Posted on 01/09/2011 7:08:16 PM PST by freespirited
On the day of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ shooting, liberals went on the offensive, suggesting that overheated conservative rhetoric contributed to the Arizona attack.
On Sunday, conservatives pushed back – arguing that attempts to politicize the event were unfair, crass and therefore likely to backfire.
“It should not be, but the media, under the guise of ‘a full exposition’ of the evil in Arizona, is back to subtly and not so subtly pinning the blame for the attempted assassination of the congresswoman and the related shootings on the tea party movement, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, me, you, and everyone right of center,” wrote Erick Erickson, managing editor of RedState.com.
“Let’s be crystal clear: this is the supposedly objective news media doing this, not the openly, partisan left, though it is fueling the media witch hunt. And from what we now know, it is not just media malpractice, but a lie.”
Other conservatives said the criticism reeks of hypocrisy. “Keith Olbermann rants regularly about ‘fascists’ taking over the country, and each day for years has named one or more conservatives ‘the worst person in the world.’ Other liberal talk hosts are scarcely more restrained,” said law professor Brad Smith, a former FEC chairman, in POLITICO’s Arena.
“The comments sections of the Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, and other lefty sites are full of the most vile comments and death wishes for Republicans on a regular basis,” Smith added.
New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll (R) also voiced anger at Olbermann’s Saturday night comments, which laid at least some blame for the Arizona carnage on Palin, Beck and other prominent conservatives.
“Olbermann does more to coarsen the political rhetoric than virtually anyone else,” Carroll said. “For him, of all people, to urge a toning down of political rhetoric represents the very definition of chutzpah.”
Within hours of the Tucson shooting, prominent liberals had begun tying the event to the violent rhetoric bandied about by conservative media figures like Beck and Limbaugh. And in part because Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a Democrat, made similar criticisms about the “vitriol” on radio and TV in his discussion of the attack, the mainstream media also was filled with questions about the role that the tone of the day’s political discourse played in possibly motivating the alleged killer.
The anti-government language of the YouTube clips that the suspected shooter, Jared Loughner, had uploaded had drawn early connections to the tea party, but no evidence surfaced suggesting that Loughner was a fan or supporter of the tea party, Palin, Beck or any of the other media figures named in some liberal critiques.
The lack of any known connection between Loughner and Palin or the tea party prompted The Washington Examiner’s Byron York to accuse CNN and other media organizations of jumping to conclusions after congressional reporter Jessica Yellin told Wolf Blitzer that “clearly this is a moment to talk about our political rhetoric.”
Yellin pointed out that Palin had released a statement of condolence for Giffords and the other victims of the shooting and their families, but York objected to the notion that a discussion about political vitriol was fair game at that time, when the mainstream media went to great lengths to avoid jumping to conclusions about the reasons behind the Ft. Hood shooting in November 2009.
“Indeed, there is no ‘overt’ or any other sort of connection between Loughner and Palin,” York wrote. “If such evidence came to light, it would certainly be news. But without that evidence, and after a brief caveat, the CNN group went back to discussing the theory that Loughner acted out of rage inspired by Palin and other Republicans. Conclusions were jumped to all around.”
The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg criticized “those who immediately shoe-horned these awful crimes into their ideological prism,” and added: “There have been some truly disgusting displays of opportunism out there.”
Olbermann, New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman and Joe Klein all pointed to Glenn Beck as a purveyor of the kind of violent rhetoric and conspiracy theories that might push a disturbed person over the edge. Beck was silent Sunday, but his website, The Blaze, was filled with examples of liberals politicizing the shooting.
The site links to Olbermann’s special comment, in which he said Beck “obsesses, nearly as strangely as this Mr. Loughner did, about gold and debt;” and to Krugman’s blog post in which he cites Beck and says “violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate.”
Taken together, these clips form the foundation of what could be a strong counterpunch from Beck on his radio and television shows on Monday.
Beck has been accused before of inciting people to violence, a charge that he has always denied. Last month, to illustrate the absurdity of these claims, he discussed the Florida school board shooting, noting with mock glee that the shooter had links to Media Matters, a frequent Beck critic, on his Facebook page.
“Let me make this very clear,” Beck said. “Media Matters did not try to go in and shoot the school board. It was the crazy nut job that did it. Period. Nobody’s responsible for making anybody go do anything violent except crazy people who decide that violence is the answer.”
Conservative firebrand Andrew Breitbart has already begun to throw the left’s attempts to tie the shooting to the right back at them.
“Not since fake N-Word hurled at Reps Carson/Lewis has an anti-Tea Party strategy blown up in left’s face so Yosemite Sam-like,” tweeted Breitbart, referring to Rep. Andre Carson and Rep. John Lewis’s claims that racial slurs were hurled at them during a tea party event.
Although the episode was widely reported, no video or audio evidence ever surfaced to prove the claims, and the lack of evidence has remained one of the right’s favorite examples of the left’s attempts to smear them as racist.
