Silence Is Complicity & Defensiveness Is Endorsement

David Sirota: Silence Is Complicity & Defensiveness Is Endorsement
I've just finished up 3 hours of the most difficult radio I've ever had to do. The topic, of course, was the horrific shooting in Tucson, which has deeply affected me, as it has many others. As someone who had to flee the Capitol on 9/11, was warned of Anthrax contamination in my congressional office, and has faced various threats of violence, I was shaken by the scenes in Arizona more so than by any other news imagery in a long time. The reason the Radio Show was so difficult this morning was...

How low can Wikileaks go? Julian Assanges sick attempt to exploit the Arizona shootings
In a Press Release late last night, Wikileaks made a sick attempt to link in the public mind the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to widespread outrage in America over its recent leaking of hundreds of thousands of US government documents. Even for Julian Assange this is surely a low point IN Media manipulation, and here he is clearly mimicking the Far Left’s ludicrous attempts to blame the Right for the Arizona shootings. Here’s what the release, entitled “WikiLeak

Hate Speech the Rights Magic Bullet (Guest Voice)
Hate Speech the Right’s Magic Bullet by Michael Winship The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov had a rule: if you show a gun in the first act, by the time the curtain falls, it has to go off. For weeks and months, that gun, the weapon of angry Rhetoric and intemperate rabblerousing, has been cocked and loaded in plain view on the American stage; Saturday morning outside a Shopping Mall in Tucson, Arizona, it went off again and again and again. The target, Gabrielle Giffords, a member of the Un...

Rush Limbaugh Attacks 'The Left' Over Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Response
Rush Limbaugh criticizes the response of the Democratic Party and the media to the Tucson tragedy in his Radio Show today, saying that the event has been used to advance the Left’s political interests. “The left, including the media, cannot accept the reality of a madman slaughtering innocent people. It cannot be ‘individual responsibility’ -- they reject that concept anyway,” Limbaugh said. He goes on to say that “the Left” believes that Utopia can happen and th

Pol suggest Democrat spin on Tuscon shooting not working
Image by Getty Images via @daylife CBS News: Nearly six in 10 Americans say the country's heated political Rhetoric is not to blame for the Tucson shooting rampage that left six dead and critically wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, according to a CBS News poll. In the wake of the shooting, much focus has been put on the harsh tone of politics in Washington and around the country, particularly after a contentious Midterm Election. Rhetoric and imagery from both Republicans and Democrats hav...

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...

Mo Elleithee: "We should have had this discussion long before the Tucson tragedy"
I DON'T think the right had anything to do with the Tucson tragedy. But I AM discouraged & disgusted by those on the right who refuse to acknowledge their role in our toxic political environment. Why can't we all agree to drop hateful or violent Rhetoric or imagery? Do you REALLY feel the need to defend it? If Keith Olbermann can apologize for his past hateful words, why can't offenders on the right do the same? There's nothing complex about it. You're right about one thing -- we should have ha...

Paul Krugmans Totalitarian Temptation
A Washington Examiner op-ed rhetorically asks, “Was President Obama encouraging Murder during his 2008 campaign when he said, ‘If they bring a knife … we bring a gun’?” Was he encouraging political violence when he said more recently of the new Republican House majority that “we are going to have just hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill”? Of course not. Similarly, former Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Paul Kanjorski was speaking allegorically in ...

Politico gets it exactly backward in calling for a more civil tone
In the aftermath of the Tucson massacre, Politico's Glenn Thrush and Carol E. Lee write one of the most inane responses imaginable: Of all the unfulfilled campaign promises President Barack Obama made in 2008, the one that bothers the president most isn’t any squandered policy priority - it’s his failure to re-civilize what he views as an increasingly savage partisan climate. His failure? The president who reached out to the Republicans on the stimulus, who allowed Republican...

Accountability and Victimization
Accountability and Victimization by digby Adam Serwer has a good post up today about Clinton's Oklahoma City Speech (which I excerpted earlier, here.) I hadn't realized until this incident that it was an article of faith on the right that this Speech was considered a case of political opportunism which wrongly attributed the bombing to the Right Wing Extremism of the time. I should have known. If they don't feel any responsibility for Tim McVeigh, then they can say and do anything and will ne...

Congress Looks at Upping Security
Politico reports: Lawmakers are already engaged in vigorous debate over their security, with several pushing for dramatic measures and more money and others saying the actions of a single deranged gunman shouldn’t shut them off from the public. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) told Politico in an e-mail that he plans to propose a reversal of the 5 percent cut Republicans made in members’ office budgets, and he wants a 10 percent increase to cover more security measures in the wake of the sh...

Unknown militant group emerges; targets birthers, GOP
(Paulding County, Georgia) - Paulding County Republicans and birthers need to be on guard due to an unknown group calling itself, Militant Association of Democrats who sent letters, placed phone calls as well as death threats that included the words GOP and birthers through a sniper scope to the American Patriot Foundation. Two anonymous letters sent to APF from Richmond, Va. place "GOP" and "Birthers" in the crosshairs of a rifle scope alongside the exhortation "Load 'em Up!" These letter...

