The Bubble: March for Our Lives protesters dismissed by conservatives

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Protesters explain why they’ve had #enough and give their thoughts on gun control during the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., March 24, 2018.
Jarrad Henderson, USA TODAY

Each week, USA TODAY’s OnPolitics blog takes a look at how media from the left and the right reacted to a political news story, giving liberals and conservatives a peek into the other’s media bubble.

This week, media voices from the left and right wrestled with the meaning of the massive March for Our Lives rallies across the nation Saturday that called for new gun control laws in response to last month’s shooting at a Florida high school. 

Liberals praised the survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting who helped organize the event. They also were impressed by the passion and eloquence of the young people who spoke. Many on the left were inspired by the dramatic display of political mobilization and were optimistic that it would lead to a Democratic wave in November. 

Conservatives were generally less moved by the nationwide demonstrations. Many were dismissive of the students, arguing they are too young to know what they are talking about and that they have been manipulated by liberals. Others said constitutional rights can’t be taken away by angry crowds and that the rallies might have the unintended consequence of firing up conservative voters. 

Last week: ‘Real scandal is the corruption of the FBI,’ conservatives say

Conservative bubble: A ‘belligerent band of media hyped know-nothings’ 

In an opinion piece for Townhall, radio host Kevin McCullough said the march “was more irritating than anything else” and criticized the Parkland students who helped organize the event as an “angry, opportunistic” band of belligerent “media hyped know-nothings” who “spout their misunderstood self-researched ‘facts,’ lead chants of ‘enough is enough,’ and then play the untouchables when someone calls them on their inaccuracies.” 

Even though they have little more than a junior high level of education under their belt. The political left, driven by a leftist media, and financed by uber-rich and hard-left celebrities are willing to use them, and to continue to use them to advance their socialist utopia ideals.

“The moralizing and lecturing from these manipulated teens has gone roughly as far as it will go,” McCullough said. “You don’t get to use your victimization (as real as it was) to advocate for an even less safe school for my children.”

More: Republicans ignore history and the future in attacking students who want gun control

Liberal bubble: One of the most ‘disciplined and integrated’ marches ever

“While the face of the gun-control movement before the March for Our Lives may have been mostly white upper-middle-class kids from Parkland, Fla., after Saturday’s march in Washington, D.C., a whole slew of new voices, echoing the concerns of black lives and African-American policy goals broke through,” wrote Jason Johnson in The Root. 

“The Parkland kids didn’t bring out their ‘black friends’ as window dressing, they didn’t ‘share the stage’ with children of color, the stage was open to everyone,” he said. 

The March for Our Lives made a conscious effort to say “All lives mattered” onstage, and for once, that was not an insult, because of the seamless organic integration of black perspectives and black lives. Perhaps for the first time, in public life, for one afternoon, it was true.

More: In strong push for gun control, young black organizers join March for Our Lives

Conservative bubble: Protesting is not a ‘great American virtue’ 

“Chanting crowds of emotionally charged protestors aren’t exhibiting any great American virtue,” wrote David Harsanyi, a senior editor at The Federalist. “Mass protests aren’t only often antithetical to the aesthetics of republicanism, but sometimes they undermine its purpose, as well. In our system, inalienable rights — including the one to self-defense — can’t be swept away by angry crowds.

“Simply because you scrawl your thoughts on a sign rather than tweet them to your friends doesn’t imbue them with any more pertinence,” Harsanyi added. “Yet we live with the insufferable need to act as if protesting is tantamount to patriotism rather than a collective act of frustration.” 

Harsanyi also wondered if “these kids understand that they attend schools that are safer than ever in a nation that has bequeathed them more freedom and wealth than any other group in the history of the world.” 

Firearms Coalition: ‘Solutions’ won’t save lives

Liberal bubble: Adults failed, so kids are leading the way 

The movement sparked by the Parkland shooting “didn’t need adult supervision,” wrote George Zornick, Washington editor for The Nation — “and maybe it’s the other way around,” he said. 

Zornick pointed to former congresswoman Donna Edwards, who told a group of students, “Our generation failed you.” Edwards thanked them “for showing the kind of leadership our generation simply did not show.” 

“Saturday was a rallying cry for an emerging cohort that is clearly tired of adult inaction,” Zornick said. 

More: Thousands of students staged a walkout and marched across the U.S. What’s next?

Conservative bubble: March for Our Lives could be a big setback for gun control

The real impact of Saturday’s rallies — with their “acid rhetoric and progressive overreach” — was to make conservative Americans feel like they were under attack, said Michael Graham in a commentary for CBS News. 

“A rising liberal tide will raise all ideological boats,” Graham argued, which could end up making the march “the Left’s first setback of the year.” 

If conservative Americans “feel like their culture and values are under assault, that’s one way to get a relatively unmotivated GOP base fired up for the midterms,” he said. 

More: High schoolers still like their guns, even after Parkland

Liberal bubble: The cynics are wrong this time

There are good reasons to believe that the cynics might be wrong about the gun control movement’s chances of success this time, according to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. 

The rallies “finally established guns as a voting issue” and the Stoneman Douglas shooting survivors “understood that their task was to alter the terms of the nation’s quarrel over guns and to take on the NRA’s shibboleths,” he said. 

The unmistakably political character of this movement is another change. No phony bipartisanship. No pretending that everyone approaches this issue with goodwill. Thus the importance of “Vote them out.” Thus the imperative of casting the NRA as the adversary and all who welcome its money and support as complicit.

And the short-term agenda is very clear, as is the price of resisting it.

More: After Parkland shooting, reject ‘nothing can be done,’ look for new solutions: John Walsh

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Aedan Pettit, right, from Round Hill, Va., and Carly Hughes, center, of Leesburg, Va., watch a dramatic video of past school shootings standing with protesters during the March for Our Lives in Washington D.C. The march was organized following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shootings in Parkland Fla., last month, during which 17 people with killed. 
JACK GRUBER/USA TODAY
Shelby Powell, 15, from Newport High School, holds a sign with some of the Parkland, Fla. victims. Thousands took part in the March For Our Lives rally in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio on Saturday, despite the snowy weather. Students organized the event, which included several speakers, including Ethel Guttenberg, grandmother of Jaime Guttenberg, 14, who was one of the victims at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. 
LIZ DUFOUR/THE ENQUIRER VIA USA TODAY NETWORK

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