Vol. 75/No. 3      January 24, 2011

Jared Loughner, 22, is in custody, having so far been charged with one count of attempted assassination of a member of Congress, two counts of killing a federal employee, and two counts of attempting to kill a federal employee. The shooting took place at a public event for Giffords.

Loughner has made no public statements since his arrest. News reports say he was suspended from Pima Community College last year after campus police were called five times for disruptive behavior. The school administration told him he had to get a mental health clearance before he could return. Other students and neighbors described his behavior as erratic. There is no evidence of any political leaning on his part one way or the other.

Setting the tone for the attempt to lay blame on Republicans was Pima County, Arizona, sheriff Clarence Dupnik. He held a press conference January 8 where he called Arizona a “mecca for racism and bigotry” and blamed “vitriolic rhetoric” on the airwaves from conservatives. “That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences,” he said. Dupnik is a well-known liberal opponent of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigrant law.

“Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from?” asked Paul Krugman, a columnist for the New York Times, in a piece the next day. “Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right.”

Initial Times news coverage of the shootings played up the fact that Republican Sarah Palin put on the Internet a map marking with cross hairs congressional districts where Democrats should be unseated. Giffords’s district was one of them. The Times pointed out the congresswoman opposed the Arizona anti-immigrant law, although she has called for beefed-up border patrols. It reported that a window was broken at her office in Tucson after she voted in favor of the health-care “reform” law last spring, and tea party activists frequently picket outside the office.

A January 8 Times editorial said, “It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans … responsible for the gale of anger” over government policy. “Many on the right … seem to have persuaded many Americans that this government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people,” it lamented. Arizona should stiffen its gun control legislation, the editors added.

Keith Olbermann, NBC anchor for “Countdown,” accused Sarah Palin January 8 of guilt because of the cross hairs. “If Sarah Palin … does not repudiate her own part in amplifying violence and violent imagery in politics, she must be dismissed from politics—she must be repudiated by the members of her own party,” he said. Olbermann also demanded right-wing commentators Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly “begin their next broadcasts with solemn apologies” and called for them to be fired if they refused. “Those of us considered to be ‘on the left’” should likewise purge themselves of “suggestions of violence,” he added.

Palin released a video January 12 expressing “sadness” over “irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame” for the shootings. Those accusing her of guilt were committing “blood libel,” she said.

Jack Shafer was a lone voice among liberals in a piece titled “In Defense of Inflamed Rhetoric” that appeared January 9 on the Slate website. Shafer objected to Dupnik’s assumption that “strident, anti-government political views can be categorized as vitriolic, bigoted and prejudicial” and that “those voicing strident political views are guilty of issuing Manchurian Candidate-style instructions to commit murder.” The logic of that, he said, is that “we should calibrate our political speech in such a manner that we do not awaken the Manchurian candidates among us… . Any call to cool ‘inflammatory’ speech is a call to police all speech.”
 
 
Related articles:
Arizona killings: A different view  
 
 
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