"Sarah Palin made him do it!" means Narrative failure

Sarah Palin and her Lack of Humility.
Without a hint of true regret Sarah Palin released a video on Facebook which barely acknowledged the full tragedy of the event on Saturday which involved the killing of six people, the wounding of many others and an Assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords which has left her critically injured. Within hours of the shooting, significant criticism was directed at Sarah Palin’s 2010 election campaign “Take Back the Twenty”. The campaign comprised of bombastic statements s...

Sarah Palin Speaks from Some Undisclosed Facebook Location
Sarah Palin: “America’s Enduring Strength” from Sarah Palin on Vimeo. Sarah Palin chose to forget today that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords brought up Palin’s “targeting” of her when lamenting the vitriolic political Rhetoric in this country before Jared Lee Loughner tried to assassinate her in Arizona. In a weirdly disembodied and out of touch statement from the abyss of her self-imposed political exile, Palin picks today, the day Pres. Obama will address the nation...

Sharron Angle: I condemn all acts of violence (Daily Caller)
Read more stories from The Daily Caller Heavy metal band responds to allegations that their music had any influence on AZ shooter Chris Christie to Rudy Giuliani: Butt out Police visited Loughner's home before shooting Face of evil: Mug Shots of famous assassins [SLIDESHOW] Poll of Conservatives shows support for broad cuts to spending, including Military Spending Former Republican Senate Candidate Sharron Angle condemned Tucson shooter Jared Loughner and expressed concern about the politicize...

Sarah Palin calls out liberal hate merchants for creating "Blood Libel"
Sarah Palin came out swinging Wednesday by calling out the liberal media and pundits for creating "a blood Libel" for last weekend's Arizona shooting.  Palin said; "acts of monstrous brutality ... begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively" with Americans exercising their constitutional freedoms. "If you don't like a person's vision for the country, you're free to debate that vision. If you don't like their ideas, you're free to propose better ideas. But, especi...

Influence and over-determination
In comments yesterday, Mark Matson posted this incredibly instructive little video demonstrating the power of even barely noticeable influence: In the broadest sense, this is a demonstration of the (small-s) situationist Thesis: the hidden power of situational factors to influence behavior. Situationist influences are generally taken to be much less important than dispositionist ones--those that reside in the individual's inherent disposition--their character, tastes, preferences, beliefs, et...

Clyburn: Palin 'Seems Not to Be Able to Understand What's Going on Here'
Good grief, don't these people know when to shut up?A House Democratic leader on Wednesday lashed out at Sarah Palin, accusing the former Alaska Governor of being intellectually unable of understanding why she's faced criticism related to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.). Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said that Palin had missed the point by releasing a statement this morning blasting the media for "blood Libel" for looking to assign blame in part to her rhet...

Does Sarah Palin's Handling of This Week's Events in Tucson Tell Us Anything about her Presidential Ambitions?
Sarah Palin today release a video on Facebook expressing her grief and outrage over Saturday's shootings in Tucson. She also explained her Rhetoric and hit back at those who have suggested that the level of political discourse in the country is, in part, to blame for Jared Lee Loughner's unhinged rampage. “We know violence isn't the answer. When we ‘take up our arms', we're talking about our vote,” Palin says in the seven-and-a-half minute video. “Yes, our debates are ful...

ERIC SCHEIE: Sarah Palin made him do it! means Narrative failure. OK, I am not much of a femini
ERIC SCHEIE: “Sarah Palin made him do it!” means Narrative failure. “OK, I am not much of a feminist theoretician, but there is something I find odd about the way people — especially on the left — are not looking at this case. . . . There is only reason I can think of that they don’t, and that is because it is at total cross purposes with the left-wing narrative that Sarah Palin made him do it. Ditto the Tea Party movement, which is heavily female.” ...

Truth or Consequence How Did You THINK It Was Going to End Up?
In the aftermath of the Assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and the cold-blooded murders of six other innocent people, Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation issued a statement, “We didn’t intend for this to result in violence.” Huh? How did you think it was going to end up? Phillips went on to say, “No one should be killed for their political beliefs, but . . . there can be no Civil Discourse with people as crazy as those on the left are....

Poisonous Political Atmosphere Is Unhealthy
This is really, really hard to write. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) is my friend. I spent time with her, and her husband, Mark Kelly, less than two weeks ago. We talked about the debased state of discourse in the country, the awful and degrading nature of campaigns, including the really despicable one run against her last year, the threats she received after she voted for the Health Care Reform Bill--and the wonderful satisfaction of public service and the need to encourage more of our best and bri...

New Deranged Comments Found Online, But Loughner Might Not Be Able to Plead Insanity
Each day seems to bring new and disturbing revelations about the mental state of accused shooter Jared Lee Loughner in the days and months leading up to the attack. The Wall Street Journal has unearthed 131 posts written in an online forum for gamers between April and June 2010. Some of the comments are chatter about weight lifting, rejection by women, or his difficulties job hunting (he wrote that he hadn't had a paycheck in six months, submitted 65 applications without an interview, and confes...

ROGER SIMON: The Sixties Were Violent, Not Today. I bring it all back now for one reason to
ROGER SIMON: The Sixties Were Violent, Not Today. I bring it all back now for one reason — to point out that what we are going through currently, this supposed period of extreme Rhetoric bemoaned by so many pundits and politicians, is but a minute radar blip compared to that era. And some of these pundits and pols are old enough to remember. Apparently, they choose not to. But to remind them, we were in an era then of genuine political Assassination — RFK, MLK — not faux political assass

Suddenly the Media is Concerned About Tone
Last night on John King USA I tried very hard to keep my blood from boiling. Cornell Belcher, a very good guy, tried to claim that the right’s history of Rhetoric is worse than the left’s. I’ll meet you half way on that, just for the sake of argument, and say the left and right can at times be equally vile, but only for the sake of argument. But really, maybe the right’s history of Rhetoric is greater if only because the left goes beyond Rhetoric to outright violence. ...

