Imagine the Saturday morning of congressional aide Mark Kimble. Kimble
told of going to a Safeway for a typical meet-and-greet event with his
boss, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Kimble said he went into the store for
coffee, and as he came out, Giffords was talking to a couple about
Medicare and reimbursements, and federal judge John Roll had just walked
up to her and shouted "Hi" - when a gunman opened fire.
Nobody in America should greet this scene with any other initial
reaction than horror. Six people were killed, including Judge Roll,
several retirees, and a nine-year-old girl. Over a dozen others were
seriously injured in the carnage. Giffords was shot in the head and
remains in critical condition. Sadly, shamefully, within just minutes, a
nasty political spin was kicking in without any brake for decency or
evidence. Conservatives were to blame.
CNN broke in with this horrible news at about 1:30 Eastern time, and
within an hour, CNN put on on the local political cartoonist, David
Fitzsimmons, who announced that the shooting was "inevitable"
considering "The Right in Arizona, and I'm speaking very broadly, has
been stoking the fires of a heated anger and rage successfully in this
state." The state also had a conservative "fetish" for guns that added
to the inevitability, he claimed.
Fitzsimmons later apologized, something a whole of lot people should
consider doing if they have a shred of decency. I have never witnessed
such an immediate rush to tar a majority movement in my life - without a ounce of evidence.
The
star of the media's Smearing Olympics was Pima County Sheriff Clarence
Dupnik, a Democrat who rushed to the readily available media microphones
to proclaim the shooting was the natural outgrowth of hot
"anti-government" talkers, that "the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day
in and day out from the people in the radio business and some people in
the TV business" was to blame.
At first Dupnik didn't name names, but you knew who he meant. He later
said he wanted to say Rush Limbaugh first, and Glenn Beck as well. That
began a deluge of "news" coverage blaming conservative radio hosts, Fox
News, and politicians like Sarah Palin for their alleged encouragement
of nutty lone gunmen to kill federal judges and congressmen.
Even as they acknowledged the shooter's motive was a mystery, liberal
reporters were filling their buckets with mud. Typical was CBS reporter
Nancy Cordes, who scolded that "Giffords was one of 20 Democrats whose
districts were lit up in cross hairs on a Sarah Palin campaign Web site
last spring. Giffords and many others complained that someone unstable
might act on that imagery."
Jumping into special coverage on MSNBC, that dispassionate news
"anchorman" Keith Olbermann insisted that Palin should apologize or be
"dismissed from politics." It mattered not one iota to this man who
drools nightly hatred that his friends at the Daily Kos also talked of
a "target list" with Rep. Giffords - and dehumanized her a
"congresscritter."
This flood of slanderous sludge is designed for nakedly political
benefit: to paint a permanent black mark on conservatives as accessories
to murder, and criminalize any expression of conservatism as a
dangerous anti-government conspiracy.
Happily, after a few broadcasts of this vomit, CBS pollsters found 57
percent of Americans questioned on Sunday and Monday didn't accept the
notion that the country's "harsh political tone" had anything to do with
the Tucson rampage.
Conservatives could see the liberals trying to replay the Oklahoma City
bombing smears from 1995. An anonymous, cowardly "veteran Democratic
strategist" whispered to Politico that Team Obama needs to "to deftly
pin this on the tea partiers ... Just like the Clinton White House deftly
pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government
people."
Is this deft? Or just daft? This partisan insanity was presented as
savvy by the usual suspects. Ex-Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman oozed
that Obama needed to gain advantage over Republicans without seeming
political: "The trick is to make it without seeming to be trying to make
it. He will, after all, be speaking at a funeral."
Another sicko at Newsweek, Jonathan Alter, was so indecent that he
calculated how Giffords is more valuable to Obama alive than dead: "Sad
to say, if Giffords had died, she would have been mourned and soon the
conversation would have moved on. But Giffords lives, thank God, which
offers other possibilities. We won't know for weeks or months whether
she can function in public. If she can, she will prove a powerful
referee of the boundaries of public discourse - more influential,
perhaps, than the president himself."
Thank God Giffords survived - so Obama can be re-elected? Alter is the
one who needs a referee - some editor who can tell him he couldn't find a
"boundary of public discourse" if it slapped him in the face.