Rev. Jesse Jackson: Hate speech lit blaze in Arizona
Let us grieve the slain and wounded in Tucson, and pray for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, targeted for Assassination by a clearly unbalanced young man. Rep. Giffords was shot as she made herself available to citizens exercising the most basic of rights: "to peaceably assemble" and petition their representative. The heinous act has generated a good debate about the connection between the Rhetoric of violence and violence itself. As we approach the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, this reminds me ...

The Present Madness
On the radio this morning, Bill Bennett and I had a discussion about the Arizona massacre, and the political use of it made by the Left in this country. A few observations. In a way, they have won. “They”? I mean, the Krugmans, the Sullivans, the Olbermanns: “They.” They’ve won because we are on their turf, where they have dragged us, or enticed us. The shooting in Arizona has nothing to do with politics. Nothing to do with Republicans, nothing to do with conservati...

Wayne Besen: The Bombast and the Body Count in Arizona
While the world focused on the tragic Arizona shootings, another horrific crime took place in New York City. The New York Post reported today that a Portuguese male model tortured and murdered his "sugar daddy" in a Manhattan hotel. For more than an hour, Renato Seabra, 20, beat Carlos Castro, 65, before he castrated the older Fashion Journalist with a wine corkscrew. Seabra said he murdered the Journalist "to get rid of Castro's Homosexual demons." The suspect then declared, "I'm not gay any...

Missing From Loughner Debate: Soul Searching
Jared Loughner (Credit: Personal Photo) There's been quite a bit of back and forth this week about who should share the blame for the actions of alleged Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner. Some on the left have pointed to incendiary Rhetoric from Sarah Palin and others on the right, while some on the right have sought to tie Loughner to the beliefs of the left. Palin was blamed in part for using of a bullseye icon to identify political targets - including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords - before the ...

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...

Tea Party Leader Gloats Over Tucson Massacre
Tea Partiers - and the Republican Party, which has fully embraced the Tea Party movement - keep wondering why everyone keeps tying their violent Rhetoric to actual incidents of violence. That argument was not helped tonight by Nigel Coleman. The Danville Tea Party Leader, who posted the address of Rep. Tom Perriello's brother to his Facebook page just hours before the gas line at that home was cut, is now having a good laugh about the Tucson massacre: Look, we learned exactly how tough Nigel C...

Commentary: Take the political rhetoric down a notch
Those searching for easy answers after a 22-year-old shot 20 people, killing six, during U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' meeting with constituents in Tucson, Ariz., on Saturday won't find any. Yes, guns are easily accessible in this country. Yes, in the past two years we have seen Political Speech ratcheted up with gun-toting participants at some Tea Party events, and some Democrats in Congress faced angry voters at town hall meetings during debate on Healthcare Reform. And, yes, the Internet a...

Arizona sheriff condemns Limbaughs irresponsible rhetoric
Stumble This! An Arizona sheriff responsible for investigating the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) confronted conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh Tuesday for the "irresponsible" Rhetoric he uses on his Radio Show. "The kind of Rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information," Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik told ABC News. "[Limbaugh] attacks people, angers them against governm...

The Giffords Blood Libel Will Fail
The big push to blame Conservatives for the murderous rampage of Jared Loughner won’t work. In fact, it will backfire. The Left is riding across quicksand on a horse that is dying beneath them. Here are some reasons why. The Right can fight back: The paramount reason this strategy will fail is that liberal media dominance is gone forever. The Politico offers a disgusting quote from a nameless Democrat operati...

Arizona Shooting Coverage Is a Media Campaign to Criminalize Conservatism
Managing Editor's Note: Media Research Center President Brent Bozell issued the following statement after a thorough, two-day review of how the media have covered the tragic shooting in Arizona. Implicating a conservative tie to this heinous act of violence or to Jared Lee Loughner, who is no conservative, is nothing short of a naked campaign to criminalize conservative thought. Sadly, those who point their finger are at the nexus of hypocrisy. Take the unidentified “Veteran Democratic...

Keep rampage blame where it belongs
We add our thoughts and prayers to the many for critically wounded Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the six people killed, including a senior Federal Judge, a 9-year-old girl fascinated by politics, a congressional aide and three other innocents, as well as the 13 people wounded, in the attack Saturday in Tucson. The accused, Jared Loughner, is a deeply disturbed young man whose violent proclivities had frightened several acquaintances but who had not yet done anything overt enough to bring h...

Times' Mark Halperin: Conservatives should turn the other cheek when scapegoated for murder
The "normally sensible" Mark Halperin from Time completely jumps the shark in this segment from today's Morning Joe, in which Halperin praised the media and politicians for their reaction to the shooting ... while blaming the "anger of the right-wing commentariat," condemning Fox News and conservative pundits for treating the tragedy like "war and fodder for content" ... ignoring the fact that the Controversy started when CNN, other media outlets. and left-wing Bloggers began tying the shooting ...

Congress Prays for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords
Saturday's shooting of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords prompted Congressional officials to schedule a special briefing to review security issues. See photos of the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting in Arizona. Take the poll: Is Political Rhetoric to Blame for Arizona Shooting? See who in Congress gets the most from Gun Rights groups. ...