Connecting the Dots: Tucson, Violence, and Pundit Reality

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http://www.newdeal20.org/2011/01/17/connecting-the-dots-tucson-violence-and-pundit-reality-32764/

new deal 2.0
A PROJECT OF THE FRANKLIN AND ELEANOR ROOSEVELT INSTITUTE

Connecting the Dots: Tucson, Violence, and Pundit Reality
Monday, 01/17/2011 - 6:41 pm by Lynn Parramore


According to the New York Times, one week after the massacre that left six dead and 13 wounded, a gun show at Arizona’s Pima County Fairgrounds went on as planned. The Times reports that “items for sale included ‘gun juice,’ a type of lubricant; 40-round magazines for AK-47s, at $19.99; and bumper stickers critical of President Obama.”

See a connection between these items? Worry that these things would be displayed together so soon after an assassination attempt and bloodbath? Feel uncomfortable about potential links between political rhetoric and violence? Well, you’d better put your blinders on. Because you will be condemned by a brigade of pundits who want us to ignore facts, cast aside our critical faculties, and get on board with their dishonest constructions of the Tucson massacre.

Charles M. Blow began his Saturday New York Times editorial railing against people (specifically, the ‘left’) who had the temerity to suggest that the increasingly hateful rhetoric and violence of right wing ideologues had anything whatever to do with Tuscon. “The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them was too strong,” he hissed, accusing the left of a “political witch hunt” in its “overreaction” and “overreaching” in response to the tragedy. He was not the first. Soon after the shooting, The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait quickly announced that the violence in Tuscson “is largely disconnected from even loosely organized extreme right-wing politics” and then went on in a separate piece to leap to Sarah Palin’s defense. (The damsel, to my knowledge, offered no thanks to her savior). On it went. Speculation! Conjecture! We must not politicize! A random act! Some commentators, including Blow, actually intimated that the left was glad that the killings had occurred just so they could discuss violent rhetoric in America. Shut up or you’ll be branded a sociopath!

Let me see if I understand this correctly. If I am concerned about the shooting in Tucson and wish to think about how we might best prevent future violence in our democracy, I must ignore a) American political culture, b) right-wing ideology, and c) Sarah Palin. I must totally disregard the following, or I will be accused of ‘taking advantage’ of a tragedy, conducting a witch hunt, and wanton recklessness:

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This is a must-read, with Parramore's long list of the facts that must be ignored if we're going to pretend that the hateful, violent rhetoric on the right had nothing to do with Tucson.


I found Parramore's blog post via James Ridgeway's Mojo blog in Mother Jones today:

Just a Nut Case: The Post-Tucson Bait and Switch

Jared Loughner may be mad, but there's clearly a method to his madness. He may be psychotic, but his psychosis manifested itself in a particular way. After all, Loughner didn't attack members of his family. He didn't go postal at the workplace. He didn't shoot up the military recruiters or the college that rejected him. No. When he picked up his legally obtained assault weapon, he chose to try and assasinate a member of the United States Congress. And not just any old member, but one who had been targeted, singled out for political attack, reviled by the right wing. And this amidst a call by several right-wing figures for their followers to become "armed and dangerous" to defend their liberties against such Democratic party usurpers as Gabrielle Giffords. How can you say this attack is unrelated to the current American political culture?

As Lynn Parramore, editor of the Roosevelt Institute’s blog New Deal 2.0, puts it, one must ignore that political culture, right-wing ideology, and Sarah Palin. Otherwise, one will be taking advantage of the botched murder, and thereby contributing to a witch hunt. To avoid such accusations, the majority of the populace are willing to deny the following facts, as outlined by Parramore:

-snipping out Parramore's long list-

In the face of this preponderance of fact, the right has once again managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and sieze hold of the political rhetoric. That they did so in the current circumstances–while a judge and a young child lie dead, and a member of Congress struggles to recover from a bullet through her brain–seems nothing short of astonishing. But then, one has to remember how completely the right has ruled the political discourse in this country for at least 30 years.

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