Last Tuesday, PBS aired a Frontline production titled, Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA. PBS promoted it as an expose of longtime NRA front man, Wayne LaPierre. That LaPierre is synonymous with the NRA ought to come as no surprise to anyone familiar with American politics so I was hoping for new and damning intelligence on the NRA and the insidious commercial gun industry.
It was a
big disappointment. Mostly, Gunned Down was an on air post mortem of
Congress and the Obama Administration set to music from 24. Cause of
death? You guessed it. Wayne LaPierre and the National Rifle
Association. Not too newsworthy.
As the
credits rolled I considered what producer, director and writer, Michael
Kirk wanted me, the viewer, to take away from Gunned Down.
Kirk easily made the case that ranking government officials are
powerless against the NRA to marshall the necessary political will in
congress. Perhaps the take away comes more in the form of a question;
whether civilian gun regulation is just a pipe dream now that the NRA owns
congress?
After
retelling how each political setback merely fed the mighty ire of the NRA beast
and its constituency, it repeated the question asked by greater America, just
who is going to do something to stop the NRA? Unless it was buried in
code Gunned Down offered not even a hint of a silver lining.
Gunned
Down gave Kirk a platform to dissect the political life of Wayne LaPierre
when he should have examined more judiciously the US gun industry and it’s
contributions that sustain the efforts of the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute
for Legislative Action. It’s no mystery gun makers and their boards are
more involved in owning congress that it would like the world to know.
Kirk drew no lines making this connection to the gridlock paralyzing
Washington D.C. and increasingly inside state capitals when it comes to gun regulation.
Why?
Certainly,
LaPierre transformed the NRA into the lobbying juggernaut it is today.
LaPierre is hailed as the uncompromising champion of “gun owner” rights and he
is compensated well. But look closer at the rewards of LaPierre’s success
enjoyed exclusively by civilian arms manufacturers. All NRA revenues
combined are minuscule by caparison and somehow, someway Frontline omitted this
from Gunned Down.
What
gives? Maybe PBS charitable endowments find that too distasteful?
After
interviewing a who’s who of journalistic heavy weights, NRA insiders, and
reform advocates it is inconceivable Kirk did not share some sense, be
that a wink and a nod, that “the man” behind the curtain has never been Wayne
LaPierre. Why instead didn’t Gunned Down confirm on air that LaPierre is
simply the skullen blue genie shielding bloated gun industrialists behind a
moldy shower curtain?
Why?
Because that conversation would never make it past Frontline post production.
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| Rachel Maddow picked a fight with the gun industry instead of the NRA. Big mistake. |
To quote
Hunter S. Thompson, LaPierre is a front “for all the rancid genes and broken
chromosomes that continue to corrupt the possibility of the American Dream.”
After Sandy Hook, Rachel Maddow flew
dangerously close to the sun calling LaPierre and the NRA a heat shield for the
gun industry. The base criminals at the root of this gun theocracy
have always been the Chief Executives, Board Chairs and majority
shareholders. Not Wayne Goddamn LaPierre.
Symptomatic
of a much larger disease, corporate sponsors and foundations would prefer, in
this instance, that well-educated liberal progressive PBS audience pay
attention to LaPierre and not the gun theocracy. The PBS audience must
remain adamant that LaPierre is calling cadence. The alternative would
implicate too many of their own and that would start to unravel everything.
Gunned
Down merely repackaged things we already knew; that LaPierre is the most
detestable whore in Washington. Even his political battle buddies
mustered faint praise for the man but varying shades of envy of his political
savvy. At the same time they ridiculed his lack of gun prowess.
An objective review of PBS and its corporate sponsors and
foundation as they actually function would make affluent liberals
uncomfortable. They’d have to examine the corrupt system which they are an
uncontested part. As investigative journalist Russ Baker put it, they’d be
forced to see that “when liberals get into power, all too many end up serving
corporate interests in ways that differ from conservatives more in style and
tone than in profound shifts of policy and governance.”
Large,
corporate sponsorships and foundations like the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation and
Charles G. Koch Foundation would experience serious heartburn if Frontline
exposed it’s executive and boardroom brethren inside civilian arms
manufacturers like the Freedom Group, Glock, Smith & Wesson, etc.
Weapons
manufacturers have quietly bankrolled the NRA’s Institute for Legislative
Action for 40 years. The ILA is arm of the NRA that accomplishes the gun
industry bidding. The ILA knows where all the bodies are hidden.
Everything else the NRA accomplishes is air cover.
I counted
exactly zero times that Chris Cox was mentioned. In 2002, Cox replaced
Wayne LaPierre as executive director of the NRA-ILA. When the legislature
is in session Cox, an attorney by training, is busy calf roping congress.
As the senior most, tenured, semi retired NRA operative, LaPierre rarely
emerges from his crypt for anything less than a school massacre. He
conducts the Sunday talk show circuit tour, distracts John Q. Public with
absurd and debase portrayals of freedom and patriotism. He warns the
twitchy base that gun confiscation is eminent and then he limps back into
twilight. LaPierre and his foaming minions inculcate faux grass root organizers
in the art of obfuscation, rat hole argumentation and zealotry. All so
that the NRA-ILA can buy political campaigns and hand pick elected officials.
The purpose behind Gunned Down wasn’t to anger America off the sofa to fight the
NRA. It was to inure the PBS demographic to a narrative that not only
suits the civilian arms industry but keeps the PBS viewership tuned in and
comfortable with the "new normal."
Again, Russ Baker: “By creating an aura of thoughtfulness, PBS has
essentially lulled the public into complacency. By its very existence, it has
convinced us that dissent is not only welcomed but has a vigorous presence in
the American conversation. By having hard-core corporate operatives gently
debate tepid reformers, it has given us the facade of open discussion and
probing inquiries. Which is why those oil companies, banks, and foundations set
up by the very rich are so happy to underwrite all that good taste”.
