Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Jimmy Kimmel makes 'Gunwalker' joke; much of the crowd doesn't get it

Kurt Hofmann
St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner

It was only for 14 seconds, and one might question the appropriateness of joking about a government plot that has resulted in hundreds of deaths in Mexico, and two dead federal agents, but comedian Jimmy Kimmel is now one of the few people to have publicly referenced the "Project Gunwalker" scandal in President Obama's presence. This was Saturday night, at the White House Correspondents' Dinner (see sidebar video):

Even some of your fellow Democrats think you’re a pushover, Mr. President. They would like to see you stick to your guns, and if you don’t have any guns, they would like to see you ask Eric Holder to get some for you.

Jake Tapper wrote that.

Jake Tapper is ABC's senior White House correspondent, and one of the few White House correspondents to have made some effort to get answers about the scandal, although ABC leadership evidently does not find it as newsworthy as Tapper does, judging by their decision not to air his questioning Obama on the subject.

How was Kimmel's joke received? According to Matthew Boyle, of the Daily Caller, rather . . . stiffly, by Obama himself:

Obama forced a smile but didn’t audibly laugh at that joke.

As for the rest of the audience, not much better, according to Twitchy.com:

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel made reference to the deadly “Fast and Furious” White House/DOJ gun-walking scandal at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night. Most of the D.C. media and Hollywood types, of course, a) cringed; b) shrugged their shoulders; or c) scratched their heads in abject, willful ignorance.

The cringing is good news--the more uncomfortable this scandal makes administration apologists, the better. The bad news is that this scandal, festering for 16 months since blogger Mike Vanderboegh first started calling attention to it, has still not become too big for even the abjectly, willfully ignorant to miss.

That, of course, is how much of the mass media wants it, as National Gun Rights Examiner David Codrea has pointed out, again, and again, and again, and again. The traditional "watchdog media" is long dead, and if the murderous abomination of "Project Gunwalker" is ever to become the impossible-to-ignore, Watergate-dwarfing scandal it should be--that decency, and justice for its hundreds of victims demand it become--the spotlight is going to have to come from another direction.

Perhaps that direction will be "Blood on their hands," a proposed documentary by award winning documentarist Mike McNulty's COPS (Citizens Organization for Public Safety) Productions, about the "Gunwalker" scandal. As promising as the documentary sounds, it won't happen without funding:

That said, the film may not get made. Funding for documentaries has always been difficult to obtain without well-resourced backers, and interest in the film community and among their foundation and individual benefactors in exposing the government’s part in sanctioning “gunwalking” is practically nonexistent. In order to deal with that reality, McNulty has turned to us.

He’s established a budget goal of $389,500 which he explains on a “Kickstarter” fundraising page where he’s soliciting individual contributors like you to back this project. Minimum donations start at $1, with progressive contributor thresholds and incentives. It will only be funded if the budget goal is met by May 24, 11:33 pm EDT. Importantly, because the question is a natural, albeit a pessimistic one, per Kickstarter policy, “if the project falls short no one is charged.”

No one should be able to even convincingly pretend to be ignorant of this administration's bloodiest scandal, and this documentary could go a long way to making such an act impossible to pull off. And it will only happen with readers' help.

Update: Seattle Gun Rights Examiner Dave Workman has more, in "The joke that didn’t leave ‘em laughing."

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