Less than 24 hours after the story of the Arizona shooting first broke, Americans woke up to Responsible-Rhetoric Sunday. Every newspaper and news-analysis show piously raised questions about the country’s overheated political rhetoric and its relationship to yesterday’s massacre. This was nothing short of the immediate and seamless political hijacking of a senseless tragedy.
That the alleged shooter has left a long and florid multimedia trail detailing what looks like a chaotic battle with paranoid psychosis has led, of course, to this obvious conclusion: Sarah Palin is, at least partially, to blame: “During the fall campaign, Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate, posted a controversial map on her Facebook page depicting spots where Democrats were running for re-election,” write Marc Lacey and David Herszenhorn in the New York Times. “Those Democrats were noted by crosshairs symbols like those seen through the scope of a gun. Ms. Giffords was among those on Ms. Palin’s map.”
And what about 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green? Was the little girl killed in yesterday’s shooting also “among those on Ms. Palin’s map”? Were the other 16 victims? The scrambled mind behind yesterday’s unspeakable rampage is obviously not organized enough to act on any real-world motivations, let alone political ones. But never mind, the media will take it from there.
A responsible pundit class would have explored the issues most relevant to the shooting: severe mental illness and its warning signs; social networks and the responsibilities of participants; the challenges posed to the security of American officials. Instead, we got the latest installment in what has become a liberal-media pastime: shaping apolitical tragedies into left-wing talking points. Violent crimes are ripe for this treatment. Michael Moore squeezed an entire anti-Balkan intervention movie out of the Columbine shooting. Natural disasters work too: a tornado devastates Greensburg, Kansas? Then-governor Kathleen Sebelius blamed Iraq policy, naturally. A hurricane overwhelms New Orleans? Well, that’s Bush for you. Everything from the Duke-lacrosse case to the BP spill to the earthquake in Haiti can be trumped out as evidence of conservatism’s evils. By the time history puts these things in perspective, we’ve all become a little dumber and more than a little dirtier.
Today, with a nation awash in personal tragedy and people in hospital beds fighting for their lives, the political spin of yesterday’s horror marks a new low. Indeed it is no small indignity for conservatives to have to join this unseemly debate in order to refute liberal analysis. The preposterous George Packer writes, “for the past two years, many conservative leaders, activists, and media figures have made a habit of trying to delegitimize their political opponents. Not just arguing against their opponents, but doing everything possible to turn them into enemies of the country and cast them out beyond the pale.” And so it feels frankly indecent to point out that it was President Obama who called Republicans “enemies” in the run-up to the November elections. If the shapeless massacre in Arizona devolves into nothing but another round of sound-bite ping-pong, then all the hopes of 2011 being a fresh start with a new Congress are for naught. For even as our elected leaders now act with a somewhat restored sense of dignity and unity, talking heads have waged a civil war.
I don’t think Rendell is being sexist, just being an ass.
I’m a man, and I’ve worked in guvmint for many years now. And let me tell you, I have been treated differently– VERY differently– when I’ve been in periods of singlehood versus periods with a significant other.
That is, when I’ve had a “life,” my career has suffered, because I’ve naturally focused less on my career. Who wants to be at work when they have a good life to live at home?
However, when I *haven’t* had much of a life, I’ve been the first person to put in 70++ hour weeks, come in on weekends, do the grunt work that husbands, wives and parents typically forgo (or worse, get out of– ask single people what they think of their parental co-workers, either in government or in the private sector, and you’ll hear horror stories a mile long of parents coming in late, leaving early, etc. with their kids as an excuse).
Anyway, to an extent I can excuse Rendell because, c’mon– EVERY boss thinks like that, about men AND women. No spouse, no kids, no life = better employee, especially in Washington. Rendell knows Napolitano, knows that background about her, and made a (at worst rude) crack knowing that the head of DHS has a thankless job that will probably eat a person alive– and that it’s a tough job to do if you’ve got plenty of distractions (welcome or otherwise).
Cut him slack.
Speaking of Scranton, is Michael Scott of “Office” fame patterned on Ed Rendell/ Joe Biden? This remark is sooo Michael-ian.
Rendell is from Philly. It’s Casey who is from Scranton.
OUr family has benefited from international assignments that put a considerable gloss on a career, and I’m certain they were given almost solely on the ground that we have no children and are thus less expensive and more flexible for living abroad. It is unfair but there you go. I also think it’s a bit unfair to be taxed for schools to which my nonexistent children do not go.
But Rendell is being hung out to dry for no reason. Campbell Brown is just stupid. He made a purely practical comment on a subject he knows, government service, and the toll it takes on a family. No family, no toll. How much less ‘biased’ could he have been?
Did he have to add, after mentioning she has no family and no life, “not that there’s anything wrong with that”?
#3: Dass OK. The Lady fm off the Cam, just as (likely) Simon Jenkins, must think that Scranton is capital of the Keystone S.