Fox News’ pathetic last stand: Cliven Bundy, Wayne LaPierre and the liberal media

Wayne LaPierre wanted to defend Cliven Bundy and cheer the NRA crowd to revolution. He couldn't. Sanity prevails

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

It’s always tough when a speaker has to alter his or her address at the last minute due to some big change over which they had no control. For instance, imagine what Wayne LaPierre’s speech to the National Rifle Association leadership forum on Friday must have been before right-wing hero Cliven Bundy donned a metaphorical white hood and declared himself a racist cretin in front of the entire nation.

It must have been a rousing cri de guerre summoning up the ghosts of great Americans from Patrick Henry to Wyatt Earp to Charlton Heston to illustrate the patriotism of Real Americans like Bundy. (Well, probably not Wyatt Earp — he was a notorious gun-grabber.) After all, the Second Amendment guarantees their right under the Constitution to declare the federal government illegitimate and threaten it at gunpoint. Or something.

Anyway, one can certainly imagine him laying out the thrilling scenario of a grizzled old cowboy and his friends and neighbors out on the range holding off the government thugs and finally forcing them to retreat rather than risk losing like the lily-livered cowards you just know they are. (I suspect he would have left out the part where Bundy’s armed supporters openly admitted that they had planned to use women as human shields — not to stop the authorities from opening fire, mind you, but so it would be “women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot.”)

He could have concluded with a rave-up finale featuring the image of Cliven Bundy, the Real American Cowboy, vs. city slicker Michael Bloomberg and his filthy 50 million pieces of communist silver. What an electrifying performance it could have been. I’m sure the crowd would have leapt to its feet weeping in ecstasy, cheering and hugging one another in gun-loving solidarity.

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http://www.salon.com/2014/04/28/fox_news_pathetic_last_stand_cliven_bundy_wayne_lapierre_and_the_liberal_media/