Massacre, Made in America

Beck claims 'I don't use [violent rhetoric] on or off the air': Oh really?
Beck claims 'I don't use [violent Rhetoric] on or off the air': Oh really? It sure seemed that everyone -- and I mean EVERYONE -- at Fox News was focused yesterday on beating down the horrifying idea that somehow Fox News' incendiary rhetoric might have played a significant role in fomenting Saturday's horrifying tragedy in Arizona. Of course, Glenn Beck -- being one of the chief purveyors of said incendiary rhetoric -- was out there leading the attack, devoting his entire hour to...

Beck, Limbaugh respond to shooting
Conservative media figures like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are raising fears that liberals could use the Tucson shootings as an excuse to clamp down on their voices, even as two prominent liberals made public statements urging that the FCC and Fox News do just that. Limbaugh and Beck, along with other conservative voices like Sarah Palin and Bill O’Reilly, had come under fire in the hours after the shooting from liberals such as Keith Olbermann and Paul Krugman, who accused them of us...

Does Beck Think Americans Are Weak?
Tue Jan. 11, 2011 8:37 AM PST Why doesn't Glenn Beck have confidence in America? During his Monday Radio Show—when the subject was the Tucson tragedy—Beck came to the rescue of his friend Sarah Palin, who had come under criticism for a map her political action group had created last year that placed cross-hairs over the districts of 20 Democratic legislators it had targeted—including the one represented by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). Beck read to his audience an email f...

Sanitizing Extremism: Palin and Beck on Violence and War
Politico: Sarah Palin reached out to Glenn Beck over the weekend, and Beck read some of their email exchange on his Radio Show this morning. “Sarah, as you know, peace is always the answer. I know you are felling the same heat, if not much more on this,” Beck wrote. Beck expressed concern about Palin’s safety, and urged her to hire the same Los Angeles-based security firm that he uses. The Rhetoric of both Beck and Palin has been cited by both liberals and some of the mainstre...

A Challenge To Glenn Beck: Will He Cool His Paranoid Anti-Government Rhetoric?
On Sunday, federal officials charged Jared Lee Loughner on two counts of Murder and three counts of Attempted Murder in Saturday’s shooting rampage in Tucson, AZ that critically wounded Rep. Gabriel Giffords (D-AZ) and killed a Federal Judge and a Giffords Staffer, among others. In the wake of the tragedy, many are wondering what motivated Loughner — whether he was a mentally-ill lone wolf vigilante or inspired by something else. Information coming out about Loughner portrays the ...

In Wake Of Arizona Shooting, Beck Backs Off Claim That Obama Wants Him Dead
Beck: "I'm Enemy Number One. Do You Hear Me Whining About It? No." Beck Dismisses Idea That Obama Wants Him Dead. From the January 11 edition of Beck's Radio Show: BECK: Sixty percent of Americans say the Rhetoric in America has nothing to do with the shooting. It's -- it's quite honestly an abomination that it's only 60 percent of the American People. I don't understand how Rhetoric had anything to do with it. It's -- there is zero evidence. And since when -- since when has a spirited debate ...

Glenn Beck Defends Sarah Palin With New Pledge Scam
It was a no-brainer that Glenn Beck would jump on the hastily gerrymandered “FOX ‘News’ Protect Palin” bandwagon after the Tucson massacre. Beck has a lot invested emotionally in the Half-Governor. Not only is she his BFF—she was his first guest on Fox “News”—but he is also knew that an attack on Sarah Palin for her “target maps” would quickly spread to the Beckinator himself. As offensive as the bulls eyes might have been—and the...

