I'm Sure Eric Cantor Will Soon Hold A Press Conference For This, Too

On Thursday, March 25, Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip, held a press conference to announce that he was also a victim of the spate of violence and threats spawned by the rancor surrounding the health care reform debate.  In his best melodramatic delivery, Cantor intoned, "Enough is enough.  It has to stop."  Then he walked away from his own press conference without taking questions from reporters.  Dramatic, indeed.


Unfortunately for Cantor, he was apparently just the victim of bad luck.


Turns out his nondescript office in a nondescript building in Richmond wasn't the target of an intended shot by some crazed crackpot looking to weigh on the health care reform issue through violence.  Instead, as Richmond Police reported, it wasn't really Cantor's campaign office that got hit by the bullet.  It was a room in the building -- the same building that houses his campaign office -- that he sometimes uses for meetings that was struck.


It also appears that the bullet had landed just inside a window on a downward trajectory; in other words, somebody shot a bullet into the air and it hit this building on the way down.  That's what we in the normal world call a coincidence.


Here's my favorite part:  According to the Richmond Police, "[t]he round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds."  If someone were actually trying to cause damage or harm, he (or she) would have been better off to use a slingshot and a rock found by the side of the road.


Of course, Richmond Police knew within hours of the report of the "shooting" that it was most likely the result of random gunfire.  But that didn't stop Cantor from going into full accusatory mode and holding a press conference to announce this gravely serious incident to the public.  No sense in letting the facts get in the way of a good story, after all, especially if you can detract from some of the negative attention being focused on your GOP followers as a result of the other attacks directed mostly at Democrats who supported the health care reform bill.


But once the facts were out, Cantor couldn't be bothered to hold another presser to, if not apologize for his previous, overhyped announcement, at least clarify that the incident didn't turn out the way it first appeared to him.  Not until Cantor's office was contacted by media outlets about the Richmond Police's conclusion did Cantor release a statement that he was "very happy" that the incident appeared to be the result of random gunfire, and he used a spokesman to release that statement.  Yes, apologies and/or clarifications are for losers.


Amazingly, no one's really calling Cantor to task for his disparate treatment "before" the facts were all known and "after."  And pretty soon, the public won't remember because they're too busy listening to what others say about health care reform instead of bothering to read the law themselves.  Really, why let facts get in the way of your outrage.  If you do, you might find that some leaders in particular have been lying to you, and you just might find a new target for your outrage.