… but as the Zumbo story slowly works its way out to the mainstream media, I’m continually annoyed (but not even mildly surprised) by the way it’s being willfully misrepresented.

Nearly every article I’ve read has spun things this way: the big, bad, evil NRA directed its brainwashed minions to ruin a reasonable man for daring to break from party dogma.

No. There is no way for an objective person to look at the actual facts and reach that conclusion. Does. Not. Compute.

Let’s see, Zumbogate broke in a big way on Sunday the 18th, due ENTIRELY to the actions of individual forum members and bloggers; it was pure grassroots. By the 21st, Remington, Cabela’s, and Gerber dumped him and his blog was pulled from the ‘net. It wasn’t until the 22nd, four days after the story broke and after everyone else in the industry had already distanced themselves, that the NRA took action.

And what did they do? They put out a press release announcing that Jim wouldn’t be writing for NRA Publications anymore. He wasn’t thrown out of the organization. They didn’t call for his head on a lance. NRA just followed the lead of everyone else in the industry and realized that continuing to employ him would be a PR disaster.

But, of course, reporters can’t be troubled with trifling inconveniences like facts when there’s an agenda that needs pushing.

(see Standard Mischief’s excellent timeline for more details on what happened and when)