The Deafening Silence

By Eric-Woods Erickson

There was a school shooting in Iowa. A child died. Four others were wounded. The shooter committed suicide.

It is so curious. We cannot say the press did not report it, because it was widely reported.

But we can all use our brains and common sense to realize how the media did not cover it extensively as they have numerous school shootings.

There were no overnight round tables on gun violence and the need for gun control. In a political environment where so many gun owners are supposed threats to democracy, Democrat politicians have not run out, as they usually do, and demanded action. The President’s response has been muted.

We should conclude that, like so much of the media’s coverage of news today, the intersectional algorithm falls outside “white cisgendered heterosexual male” school shooter into some victim class.

And you would, naturally, be right.

Just as the press censoriously lectures us not to “deadname” members of the trans community and they covered the Covenant School shooting in Tennessee using Audrey Hale’s given name instead of Aiden Hale, which she wanted to be known by, and also downplayed Audrey Hale being trans, it looks like the same situation is playing out now.

I’m reminded of the three shootings last year that all occurred over a weekend.

A mass shooting at a birthday party in Alabama with multiple people dead, but the shooters were black and the victims were black.

The girl shot and killed by an elderly man in New York as the girl and her friends turned around in the man’s driveway. They were all white.

The young man in Missouri who was shot through the front door by an elderly man. The boy, thankfully, survived. The boy was black. The man was white. The media gave it maximum coverage and even Joe Biden got involved.

The stories the press chooses to cover are all chosen through an intersectional lens. So if the school shooter in Iowa were from a MAGA family, you’d be waking up today to copious media coverage. But you aren’t because the shooter wasn’t.

The shooter is from the Alphabet Gang, so move along please. The narrative does not work. You can have a news day mostly free of lectures on the evils of the second amendment.