On Wednesday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” National Review columnist Mark Steyn commented on Tuesday’s incident involving the assault on Fox News Channel contributor Steven Crowder at a union rally in Michigan.
Steyn, author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” first went after the media and drew parallels with the shooting of former Democratic Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
“It’s the old story — at time of Gabby Giffords shooting, the problem was apparently metaphor,” Steyn said. “Metaphor was dangerous, if you say you were Sarah Palin and said this particular congressional district is in the crosshairs, you were fomenting violence. Now we have actually violence, and it goes entirely unreported by all the ninnies and nellies who were wailing about the use of metaphor at the time of the Gabby Giffords thing. Absolutely disgraceful, but as you say entirely predictable.”
Cavuto proposed that the incident was not exactly good PR for organized labor since it gave a thuggish face to labor unions. Steyn disagreed.
“I think in fact it is the opposite, Neil, that a lot people are happy to give this impression,” Steyn replied. “It is extremely valuable for people to understand that your guys mean it and you may want to play along because, otherwise, things are going to get very unpleasant for you. That is the message these guys are sending in Michigan. It’s basically the domestic version of what you see in the Arab Spring. All of these protests against Morsi in Cairo were completely peaceful, then Muslim Brotherhood show up to protest and seven people die. There is always an advantage to the side that means it and to the side that is willing to apply the muscle. And that’s why I don’t think the unions are bothered about bad publicity over this at all. They understand the people get the core message.”
Steyn predicted the incident is a preview of what to expect as the country gets “broker.”
“They are not because they understand — I think this is an amazing decision in Michigan and if it goes this way across the country, it is very bad news,” Steyn said. “And these guys will be at a tipping point, and they don’t want to go that way. And so I think here you are seeing a glimpse of what the future is like as America gets broker and broker that you will see people prepared to do all kinds of things out there on the streets, and in that sense it’s a portent of what could be a lot worse in two, three, four years, as America slides off the real fiscal cliff into the great abyss of bankruptcy that awaits. It’s not going to be pretty.”