Time Magazine to New Media: Drop Dead
Mark Halperin of Time Magazine is nostalgic for the days of 1930…or1963…or1973…or 1995, when his fellow liberals could just invent a narrative, get it into the media, and not have to bother with much pushback, Mary Katharine Ham writes: “I just want to single out one thing. I think the media and the politicians have behaved pretty well so far. I’m worried about the anger of the right-wing commentariat,” Halperin said. “Fox and George Will and other Conservatives a

Brave Woman Who Grabbed Clip from Shooter Blames Right-Wing Media and Rhetoric In Fox News Interview
Patricia Maisch, 61, was the brave woman who kept alleged shooter Jared Loughner from unloading a second clip into a Tuscon crowd on Saturday. Wounded herself from a bullet, she saw him attempting to equip his gun with another magazine, grabbed him and knelt on his ankle, delaying the reload and potentially saving many more lives.  So when Fox News interviewed her on Sunday, they clearly wanted to know if her strength could translate to psychic healing as Americans grappled with the tragedy...

Doubting Ourselves Through the AZ Shooting
I’ve spent two days thinking about how to comment on the broad-based cultural implications of the recent violence in Arizona and not participate in the very “lack of civility” that we all know is a problem. I can cite all kinds of troubling ways in which the people with whom I disagree invoke violent metaphors. The problem is, that those people with whom I disagree often honestly believe that that’s what people on “my side” do too. To make it worse, even when ...

Vitriol spinners losing the battle for hearts and minds?
The view from our front porch at daybreak this morning: Deck cranes of the container ship "West Bay" out of Hong Kong catch the sun's early rays dockside at Eastern Minerals across the street. "It looks like the vitriol spinners are losing the battle for hearts & minds," we just twittered," referencing a brand new CBS News poll that finds "Most Americans Feel Rhetoric, Tucson Shooting Unrelated": Overall, 57 percent of respondents said the harsh polit...

Glenn Beck Removes Gun Pose Image From Website Rotation
On Monday night’s Countdown, host Keith Olbermann highlighted a Screenshot from Glenn Beck ’s website that featured an unfortunate juxtaposition: a photo depicting Beck saying “We must stand together against all violence,” and on the left sidebar, a picture of Beck holding a semiautomatic pistol. The image, first captured by Media Matters‘ Angelo “StopBeck” Carusone , has since been taken down out of “respect” for the events of this weekend, ...

Why Sarah Palin Won't Be President.
One of the criticisms Progressives often make of Barack Obama is that he spends far too much time trying to make his opponents like him, and not enough time worrying about what his supporters think of him. Sarah Palin , on the other hand, has the opposite problem: she spends all her time speaking to those who are already within her bubble of support, and no time thinking about how she can persuade those who aren't already on her side. Her reaction to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting has cast this...

The Lefts Script of Hate
“Just the facts, ma’am,” Dragnet’s Joe Friday famously informed witnesses he interviewed. Oft-interviewed Pima County Sherriff Clarence Dupnik might adopt the catchphrase: “Save the facts, ma’am. Just the narrative.” The narrative of right-wing Rhetoric fueling accused mass-murderer Jared Lee Loughner proved so seductive to partisans that they didn’t wait for the compilation of facts, or burial of the dead, to advance their politically opportunisti...

That’s Political Entertainment!
EMOTE CONTROL Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck. In Morning Glory, last year’s most underrated movie comedy, go-getter breakfast-show producer Becky Fuller (Rachel McAdams, divine), in a burst of exasperation, explains the facts of life to journalistic warhorse Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford, face furrowed with mental indigestion): “The world has been debating news versus entertainment for years, and guess what? You lost!” Which hasn’t stopped the l...

Mahers Offensive Rant About Loughner Sets New Low
Anderson Cooper took a very different tack last night in trying to make sense of the Arizona shooting tragedy from the weekend. While many on Cable News were turning down the partisan Rhetoric, AC360 producers booked comedian Bill Maher, who was unafraid to compare the imagined mindset of alleged assailant Jared Loughner with Fox News host Glenn Beck, while at the same time calling for responsibility in the media. You must login to comment. The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, exc...

The Tucson tragedy: over the line
I gasped when I saw the picture on my Facebook news feed. Joe Jervis, creator of the widely followed gay blog Joe.My.God, posted a separated at birth-like coupling of alleged Tucson murderer Jared Lee Loughner and Fox News's Glenn Beck. Folks, this is despicable. Beck may be a fire-breathing blowhard who doesn't deserve the mass following he has for the vitriol he spews daily, but to equate him with the twisted monster who stands accused of killing a 9-year-old girl and a Federal Judge and crit...

