Violent rhetoric vs. Violence: Why the media can’t let go when conservatives trip over their own tongues.

This week, St. Louis resident Scott Boston accidentally made national news. As a Tea Party activist and co-founder of the Gateway Grassroots initiative, he intended only to support Missouri Senate candidate Sarah Steelman at a Tea Party Express Rally held largely in her support.

He made a statement referencing the squeaky-clean, almost cuddly image of current Senator Claire McCaskill, the Claire Bear. When she is campaigning in Missouri, she affects the “Missourah” dialect and passes herself off as just like everybody else. You know, the everybody else who have access to private jets and get a slap on the wrist when they evade hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of taxes owed.

Scott’s actual words? “We need to kill the ‘Claire-Bear.’” His intent? To destroy her misleading narrative, to bare the real “Claire Bear,” the tax-evading hypocrite who claims “Missourah pride” and then behaves as Obama’s lapdog (sorry, Bo)when in Washington, to the voting public.

Although everyone present at the rally realized that Boston was speaking metaphorically, McCaskill’s campaign immediately beefed up security and contacted the FBI. The story was even leaked to local news outlets before Scott was even contacted either by law enforcement or by media outlets for comment.

Flash forward to today: The FBI has completely cleared Scott Boston of any harmful intent. Scott has explained his comments via many media outlets, saying that his choice of words may not have been the best but that it was only ever intended as a metaphor. And still, the left-wing blogs are buzzing about “death threats from Tea Partier Scott Boston” and “Claire McCaskill’s obvious need for increased security.”

Why won’t they let the story die? THEY CAN’T. The media needs violent rhetoric from the right in order to help obscure actual violence from the left.

Claire McCaskill herself proves to be an excellent example of this. The media needs a story that can be painted to look like violence might conceivably come from the right because they don’t want anyone to remember that McCaskill herself spoke out in support of the Occupy movement, likening them to the Tea Party even after they had shown a willingness to physically attack police officers and security guards and destroy private property. 

The examples don’t end with Claire McCaskill, nor does the violent rhetoric only come from the right. How quickly the media forgets that the New Black Panther Party called for the murder of George Zimmerman. How quickly they forget that President Obama courted the Hispanic vote by calling Republicans “the enemy.” How quickly they forget that we are watching, and that we do not forget.