The Discovery Channel building, featuring Chompy the Shark earlier this summer. Photo credit: Paul Roth

Wednesday’s hostage taking at the Discovery Channel building has produced a flurry of commentary today – most of it political.

On Wednesday, a man walked into the Discovery Communications building in Silver Spring, Md. with explosives strapped to his body and took three people hostage. The man, identified as eco-protester James Lee, demanded, via a “manifesto” offered on his Web site, that the television company broadcast programming (yes, the one that produces Shark Week) reflecting his views that humans are ruining the planet. For example, “All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it. … Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is.”

And another thing: “Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans.”

The four-hour standoff ended after police opened fire and killed Lee; the hostages were released safely.

That, however, wasn’t the end of the story. As The Atlantic Wire pointed out, “[B]loggers and partisan commentators have not hesitated in using this incident to score political points. Whether liberal or conservative, the bloggers argue that Lee represents the opposite end of the political spectrum and is thus the responsibility of that bloggers’ ideological opponents.” Lee, according to the various bloggers The Atlantic highlighted, is alternately an “anti-immigration conservative” or a “radical left-wing environmental”. Moreover, the coverage of the situation reveals the extent of the influence of the Israel lobby, according to liberal blogger Philip Weiss, who, the site noted, “works hard for this” – evidently, CNN’s talking to Aaron Cohen, a man identified as someone who has trained Israeli commandos, about the hostage situation qualifies as an Israeli bias.

The Atlantic wasn’t  the only one who noticed how a discussion about the actions of one clearly insane person acting alone devolved into politics: At The Washington Post’s dot.comments blog, Doug Feaver explained, “[T]he majority of the comments this morning concern the environmental debate and worries about overpopulation that apparently drove James J. Lee to the actions that ultimately led to his death. Such a conversation would not be complete without an attack on former Vice President Al Gore and the scientists who have warned about global warming and overpopulation. Those attacks, of course, bring responses.”

Jack Shafer, media critic at Slate, complained that Lee managed to take the press hostage, as well, with little protest and indeed much cooperation from the media. “By following its own mindless script—surrounding the Discovery Channel with camera trucks and legions of reporters—the press validated the hostage-taker’s mission. It has also seeded future hostage-takings by other publicity hounds and self-destructive maniacs. How long before somebody follows the Discovery Channel perp’s example and takes Lifetime’s staff hostage in the name of human rights or BET’s to fight world hunger?” Shafer asked. “Just because a nut job has staged his hostage-taking in the headquarters of a cable TV network, knowing that it would reap maximum publicity, doesn’t mean the press needs to volunteer itself and its audience as hostages, too.”