Blood Libel? Dangerous Critics? Palin, Angle Doth Protest Too Much
Sigh. So I guess I have to comment on Sarah Palin’s statement on the Tucson shooting, which was actually a statement about Sarah Palin, of course. First of all, the faux sincerity achieved by shaking her head a little bit from side-to-side is grating. But enough of the theater criticism. Second, you have to love the statement, cribbed from Reagan, that “we have to restore the American precept that each person is accountable for his actions” from the woman who sent out her spo...

Sharron Angle is Miss Manners
Former Senate Candidate Sharron Angle is firing back at critics — including a U.S. congressman — who have blamed her and her infamous “Second Amendment remedies” quote for fueling the Saturday shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and others in Tucson, Ariz. In a statement reported today on the website Politico, Angle had harsh words for her critics, including U.S. Rep. James Clyburn , who said on Monday that accused Tucson shooting Jared Loughner “…saw a S...

Dave Zirin: It's Not a Game: Sarah Palin and the Madness of March
First posted at thenation.com In the wake of Saturday's horrific shooting in Tucson of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 other Victims, long overdue attention is being paid to Republican Party heroine Sarah Palin's brazen use of violent language and symbols. It's hard to recall a national political figure since George Wallace who played so fast and loose with images of gunplay, demonization and death. For me, it was last March when I wondered if "Going Rogue" meant going off the deep end. This wa...

Lerner points to anti-Semitic character of new hatred in America
Rabbi Michael Lerner insists on the Jewish angle in the Arizona shootings. Interesting. I don't know, want more evidence. But hear him out. [D]on't think of this action as a mere "irrational event," because it fits very well with the agenda of those who want to give the country back 100% to the corporate powers and their Republican agents in Congress while scaring those who might wish to participate in helping build any kind of progressive alternative. And don't underplay the anti-Semitic ele...

Feministes Next Top Troll, Season 7
Ok,everyone, it’s Top Troll season again! We have rounded up some of the best of the worst comments from the past year, and will be publishing them for your amusement/horror. We’ll have a series of voting rounds where the trolls will compete against each other. Judge them however you like; I personally give points for style, (lack of) punctuation/proper grammar, inexplicable capitalization, magnificent use of stereotype, creative insult, and degree to which the comment reveals the co...

FNTT Season 7: the Are We Text Messaging Now? Round
Welcome to Feministe’s Next Top Troll. Background on the contest is here. For those of you who are new, here’s how it works: We post a bunch of different troll comments that we’ve received over the past year, organized by theme, over the next few weeks. You vote on your favorites, and we have a troll-off between the winners, until only one is crowned Feministe’s Next Top Troll. As a reminder, these comments are nasty! They are mean! They are sexist! If you dislike that or...

In Wake of Tucson Tragedy, What's Sarah Palin's Next Move?
Sarah Palin and her campaign website targeting Congressional Democrats. (Credit: CBS/AP) In the wake of Saturday's tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona - in which six were killed and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 13 others were injured - Sarah Palin has maintained a relatively low profile. After expressing her "sincere condolences" to the shooting's Victims and their families via Facebook on Saturday, Palin has made only one other statement to the press: an e-mail to Glenn Beck, which ...

The War on Sarah Palin
I've never seen anyone who inspires such fear and hatred on the left as Sarah Palin. The Arizona shooting has led to a whole new round of anti-Palin hysteria. David Brooks addresses the issue and the media's complicity: Other themes from Loughner’s life fit the rampage-killer profile. He saw himself in world historical terms. He appeared to have a poor sense of his own illness (part of a condition known as anosognosia). He had increasingly frequent run-ins with the police. In short, the e...

Sarah Palin: The link. You decide.
The horrific events of last weekend deserve a place in the historical record of this country. Pin it up right next to Jonestown, Waco, the Oklahoma City bombings and any of the multiple massacres we have had to endure. Infamously, the attempted Assassination of a US Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, and the Murder of six people will always stand in our national memory. But how will it be remembered? How will we recall the tragedy? Will our thoughts be triggered whenever we see the face of the a...

Tim Pawlenty's hypocritical criticism of Sarah Palin
Tim Pawlenty thinks Sarah Palin shouldn't have used gunsight crosshairs imagery and says he would never have done anything like it: “It would not have been my style to put the cross hairs on there,” he said Tuesday on “Good Morning America,” referring to a map like the one posted last year on SarahPAC’s website showing gunsights on the Congressional Districts represented by Giffords and a select group of lawmakers who supported Health Care reform. “But then a...

Sarah Palin's Tucson Statement Is Steeped In Stubbornness
Nearly four days after her notorious map targeting Congresswoman Giffords with cross-hairs was alleged by some people to have possibly influenced crazed Tucson gunman Jared Loughner, Sarah Palin has finally spoken. In a long Facebook message and corresponding Vimeo video posted online in the middle of the night, mainland America time, Palin focuses much of her attention on such accusations, which, it seems at this point, lack merit. Missing completely though is any acknowledgment at all that, up...

Sarah Palin scores Blood Libel ascribed to her by the press - The Gabrielle Giffords shooting
Sarah Palin’s video response to the Arizona shooting of Gabrielle Giffords Sarah Palin today accused her opponents of Manufacturing a “blood Libel” by suggesting her Rhetoric and campaign tactics had anything to do with the Arizona shootings. Four days after an incident which left six people dead and critically injured the congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Palin released a video statement condemning the attack. She denied that a now infamous campaign map showing Giffords’...