“Giffords Shooting in Arizona May Cool U.S. Political Rhetoric, Hurt Palin,” Bloomberg.com opined on January 9th of 2011, quickly following the talking points established by the left, that Sarah Palin’s clip art was somehow responsible for causing Jared Lee Loughner to shoot Gabrielle Giffords. (And murdering, among his other victims, George HW Bush appointed Federal Judge John M. Roll, who has since been airbrushed out of the event, to avoid muddying up the talking points.) Even though from all accounts, Loughner never saw them; he was too busy obsessing upon the anti-Christian conspiratorial film Zeitgeist.
No matter:
The shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six people and left U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition is contributing at least momentarily to a cooling of U.S. political rhetoric.
The incident on Jan. 8, coming after the Jan. 5 opening of a new Congress in which Republicans took control of the U.S. House, led the House to postpone legislative business for the coming week as both parties rushed to condemn the attack.
It is also likely to hurt the image of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, said Ross Baker, a congressional scholar at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
The former Republican vice presidential candidate has posted on the Internet a map of the U.S. with the cross-hair symbols for a rifle scope dotting the home states of lawmakers, including Giffords, whom she was targeting for defeat in the 2010 congressional election.
The tragedy “will take some of the edge off of the polarization” and “will be used by lots of people as an exhortation for people to be kinder to each other,” said Baker. At the same time, Palin’s brand of “female macho,” he said, “is not going to wear very well after this.”
Lawmakers were careful to stress that the suspected shooter, identified as 22-year-old Jared Loughner, has a troubled past and appears mentally unstable. Regardless of whether it is determined that Loughner also had political motivations, members of both parties said politicians and the media play a role in setting an example of civility.
Well, so much for that idea, based on the cover on the current issue of Bloomberg-owned Business Week magazine:
If mere bullet point clip art can cause deaths, aren’t illustrations of actual imaginary bullet holes even more potentially lethal? Not to mention, potentially even more racist than Business Week’s cover late last month?
No, of course not. But having first laid down all of these sweeping statements and civility pledges at the start of 2011, it’s amusing to watch the left forget they ever uttered them, now that it’s time to gin up the current Two Minute Hate. But then, to be a leftist is to pivot deftly on a daily basis. (Oceania, Eastasia, Eurasia, etc.)
Oh, and speaking of pivoting…
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