How Glenn Beck And Fox News Successfully Painted AZ Shooter As Hitler, Marx Devotee
Within hours of the Shooting Spree in Arizona, conservative blogs lit up with the news that the suspect, Jared Loughner, was an aficionado of Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. A Hitler/Marx devotee, the logic went, is someone too idiosyncratic or crazy to be part of any mainstream political movement. Some went further, and cited the information as proof that Loughner was the sort of big-government liberal they had nightmares about. As with so many of these fast-propagating conservative m...

No More Mister Nice Blog
Glenn Beck THINKS I'M A PSYCHOPATH From the Open Letter posted by Glenn Beck on his Web site: All evidence points to the fact that the assailant from this weekend was severely mentally disturbed. His belief system was not rational by any modern political standard. He was an atheist, believed George W. Bush was responsible for 9/11, feared a global currency, cited the Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books and thought the Mars rover landing was staged. These are not the opin...

Rush Limbaugh: Its insane to fault Sarah Palin for Ariz. shooting (Daily Caller)
Read more stories from The Daily Caller Rep. Peter King to introduce bill making it illegal to carry a gun within 1,000 feet of 'high-profile' government official Fellow commenters at UFO Conspiracy website questioned Jared Lee Loughner's sanity in threads We're probably alone in the universe, or else they're out to get us Mark Halperin: Conservatives should turn the other cheek when scapegoated for Murder Could Jon Huntsman really be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012? Talk Radio ma...

Scarborough: Palin Made Up Death Panels, Obsessed Over Birth Certificate
I suppose it could be just sloppy wording, but Joe Scarborough — the MSNBC morning host who is making noises about running for office again - appears to suggest that Sarah Palin is a Birther in an interview with Howard Kurtz: “I’ve told them it’s counterproductive to call Obama a Marxist. I caught so much flak by calling out Republicans when a few of them, like Sarah Palin, made things up like Death Panels, or obsessing over his Birth Certificate.” Er…...

5 Myths about why the South seceded
So let me see if I have this straight: Low Income people who want tax-cuts are the same as those who favored Slavery. As if we have not been ginned up enough, the Washington Compost comes up with this gem. Let’s stoke up the Civil War and Slavery. So we are poor knuckle draggers who must be saved from ourselves. Those devilish Tax Cuts of Bush, the left just cannot get over it. “[T]wo ideological factors caused most Southern whites, including those who were not slave-owners, to ...

Obama faces stiff test in Arizona eulogy
President Barack Obama faces a moment fraught with risk but shrouded in political opportunity when he leads a national memorial service for the dead of the Arizona shooting tragedy. Obama will Wednesday eulogize the Victims and chart a path ahead for a political community convulsed by shock, after a gunman's failed Assassination bid on an Arizona lawmaker killed six and wounded 14. Presidents, in their symbolic roles as head of state and commander-in-chief are periodically required to invoke u...

Blood will be on your hands, Whoopie Goldberg warned talking heads in March
Stumble This! Whoopi Goldberg may not be the best of talents when it comes to picking scripts that will become breakout hits as films, but she certainly seems to have absolutely nailed a prediction of what America's political discourse would become in an era of ubiquitous violent Rhetoric. During a March 2010 broadcast of ABC's daytime Talk Show "The View," co-host Joy Behar called out "an Al Qaeda Christmas Card" circulated by Fox News employee Sarah Palin, showing a map of the US with gun sig...

Re: The Present Madness
I disagree with Jay. I don’t believe that it’s likely that “the Arizona massacre will hurt the Republican party and the Tea Party, stopping or slowing their momentum.” This isn’t Oklahoma City all over again. Reason 1: McVeigh wasn’t as crazy as and had a more coherent political purpose than Loughner. Reason 2: Tying McVeigh to the Militia movement was less of a stretch than tying Loughner to Palin. The Oklahoma City bombing didn’t help Clinton political...