Bitter and I arrived back late last night, and had to return the rental car early this morning. So things are running a bit behind. I have some more thoughts on NRA that have been developing since Annual Meeting, but it’ll take a bit to figure out exactly what I want to say. Indy was a good convention. But it seems that no NRA Annual Meeting can be complete without the requisite article by a pearl clutching reporter who is shocked, shocked, about what’s going on behind those doors. This year’s award has to go to Cliff Schecter, Bloomberg stooge, and all around vile human being.
I’m pretty certain the only one who is terrified of the NRA Annual Meeting is Cliff Schecter and his fellow travelers. It seems odd that NRA would credential media known to be hostile, but as anyone who’s read Brian Anse Patrick’s book on NRA media coverage can tell you, NRA feeds off this kind of hate. If anything, NRA is better off leaving friendly media to their own, and giving hostile media the “Right this way Mr. Schecter. We’ve prepared a tour of the floor for you that we sincerely hope will fulfill your every prejudice and stereotype about NRA members, and make the hate flow from your fingers with ease!,” treatment.
As I walked past a row of AR-15s mounted on the wall on my right, I noticed a J.Crewed-out family who might have come from Bethesda or Greenwich—two parents and their son, 12 or so—checking out the action on the wall. I looked around for more like them and started to notice that while in the minority, they were definitely there, wandering the halls looking at the merchandise. For a moment it was comforting, but it suddenly occurred to me that their nonchalance about taking their kids to an arms bazaar might be even more eerie than the shaved-headed, ZZ Top-bearded guys who smelled like month-old cheese and looked like they’d been locked in their bunkers the past week making love to their antique Lugers.
The condescension there is so thick you could plant a flagpole in it. First is the surprise that people who looked “J.Crewed-out” would be in some third world backwater like Indianapolis, which can’t even support a proper art gallery! And not only does it seem Indianapolis has cultured and upper-middle-class looking people, but they bring their kids to NRA Annual Meeting. Sacrebleu!
Of course, as much as Mr. Schecter might want to think we’re the short bus rejects, I’d just like to point out that one thing I did not do this weekend was wander around the show floor sniffing other men’s beards, and I’m pretty certain that was the case for probably all of the 75,200+ other attendees. Talk about weird.
Note the thinly veiled neo-Nazi allusions: shaved-headed (skinhead); bunker; Luger.
The next paragraph:
“The thrust of the NRA’s push is these guys. It is for them that the NRA runs a terror campaign, pure and simple, to sell a lethal product by making them think everyone from the black president to the United Nations to minorities and terrorists is coming to start a war with them—probably by kicking in their door and stealing their guns.”
So there you go. NRA exists to cater to neo-Nazis and stoke their fears.
Godwin’s Law proven again by the tolerant left.
“Why don’t these people realize guns are super weird and scary evil totems? WHY?
How can they imagine they’re normal, merely physical objects?”
(On Rob F’s quote of the next paragraph … I’d love to see the author provide links to the actual NRA sources saying any of that.
Oh, the NRA does occasionally say the President might like more gun control. But, well, the President himself occasionally says things like that.
Last I checked the NRA encouraged minorities to … arm themselves, legally.)
I help run a state organization and I can say without a doubt, the best membership surges we have are when news media publishes anti-gun articles.
One of the first surges we had was from a editorial about us in a newspaper. The more rhetoric they spew, the more members sign up.
The biggest recruiter of course is Obama. I don’t mean what we say about him, I mean what they hear him say in the news drives them to join us.
“ First is the surprise that people who looked “J.Crewed-out†would be in some third world backwater like Indianapolis, which can’t even support a proper art gallery!”
Mr. Schecter might be interested in this little factoid: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/best-places/2012/snapshots/PL1810342.html
If I’m not mistaken, our two northern bedroom ‘burbs, Carmel and Fishers, are both in the top five cities in the U.S. in per capita household income. I think there might even be a J. Crew up there, out past Zeke’s cow pasture, near the old tire shop. ;)
I guess he never thought about why Marriott decided to build their largest flagship hotel in Indy, at a cost of nearly half a billion dollars. Granted, that’s probably why I was paying close to New York prices for beer and wine around the convention area, but they’d never build anything like that in Philly, because no one in their right minds (or conventioneers) would come there without a good reason. Our convention center is a multi-billion-dollar boondoggle.
As you have blogged and said, yes. They built it there because Indy is a sports city. It hosts the Super Bowl and NCAA men’s basketball championships (plus races of course). Indy is primarily known for sports, and people who attend those events don’t want to stay in a bunch of crap hotels inconveniently located to the stadium. Building a flagship JW Marriott in Indy was very smart. And of course their business decision now helps thousands of NRA members too.
I sure walked past J. Crew in the malls `round Indy more than a few times. I believe, “back in the day”, there was even a J. Crew in the Lafayette Square mall.
so this is where mentally retarded Repugnant gun nut racists hang out? a real circle jerk of idiocracy going on here, eh…what a pathetic bunch of ahole racist morons
Troll says what?
Thank you for proving the point that leftist gun control supporters are interested in anything other than a rational conversation about policy. No… it has to be straw men.
Wow lots of name calling there. Does that help your cause? Or does it just make you feel better.
I’m mean thanks for proving our point and all, but still that’s uncalled for.