In a post titled “Breaking: Democrats Plotted to Blame Tea Party for Slaughter,” Jim Hoft, a blogger on Breitbart’s Big Government website, picks up a quote that an anonymous Democratic operative gave to POLITICO as evidence of what he believes is a similarly orchestrated smear.
“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, suggested the left has a “sad” history of politicizing violence.
“When John F. Kennedy was killed by a supporter of the Soviet Union and Cuba – Lee Harvey Oswald – the establishment left announced that conservatism in Dallas was to blame. A communist kills, conservative America is to blame,” Norquist said.
“Now we have a 22-year-old with no discernible politics (one hint, the “Communist Manifesto” cited approvingly on his website)….and Keith Olbermann is joined by the Democrat Sheriff Clarence Dupnik from Southern Arizona who both blame conservatives. Violence is bad. Liberal Democrats blaming violence on conservatives is so old and anticipated it is now a cliche.”
And Fran Wendelboe, a Republican New Hampshire state representative until December 2010, knocked the idea put forward among liberal commentators that stricter gun control measures would have prevented the Arizona tragedy.
“I hope that this act of a deranged individual does not open the door to finger-pointing against imagined causes,” Wendelboe said. “As a thirty-plus year concealed carry license holder, I accept a deep responsibility to be always ready and vigilant when armed to protect the public from such attacks. As the saying goes, firearms don’t kill people, it is the person pulling the trigger who kill people. Using acts such as these to try to limit the possession/use of firearms of honest citizens will make America a much LESS safe place to live.”
just go to youtube and look at the old news clips of the kennedy assassination as it happened....from the get-go they were blaming “right-wing” groups...
I call it the Fearness Doctrine. The "fairness" of Free Speech is nonexistent when those who determine what is "fair" are corrupt and power-hungry people. They are satisfied only when the voice of the people is first muzzled by instilling fear of "saying the wrong thing" and ultimately by silencing it altogether.
Tomorrow starts a full week of the counter-offensive.
By Saturday, the left wont even pretend to know where Arizona is.
Quite a few Freepers have said they thought he was schizophrenic and that he’s the right age for onset.
(BTW, I did some looking around on IMDB, and think the movie most likely to be the one I saw is Four Days in November)
...........my hometown Austin/Travis County, no stranger to wack-job cowards shooting innocent people, seems to always, at least by my non-scientific observations, have many on duty cops at public events like this..............just sayin!!!
..........I’ve not heard of one Tuscon cop or Sherriff’s deputy being anywhere near little Christina Green when the blankety blank shots rang out!!! Why???!!!........just askin!!!!
A homo, too.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Tomorrow, a full-scale attack will begin on the 2nd Amendment...AWB II, Brady II, more freedom-squashing fiat rulings by the ATF, etc. They won't go away in a week.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
It wouldn’t be a normal week without them trying.
But this time they cant shove it through, and fortunately these days news cycles are quick, few people watch, and attention spans are fickle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5NgR8j9a4
I should click you right to it
Megyn Kelly ripping into the leftist vitriolic spinning lying UNPROFESSIONAL Sheriff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB5NgR8j9a4
It should click you right to it
>>>I only watch Fox News because its the only news channel I can tolerate without puking, but its gone downhill in these past few months, really downhill
Do yourself, and your sanity a favor and quit watching TV for news.
Bump
The Sheriff is basically accusing her of being a Co-conspirator in the Murders and he is fueling the same hate against her as he accuses her of doing. Of course, there is nothing he can pinpoint to prove his charges, which tells me it is Slander and Defamation of Character.
I don’t watch Fox News anymore. Unfortunately, there is not one National Media Outlet I trust.
Has this unprofessional A$$HOLE “Sheriff” ever cruised over to ANY of these left-wing sites and seen the hatred/death threats spewed toward Palin? It’s been going on for years.
.......my hometown Austin/Travis County, no stranger to wack-job cowards shooting innocent people, seems to always, at least by my non-scientific observations, have many on duty cops at public events like this..............just sayin!!!
..........I’ve not heard of one Tuscon cop or Sherriff’s deputy being anywhere near little Christina Green when the blankety blank shots rang out!!! Why???!!!........just askin!!!!”
That Lard azzed pinko Sheriff was stuffing his face somewhere and by the time he got a bullet out of his shirt pocket and dropped his gun in the piss puddle,The damage would have been done.
Remember, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.
The Fox News Channel is run by someone who was a Richard Nixon media man, Roger Ailes.
President Nixon recruited conservatives to support his presidency by exploiting their rage over hippies, radicals, riots and the liberal media.
Nixon grew big government spending more money, adding more debt and giving us the EPA and OSHA, among other things.
The Republican Party uses us and exploits our emotions over Obama Care even now as the country sinks deeper and deeper into the debt hole.
Getting rid of Obama Care is fine, but it will not save this country from doom.
And getting back to Fox News, its purpose is to get conservatives into a tent where the RINO’s can exploit their emotions and use them like Nixon did.
Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, patriotism and “support the troops” etc. are used to get us to watch so that afterwards RINO’s can fake us out with conservative rhetoric.
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