As politicians and the media scrabble to assign blame for Saturday’s synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway came out with a novel take: It’s the fault of liberal, atheist comedians.
After gunman Robert Bowers murdered 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue on Saturday morning, President Donald Trump blamed Bowers’ well-documented anti-Semitism, calling it a “wicked act of pure evil and anti-Semitic.” Meanwhile, a handful of left-wing Jewish community leaders in Pittsburgh partly blamed Trump for the attack, claiming that Trump’s “policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement.”
On Monday, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway offered her own take on who is to blame for the tragedy: late night atheist comedians.
“The anti-religiosity in this country that’s somehow in vogue and funny to make fun of anybody of faith, to constantly be making fun of people who express religion - the late-night comedians, the unfunny people on TV shows - t’s always anti-religious,” she said during an appearance on Fox & Friends Monday morning.
“And remember these people were gunned down in their place of worship, as were the people in South Carolina several years ago,” she continued, referring to the murder of nine worshippers at a black church by white supremacist Dylann Roof in 2015. Roof was later sentenced to death for the attack, which by his own testimony was motivated by racial hatred, not anti-religious sentiment.
“And they (the victims) were there because they're people of faith and it’s that faith that needs to bring us again,” Conway added. “This is no time to be driving God out of the public square, no time to be making fun of people.”
When they’re not bashing President Trump, the late-night comedians referenced by Conway have often targeted religion in their funny-if-you-agree rants. Last Week Tonight host John Oliver has blasted American televangelists and called for further separation of church and state in the US. Stephen Colbert is a practicing Roman Catholic but poked fun at the religion in an Easter Sunday skit earlier this year, while Real Time comedian/commentator Bill Maher has been a virulent opponent of all things religious, and wrote and starred in ‘Religulous,’ a documentary film panning all major organized religions.
Conway was quickly put on blast by liberals for attempting to blame their beloved television hosts for the slaughter in Pittsburgh.
Conway’s choice of scapegoat may sound ludicrous, but blaming popular entertainment for violence is a time-honored American tradition. Moralizers and pearl-clutchers blamed gangsta rap for much of society’s ills in the early 1990s, while the shock-rock of Marilyn Manson was blamed for Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s 1999 rampage at Columbine High School in Colorado.
More recently, NRA vice president Wayne LaPierre blamed an online flash game, Kindergarten Killer, for inspiring Adam Lanza’s murder spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, despite the fact that there was no evidence that Lanza ever played the game.
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