I'm truly sorry," wrote Dinesh D'Souza.
President Trump and conservative media have responded to Parkland with a party line. The FBI dropped the ball and ignored warning signs from the accused assassin. In a tweet, Trump accused the FBI of wasting resources on Russia's involvement in the 2016 election.
But the student survivors have come forth with a powerful narrative. The networks' Wednesday morning news was filled with scenes of Parkland students arriving in the Florida state capital, only to learn that legislators had refused to take up an assault weapons ban.
Alan Gottleib of Bellevue, founder of the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, put fears succinctly:
"There are emerging details in this story suggesting Broward County authorities and the FBI may have dropped the ball on the suspect in this shooting.
"But the media will concentrate on stories about gun control with demands to know how the suspect could legally acquire the gun he used."
The staying power of the students' movement will be tested in the weeks ahead. They have called for a nationwide March for Our Lives on March 24. They've called for students to walk out of school and protest gun violence on April 20.
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