George Will explores “The charlatans’ response to the Tucson tragedy:”
On Sept. 6, 1901, President William McKinley, who had survived the battle of Antietam, was shaking hands at a Buffalo exposition when Leon Czolgosz approached, a handkerchief wrapped around his right hand, concealing a gun. Czolgosz, an anarchist, fired two shots. Czolgosz (“I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people – the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.”) was executed, not explained.
Now we have explainers. They came into vogue with the murder of President Kennedy. They explained why the “real” culprit was not a self-described Marxist who had moved to Moscow, then returned to support Castro. No, the culprit was a “climate of hate” in conservative Dallas, the “paranoid style” of American (conservative) politics, or some other national sickness resulting from insufficient liberalism.
AdvertisementLast year, New York Times columnist Charles Blow explained that “the optics must be irritating” to conservatives: Barack Obama is black, Nancy Pelosi is female, Rep. Barney Frank is gay, Rep. Anthony Weiner (an unimportant Democrat, listed to serve Blow’s purposes) is Jewish. “It’s enough,” Blow said, “to make a good old boy go crazy.” The Times, which after the Tucson shooting said that “many on the right” are guilty of “demonizing” people and of exploiting “arguments of division,” apparently was comfortable with Blow’s insinuation that conservatives are misogynistic, homophobic, racist anti-Semites.
On Sunday, the Times explained Tucson: “It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But . . .” The “directly” is priceless.
Three days before Tucson, Howard Dean explained that the Tea Party movement is “the last gasp of the generation that has trouble with diversity.” Rising to the challenge of lowering his reputation and the tone of public discourse, Dean smeared Tea Partyers as racists: They oppose Obama’s agenda, Obama is African American, ergo . . .
Let us hope that Dean is the last gasp of the generation of liberals whose default position in any argument is to indict opponents as racists. This McCarthyism of the left – devoid of intellectual content, unsupported by data – is a mental tic, not an idea but a tactic for avoiding engagement with ideas. It expresses limitless contempt for the American people, who have reciprocated by reducing liberalism to its current characteristics of electoral weakness and bad sociology.
Note the cartoon an editor at the Post chose to highlight to the right of Will’s column. (Click to enlarge):
Update: The cartoonist who drew the above cartoon run by the Washington Post doubles down when questioned: “Danziger: Tea Party ‘Ultimately to Blame’ for Tucson Shootings.”
Looking forward, the Congress’ insane response to the insane shootings has been to suspend House business indefinately.
Now I ask you, what sort of message does that send to all of the crazies (and, Brother, there are plenty!) in America?
Answer: Don’t like an upcoming vote? Just take a shot at your local Congressional Representative!
Shortsighted, thy name is Boehner.
Imbeciles.
In his book involving time travel Michael Crichton has a character end the story by declaring that the use of a time machine isn’t really necessary for historians because they are really in the entertainment business.
So today. I saw the story a minute or two after it came up on CNN.com and while the story was straightforward the first comments, amazingly, presaged all the blog and old media hysterical accusations, touched all the bases.
Made me wonder if somewhere there is a Spam Bot that does nothing but write “Sarah Palin has blood on her hands.” Or have commenters (yours truly excepted, of course) become unwitting Spambots, regurgitating programmed content where ever it will fit within seconds of a story being posted?
I did a cut-and-paste of the first fifteen comments. They’re at the end of the blog post here:
http://nolanimrod.com/2011/01/08/killed-vaudeville-part-23/
Ed Frank’s email exchange with the cartoonist is priceless.
When people go out of their way to insist they are not in favor of one side or another it usually takes just a little prodding to get under their skin enough for a true reveal. Danziger went from zero to sixty when his original brush-off failed and he felt forced to unburden himself. A complete meltdown in two paragraphs.
Ed,
The scariest thing about living amongst people with Danziger’s views is, they may be sitting in the jurors’ box hearing a criminal charge against you, or your relative, or against any other citizen who just so happens to share Danziger’s county of residence.
It’s my opinion that Danziger’s cartoon disqualifies the artist from serving on a jury. His view does proximate civic insanity. Which is an official disqualifier: insanity is one of the check-able opt-out options on the mail-in juror info form.
If, when volunteering for jury duty, you deliberate the guilt of un-indicted, unnamed media products (like celebrities, “discourse,” or trends) not in the courtroom instead of the charged confessed murderer, then you’re either misinformed about the focus of your civic duty, or you’re trying to avoid delivering your simple, un-complicated verdict, up or down. Either way, you should be removed from the courtroom.
This insane jurisprudence that must always cast culpability onto un-indicted persons and unsubstantiated “invisible” conspiracies outside of the court’s walls has practical problems, and I don’t think even Clinton appointed a judge that would permit that conduct in his venue.
Sadly, the WaPo’s editors still do not see this. Gone are the days when the Post could claim to be a disinterested court-reporter.
BTW: having dipped my toe into Tucson’s municipal, “administrative” culture, my bet is Loughner observed his civil servant parents engaging in a lot of illegal conduct (like using drugs, for instance)…and, while growing up, Loughner heard a lot of “anti-establishment” rhetoric from his radical parents, perhaps excusing illegal immigration, or meth-use, or petty crime. And, unable to report his parents, and dependent on their enabling for his comforts, he resorted to lashing-out.
Which just serves to say that, if the media’d pick apart the Loughner family as much they did the Palin one (we know they have the tools in their tool-box now), then they’ll reveal some pretty nasty truths about the civil service/university entitlement culture enjoyed by the West’s expansive civil service divisions.