The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Jared Loughner’s Zeitgeist Obsession:
‘He Wanted to Watch It All the Time’

Posted on | January 16, 2011 | 34 Comments

Kudos to the Arizona Republic for this follow-up reporting:

Loughner began fixating on a documentary: “Zeitgeist: The Movie.”
The movie is a bramble of conspiracy theories involving Sept. 11, the international monetary system, and Christianity.
“There are people guiding your life and you don’t even know it,” the trailer for the movie intones.
“He wanted to watch it all the time,” Osler said. “It was cool at first. But then it got weird. It was all he wanted to do.”
Loughner developed a seeming obsession with currency, grammar and literacy rates. They were becoming the objects of his rants and screeds. Those around him didn’t understand.

OK, so on Wednesday, ABC News was first to report on Loughner’s obsession with this conspiracy-theory cult flick:

“I really think that this Zeitgeist documentary had a profound impact upon Jared Loughner’s mindset and how he views the world that he lives in.”
– Zach Osler, friend of Tucson gunman

Four days later, the Arizona Republic finally follows up on this angle and we learn how intensely involved with this movie the killer became. Loughner already had serious problems — drugs, alchohol, dropping out of high school — but it seems to have been the “profound impact” of Zeitgeist that signaled his descent into deadly schizophrenic madness.

In their haste to shift blame onto Sarah Palin, Fox News, talk radio and the Tea Party movement, the elite media have overlooked what appears to be a major clue to the motive of the Tucson massacre.

As of noon Sunday, there were 39 search results on Google News for “Loughner+Zeitgeist.” Most of those were passing mentions. Meanwhile, a Google News search for “Loughner+Palin” returned 10,395 results. There were 595 results for “Loughner+Limbaugh.”

By comparison, so far as I have been able to determine, by Sunday noon there had been exactly five substantial articles devoted specifically to the Loughner-Zeitgeist connection:

Thursday, the Washington Post published a 2,700-word profile of Jared Lee Loughner, and today the New York Times published a 5,000-word profile of the Tucson killer.

Neither story so much as mentioned Zeigeist.

The Big Boys of American journalism appear to be missing in action on this story. Even ABC News, which scored an exclusive in Wednesday’s interview with Zach Osler, has failed to follow up on this tantalizing suggestion of how Jared Loughner got so crazy. It will require a major New Media effort to force the MSM to focus on the Zeitgeist connection.

Zeitgeist: Watch the Conspiracy Movie
That Had a ‘Profound Impact’ on
Tucson Mass Murder Suspect Jared Loughner

Fortunately, the story is starting to break through. Rush Limbaugh mentioned it Friday. Last night, Instapundit linked here, and today he linked Jesse Walker’s story. I’ve been trying to encourage blogs to get on the story by instituting a total linkback policy — maximum Rule 4 FMJRA — and here are a few of the blogs that have joined the effort in the past three days:

So it’s an Army of Davids against the liberal Goliath that wants to play a dishonest connect-the-dots game with murder and the Tea Party.

“It appears quite possible that Zeitgeist was to Loughner what the Beatles’ ‘White Album’ was to Charles Manson.”


Category: ABC, Arizona, Conspiracy Theories, Crime, New York Times, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, Zeitgeist

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