The Tucson shooting, 2011
The Tucson shooting was blamed on the right,
and there were calls to clamp down on right-wing speech.
The gunman, a
mentally ill left-winger,
was called a "right-wing" terrorist.
The left rushed to blame the shooting on prominent figures on the right,
including an
outrageous
attempt to blame it on Sarah Palin.
The real story, as so often, is perhaps not so much the shooting, or the
mentally ill left-winger who carried it out. (*)
The real story is the behaviour of the left and the media afterwards.
(*) I do not mean to downplay the suffering.
I am just saying that the Tucson shooting has no meaning.
A nutcase killed people.
That's it.
There is no logical cause or deeper meaning.
Blood libel
against Sarah Palin at ultra-partisan "news" channel
MSNBC.
- The Tucson shooting, 2011
- The gunman, Jared Lee Loughner,
shot Democrat Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Republican judge John Roll
and others in Tucson, Arizona on 8 Jan 2011, killing 6.
-
Shooting a Democrat does seem to be evidence of a right-wing terrorist.
Leftists
rushed to blame it on Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, Fox News, Glenn Beck, talk radio and Rush Limbaugh.
-
Irish Times editorial, 10 Jan 2011, blames the right, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party.
- Leftie Irish Times cartoonist
Martyn Turner
blames Sarah Palin.
-
Conall McDevitt, SDLP MLA for South Belfast
blames Sarah Palin.
- The partisan left-wing
Media Matters
immediately blames Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, and demands constraints on their speech.
-
The top 10 most ridiculous left-wing attacks on US conservatives following the Arizona shootings
includes the ludicrous rhetoric of Keith Olbermann,
Paul Krugman,
Michael Tomasky,
Harold Meyerson
and others
blaming the "right" for the shooting.
-
However, Loughner is a strange sort of "right-winger".
-
He was not registered as a Republican.
Rather he was an
Independent
and he didn't vote in the last election.
People who knew him described him as
"left wing", "liberal",
"anarchist"
and "critical of religion".
He was "an ardent atheist".
He
believed Bush carried out the 9/11 attacks.
He
believed the Iraq and Afghan wars were war crimes
(see here).
He expressed
frustration with the Bush Administration.
His ex-girlfriend says he
hated the Bush government.
A profile
says:
"His anger would well up at the sight of President George W. Bush".
He
burnt an American flag.
He hated the police
and talked about
killing police officers.
-
I wouldn't say he is "left" though.
His writings appear more
mentally ill
than left or right.
He seems to have had a long-standing
deranged obsession with Gabrielle Giffords
dating from 2007
(and more).
One could perhaps call him a mentally ill left-winger,
with the "mental illness" part
being the cause of the shooting
rather than the "left-wing" part.
- Jay Nordlinger
asks:
"Does the killer in Arizona have any connection to the Republican party, the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, National Review, or the "Right" at all? Any? Why are we even having this conversation? (I know why.)"
-
Charles Krauthammer, 12 Jan 2011, on the idea of blaming Sarah Palin, the Tea Party and Glenn Beck:
"As killers go, Jared Loughner is not reticent. Yet among all his writings, postings, videos and other ravings - and in all the testimony from all the people who knew him - there is not a single reference to any of these supposed accessories to murder."
- His friend says
Fox News, Glenn Beck, talk radio and Rush Limbaugh are irrelevant.
The shooter
"did not watch TV. He disliked the news. He didn't listen to political radio."
- In fact, as with most young people,
popular culture was far more of an influence,
and, if you wanted to,
certain music and movies could be blamed
far more plausibly
than the ludicrous idea that he ever even saw, let alone was influenced by, Palin's boring election map.
- Loughner is just like a jihadist!
- Hillary Clinton
absurdly compares the shooter to jihadis,
as if the former represents some kind of worldwide movement!
-
Mehdi Hasan, 13 Jan 2011, asks:
"What makes Arizona's killer just a loner, not a terrorist?"
and contrasts this with how jihadi attacks are portrayed.
Em, maybe the answer is that
all those jihadi attacks
are part of a global jihad movement
whose members support, justify and praise each other.
While Loughner ... is part of the Loughner movement.
He is called a "loner" because he is a loner.
If you deny that, then name the movement he is part of.
-
Mehdi Hasan,
by the way,
is the man who said that
"The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam"
are
"a people of no intelligence"
and they are
"cattle"
who
"do not stop and wonder about this world."
That's you and me, dear reader, that this man thinks he is superior to.
- Sarah Palin called for violence!
- Idiot Irish blogger
Bock the Robber
says Sarah Palin
(not the shooter, but Sarah Palin, who has no connection at all to the shooting)
is just like the pro-sharia Islamists that kill
liberals, apostates, Christians and blasphemers in Pakistan.
Uh, yeah, apart from actually killing anyone.
