It is an observable fact that some individuals of high intelligence and considerable education are sometimes foolish. Moreover, quite a few of this cohort believe what they want to believe. The recent political assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk illustrates the point.
The first intelligent and well-educated fool out of the gate following Kirk’s evident murder was MSNBC senior political analyst Matthew Dowd. During an appearance on the station’s Katy Tur Reports program, soon after the news of the shooting circulated, Dowd declared: “We don’t know if this was a supporter shooting their gun off in celebration so we have no idea about this.”
This was just naive. Unlike some other nations, firing guns and rifles in the air as a form of celebration is not a custom in the US.
Then Dowd threw the switch to victim blaming, declaring: “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions; you can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful action to take place.”
In other words, Dowd seemed to be suggesting that Kirk had it coming to him. But Dowd did not cite any evidence to support his assertion of “awful thoughts” with respect to Kirk.
It was not long before the conspiracy theorists rocked up from the well-educated kind, among others.
This included Australia’s very own former ABC journalist Barrie Cassidy. As The Australian’s Media pages documented last Monday, Cassidy put up a post on X early in the morning of Saturday, September 13, to the effect that Kirk was murdered because he was not conservative enough.
Cassidy declared: “The apparent shooter was a white straight conservative Mormon from Utah who thought Charlie Kirk wasn’t far enough to the right; Trump’s analysis is exceptionally embarrassing and dangerous even by his standards.”
By the time Cassidy sent out his post, President Donald J. Trump had indicated that the shooter was on the left of the political spectrum. But to Cassidy the murderer’s motive was that a Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporter believed that Kirk was not sufficiently MAGA. An unlikely conspiracy, you would think, since it would be difficult to find an American more MAGA than Kirk.
Within a few hours it was Cassidy who found himself in an “exceptionally embarrassing” situation. But at least he took down the post and admitted his mistake to The Australian’s Steve Jackson. Namely, he had believed what he read on social media without fact-checking.
It turned out that Cassidy was in famous company. On hearing that Fox News presenter Jesse Watters had depicted Kirk as not being “a controversial or polarising figure” but, rather, just a “patriot”, novelist Stephen King posted: “He (Kirk) advocated stoning gays to death; just sayin’ “.
This was a vile accusation of advocating murder about someone who could not defend their reputation. King had come across a doctored quote and accepted it as valid.
In fact, Kirk was known to have no objection to gays – maintaining that there was no incompatibility between being gay and believing in the MAGA movement.
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Dave Rubin is an American conservative political commentator. He was reported on the Sky News Australia website as having told King: “Charlie was never anything but kind to me and my husband; we broke bread many times and he never treated us with anything other than respect.” Rubin’s message to King was: “Write about that sometime, you hack.”
In response to severe criticism from Republican senator Ted Cruz, King declared: “This is what I get from reading something on Twitter w/o fact-checking; won’t happen again.” Which sounds like shifting the blame.
Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe was another to believe what he wanted to believe in this instance. He embraced the conspiracy theory that “Kirk’s apparent assassin seems to have been ultra-MAGA, exploding the GOP (Republican)/MAGA attempt to pin the blame for this tragedy on liberals (meaning left in the American sense of the term)”.
Later, Tribe put out a post that referred to Kirk’s “grotesque murder” but added: “Those calling the suspected assassin trans, liberal, or a radical leftist are exploiting a tragedy for political gain by making stuff up.” He said: “My reaction saying he (the assassin) was to Kirk’s right was premature, and I’m sorry I reposted a tweet to that effect before deleting my repost.” It would seem that Tribe was primarily sorry for himself.
It was much the same across the Atlantic. On his The Rest is Politics podcast, former British Labor Party adviser and author Alastair Campbell said: “I remember one clip I saw of him (Kirk) saying that – literal meaning of the Bible – gay people should be stoned to death.” Campell was not consciously lying. Rather, this was a not unfamiliar case of someone having a clear “recollection” of an event that never happened.
Unlike some others involved in misquoting or verballing Kirk, Campbell apologised for his error, stating: “Kirk did have views with which I strongly disagree but this was not one of them.” Campbell described Kirk’s views, including on Israel, as “horrid”.
British broadcaster Terry Christian lacked grace with respect to his misquotation. He refused to apologise. When confronted on X by a critic who said the quote allegedly from Kirk was false, according to a report in the London Telegraph, Christian replied: “Who gives a f..k what he said.” Well, Christian certainly did, before his howler was brought to his attention.
And now the host of American network ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! has come undone.
Last Monday in the US, Kimmel accused MAGA supporters of “working very hard to capitalise on the murder of Charlie Kirk”. This despite the fact the accused gunman is on the left and a MAGA movement hater. Kimmel was using the death of a conservative to make a political point.
The American left is in denial about the murder of a prominent conservative by an alleged gunman who hated conservatives. Another example of individuals who should know better than believing what they want to believe.