Really. This isn’t a joke. Satire writers everywhere throw up in their hands in disgust, citing a lack of ability to keep up.
The University of Arizona will announce today that it is establishing a civility institute, inspired by the Tucson shooting rampage that left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords severely wounded and six people dead.
Former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush will serve as honorary chairmen for the National Institute for Civil Discourse, director Brint Milward told The New York Times.
The non-partisan center will focus on research, education and policy about civility in public discourse.
I’m not sure how any reporter can write about this stupid idea with a straight face.
The role that heated political rhetoric played in the Jan. 8 rampage in which Giffords, an Arizona Democrat in her third term in Congress, was shot in the head has been the subject of intense debate.
It was the subject of intense debate only because a bunch of hard left political hacks, and their allies in the media, made it one. Incivility actually played precisely no role in the shooter’s motivations.
And then there’s this.
President Obama had urged the nation to be more civil during a memorial service for the shooting victims. Obama implored Americans to “make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.”
President Obama urged civility after calling on Hispanics to “punish their enemies,” and before he described Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to make good on his campaign promise as an “assault on unions.” For some reason, the reporter left both of those data points out.
Question: How long before this civility institute becomes another holding pen for liberal bloggers and assorting far left hangers on, and from which they will bash conservatives on taxpayer-funded university letterhead? I say, just in time for the 2012 elections. With Van Jones and David Frum as co-chairs.
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