Or calling for any killing.
Or any violence at all.
Or any oppression of human rights at all.
Apart from all that, they are just like each other.
- Mark Levin
offers a $100,000 reward to anyone who can find an example where Sarah Palin promotes the murder of
political opponents.
Of course, no one can.
The very idea is ludicrous, as anyone not blinded by hatred like
Bock the Robber can see.
- Communist butcher
Fidel Castro
blames Palin!
You couldn't make it up.
A brutal dictator who shot without trial thousands of his political opponents
blames peaceful democrat Palin for "inciting" violence in some vague way.
A mentally ill left-winger commits an atrocity.
Obviously Rush Limbaugh made him do it.
Or maybe Sarah Palin.
Left-wing loony
Jared Lee Loughner
burns the American flag.
He's just like Sarah Palin!
The appalling local sheriff, Clarence Dupnik
Many people have been shocked at the disgracefully partisan pro-Democrat local sheriff
Clarence Dupnik,
who, instead of just investigating the crime, loudly repeated Democrat talking points
blaming Republican speech for the shooting.
-
The sheriff
says the Democrats are the party that is
"trying to do something to make this country a better country"
and the Republicans are the party that is
"trying to block them".
-
Doug Powers, 10 Jan 2011, attacks the media and the sheriff with humour:
"The day could come when Sheriff Dupnik's own role in this may be called into question. Unfortunately, MSNBC, CNN or the New York Times' idea of holding Dupnik accountable may be to ask him, "Sheriff, knowing Jared Loughner's previous warning signs,
why didn't you recommend that Sarah Palin be taken into custody long ago?""
- The Arizona Republic
tells the sheriff to shut up:
"Enough attacks, sheriff. Enough vitriol. It is well past time for the sheriff of Pima County to get a grip on his emotions and remember his duty.
...
There is nothing to date that suggests any partisan motivation for [the] crimes, whether right-wing or left.
...
With each additional comment, the Democratic sheriff of Pima County is revealing his agenda as partisan, and, as such, every bit as recklessly antagonistic as the talk-show hosts and politicians he chooses to decry."
- Rush Limbaugh responds
to the sheriff's sleazy attempt to blame him for the shooting:
"I don't know. Maybe Pima County would have been better served by a real sheriff, one who spent his time trying to lock up nutbags and criminals rather than finding ways to excuse them. Which is what he's doing. The sheriff is actually embarked on a course here that if he doesn't stop, will provide an escape hatch, one way or the other, for the accused. And all the while, he has yet to offer a shred of evidence that Loughner listened to me or read Sarah Palin's website or attended Tea Party rallies."
- James Kelley
says it is worse - that the killer was known to the local police.
He says Loughner had a history of
"making death threats .. to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers".
He was regarded as mentally ill before the shooting.
"The Pima County Sheriff's Department was aware of his violent nature and they failed to act appropriately. This tragedy leads right back to Sheriff Dupnik and all the spin in the world is not going to change that fact."
-
Arizona Sheriff Larry Dever
says Sheriff Clarence Dupnik's behaviour is disturbing.
On Dupnik's attempts to blame other people for the shooting:
"His words sadden me.
...
If there is anything more frightening or sad about this event, it is that anyone would try to lay the blame on anyone else's doorstep, other than that of the sick kid who carried this out."
-
CSI: Tucson - parody by Iowahawk, 18 Jan 2011.
Sheriff Clarence Dupnik
and his partners
Lieutenant Paul Krugman,
Lieutenant Chris Matthews,
Detective Markos Moulitsas,
Detective Keith Olbermann,
Detective Rachel Maddow
and
Chief Forensic Gynecologist Andrew Sullivan
carefully establish that Sarah Palin is to blame.
"Well sir, you see, I wrote a high speed neural network script to mine all two records in our suspect database. I think I made a positive ID.
...
Whuhh? Sarah Palin?! She's the last person any of us would have expected!"
The ludicrous theory
that the mentally ill left-wing Tucson shooter
was affected by "right-wing" hate speech
is very similar to a previous ludicrous theory
- that the dedicated communist assassin of JFK
was affected by a "climate of right-wing hatred" in Dallas.
The latter lie is practically written into the textbooks.
I wonder will the former lie be as successful?
- The assassination of JFK by a communist
-
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 11 Jan 2011, compares Tucson to the
assassination of his uncle JFK.
-
And yet he seems to have read very little about the assassination of his uncle.
He talks about:
"Toxic right-wing vitriol
...
right-wing extremists
...
There was something about the city -- a rage or craziness, that, whether sensible or not, seemed to have set the stage for Jack's murder.
...
The Texas town was such a seething cauldron of right-wing depravity
...
Radical-right broadsides were distributed in public schools
...
Jack had received myriad warnings against visiting the right-wing Texas city.
...
