J.D. Prose – 12/21/12

This page was last updated on December 23, 2012.

NRA response steers it straight into irrelevancy; J.D. Prose; Beaver County Times; December 21, 2012.

According to his Twitter page, Mr. Prose is a self-described “Surly progressive.” As you read this opinion column and his Twitter “tweets,” keep in mind Mr. Prose wears at least one other hat for the BCT. In addition to being an entertainer/pundit, Mr. Prose is a part-time reporter covering political stories. Ask yourself this. When a pundit gives his political opinions in one part of the paper, can he be trusted to report politics objectively elsewhere in the paper? After all, would a person whose opinion is 1+1 equals 3 report 1+1 really equals 2? Does he have a “Chinese wall” in his head to keep his opinions from bleeding into his reporting? (You may recall NPR claimed it fired Juan Williams for doing exactly what Mr. Prose does.) If it can get worse than that, Mr. Prose has made name-calling and personal attacks a foundation of his columns. If pushed, I’d be willing to bet Mr. Prose would try to excuse his writing by claiming he’s paid to be controversial and stir debate. The problem is, you don’t need to get into name-calling and personal attacks to accomplish those goals.

You can find the archive of my Prose column critiques here.

Below is a detailed critique of portions of this column.

Rather than write a real critique, I decided just to list some points about the subject article.

Gee, a rant by Mr. Prose about the NRA. Who saw that coming? <g> This is Mr. Prose’s second column on this topic in five days; his first was “Time for talking is over, gun control now.” By the time you finish reading the subject piece, you’ll find Mr. Prose still has not provided any recommendations or his definition of “gun control.”

Mr. Prose referred to Wayne LaPierre as an NRA “‘spokesman’”; Mr. LaPierre is CEO and Executive VP.

You can find the NRA “sickening nonsense” here. I suggest you read/view the press conference transcript/video rather than accept the Prose interpretation. Mr. Prose noted Messrs. LaPierre and Asa Hutchinson didn’t “take questions from reporters,” but failed to note in the first minute NRA President David Keene said questions would be taken the following week. Not ideal, I agree, but keep in mind most “reporters” there were probably “surly progressive” pundits like Mr. Prose. In the next Prose rant, I’m sure he will share with us the questions he asked of the NRA and the responses. <g> Mr. Prose failed to mention his fellow lefties at Code Pink disrupted the event.

In the previous column, Mr. Prose treated a lefty pundit as a credible data source. Mr. Prose continued that practice with Mother Jones.

For those of you who don’t know, a semi-automatic weapon fires one shot per trigger-pull. Mr. Prose failed to note the feds’ definition of “assault weapon” includes semi-automatic handguns.

Mr. Prose told readers the NRA “is now a caricature of itself, a fringe group to be ignored.” Hmm, the vision of a glass house just popped into my head.

Mr. Prose wrote, “Are you listening NRA-approved politicians? If not, you’ll hear the rest of us soon. Very soon.” I don’t know who “the rest of us” are, but since he refers to himself as “we” and “us” in his columns, Mr. Prose probably means himself.

Mr. Prose wrote, “One state legislator who is listening, at least when it comes to assault weapons like the one used in the Newtown massacre, is state Rep. Jim Christiana [R], who told us Friday that, ‘I can’t comprehend why someone would need a gun like that. There’s no need for it.’” Perhaps Mr. Christiana needs a refresher course on the purpose of the Second Amendment. If I were Mr. Prose, I’d write something like he and other lefties pretend to care about the victims in an effort to make sure we’re unarmed should “We the People” find our government became our enemy.