Fifteen year-old Anthony Borges, a victim of the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida, who was shot five times while saving twenty people, was the final victim released from the hospital on Friday, April 6th.
And he had a message for the Superintendent Robert Runcie and left-wing Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel:
You both failed us.
Of course, a quick check of the online faces of CNN and NBC shows that, while they mentioned his release and a few other, older details, they didn’t mention his statement.
How peculiar.
This is a young man who barricaded a door and used his body to shield other students, suffering multiple gunshot wounds that resulted in him losing a portion of a lung and hovering in critical condition in the hospital. Three bullets ripped through his legs and one came dangerously close to his liver. Yet CNN did not exhibit the fortitude to offer the heroic teenager’s own words in their official written report on his survival and release from medical care. And NBC online used a much more general statement from Borges about how the Valentine’s Day incident “should not have happened”, culled from an interview NBC did with the young man.
Indeed, in its limitlessly classy style, CNN posted a photo of the shameful, self-serving visit Sheriff Israel made to Borges in the hospital and referred to an earlier move by Borges’ family to sue the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and the Broward County Public Schools. In a way, the juxtaposition CNN presented almost implied that the young man was being ingracious.
And NBC? By avoiding the explicit statement of young Mr. Borges, but including this:
It shouldn't have happened on Feb. 14. It shouldn't have happened ever, not in my school or any other school,’ Rodriguez told ‘Today.’
Which, given how much press NBC and other pop “news” networks have offered to students who call for further curtailments to the right to keep and bear arms, could be seen as just another in the grand gun-grab chorus.
But that is not what Mr. Borges tried to express. The statement he offered upon his release from the hospital was precisely this:
To Sheriff Israel of the Broward Sheriff’s Office and Robert Runcie, the Superintendent of schools in Broward, I want to thank you for visiting me at the hospital, but I want to say that both of you failed us, students, teachers and parents alike, on so many levels.
In fact, as investigative reporters have revealed, the Broward County Sheriff’s Department received 45 calls about Nikolas Cruz and visited the home 22 times. Cruz was not supposed to have been able to enter the school, and we won’t even go into the curious and troubling story of how the security detail working at the school refused to enter it once Cruz began firing.
So is it any wonder that Borges’ family is suing? Is it any wonder why people are upset?
When a taxpayer-funded, so-called “officer” spends lots of time appearing on CNN calling for even more restrictions to the right to self-defense that, clearly, would not include him or other agents of the state giving up their guns... and when Sheriff Israel appraises his own leadership as “amazing”, it’s easy to see why Mr. Borges might be more than upset.
And why, maybe, just maybe, it might be an honorable thing for the dinosaur news media to quote him properly and not shade and couch his statements, not clip his words to fit their repulsive agenda.
But is it a surprise to see them behave this way? This tactic smacks of all the postmodernist, manipulative behavior leftists have exhibited for over a hundred years. By manipulating the language, culling words, offering their own spins on the real meanings of statements, they can control the narratives, and push for political outcomes.
It’s despicable and disrespectful, but it is done by everyone from modern news reporters to contemporary literature professors. An author didn’t actually mean what the professor tells you? Irrelevant. Twist the words of a shooting victim, or avoiding his explicit statement? No problem. We have a greater agenda, and truth is a barrier to it.
Welcome to the postmodern age. It’s been a long-time in the beta stage, and now it is in full, fecund operation.
All, despite the honest and important words of heroic people like Mr. Borges.