In 1964, Americans repudiated the forces of right-wing hatred and violence".
-
And yet none of this had a thing to do with JFK's shooting.
He was killed by a commie.
At no point in the article does his nephew mention this.
-
As Doug Powers
says:
"Is it too much to ask that the people who pulled the triggers in Dallas and Tucson be assigned some guilt?"
- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in fact disputes that Oswald alone killed his uncle JFK.
- This made me wonder:
Does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. know who killed his father?
- Reclusive Leftist
is also unimpressed by RFK junior's failure to say JFK was killed by a commie:
"I was so sure the sentence had to be there that I read the entire piece three times, and then started doing page searches to find the missing words."
She also says the Tucson lie is like the JFK lie:
"right-wing rhetoric is dangerous because it drives leftists and schizophrenics to murder".
- Amusingly, RFK junior has no problem with
violent speech
against his political opponents:
"He called those people who doubt either that global warming exists or that it is man-made or that it matters traitors and that they should be dealt with as such. ... "These villainous companies that consistently put their private financial interest ahead of .. the interest of all of humanity. This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.""
-
Where the media leads, we don't follow: False 'national debates' that journalists only have with themselves, Jonah Goldberg, January 15, 2011,
says RFK junior's stupid theory about JFK would be harder to invent today.
- On the ludicrous theory that "right-wing speech" and Sarah Palin were to blame for Tucson,
a theory immediately accepted across the entire left:
"Just because everyone at the Huffington Post and The New York Times reader forums is regurgitating the same pre-baked narrative isn't proof the narrative is right, it's just proof that everyone in the bubble needs to get out more."
- "Indeed, it's deeply reassuring ... that the American people didn't buy it. ... a CBS poll .. found that 57% of Americans found the killing unrelated to the political discourse. By Friday a poll .. found that only 15% of Americans blamed the murder spree on "heated political rhetoric."
A generation or two ago, this would never have happened.
The myth that JFK was killed by a "climate of hate" - a common falsehood endlessly repeated this week (Kennedy was murdered by a communist) - was made possible by a near monopolistic control of the press by people who all thought the same way. Today, thanks to the breakdown of the old monopoly
and the rise of the Internet ... such instant mythmaking is a lot more difficult."
Lee Harvey Oswald
writes to the Soviet Union seeking citizenship,
16 Oct 1959.
"I, Lee Harvey Oswald, request that I be granted citizenship in the Soviet Union. ...
I want citizenship because; I am a communist and a worker. I have lived in a decadent capitalist society where the workers are slaves.
... I have seen American military imperialism in all its forms."
He lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962.
Somehow this turned out not to be paradise after all,
and he returned to the "evil" US like the disgusting hypocrite he was.
He shot the anti-communist JFK in 1963.
Obviously a "climate of right-wing hatred" in Dallas made him do it!
Maybe Sarah Palin made him do it!
(She was then a 6 month fetus in the womb.)
This letter was released by Russia in 1999.
Left-wing hypocrisy
- After Tucson, the left issued calls to clamp down on "inflammatory" right-wing speech, which they claimed
(based on no evidence) was linked to the shooting.
- It is obvious that when the left complains about "inflammatory" speech,
they are only complaining about right-wing speech.
Left-wing inflammatory speech
is normally fine with them.
- There are many examples of this hypocrisy, but here is a cracker:
- Democrat congressman
Paul Kanjorski
said in Oct 2010:
"That Scott down there that's running for governor of Florida. Instead of running for governor of Florida, they ought to have him and shoot him. Put him against the wall and shoot him."
- Democrat congressman
Paul Kanjorski
said after the Jan 2011 shooting:
"it is incumbent on all Americans to create an atmosphere of civility and respect in which political discourse can flow freely, without fear of violent confrontation."
-
Shannen Coffin, 12 Jan 2011, recalls the left's violent rhetoric against Dick Cheney when she worked for him.
"Any claim that one side of the debate has a monopoly on overheated rhetoric is laughable."
- Victor Davis Hanson
recalls examples of the 8 years of Bush-Cheney hatred.
And points out that
gun metaphors and war metaphors
are used on all sides in any normal democracy:
"the outrage of Daly, Krugman, Sullivan, and others is partisan and transparently self-serving."
- Mark Meckler
of the Tea Party
reacts with scorn to the left-wing idea that right-wing speech must be suppressed for safety.
"What really irks him are suggestions that "we need to watch what we say and how we say it" lest some unstable individual like Loughner be inspired to commit mass murder. "I personally don't want my speech controlled by crazy people," he said.
And what effect will the last few days' events have on the Tea Party movement?
"None whatsoever," he said."
- Sarah Palin replies with dignity
to the sleazy left-wing libels:
"I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event.
President Reagan said, "We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own.
They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election.
...
especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.
...
we will not be stopped from celebrating the greatness of our country and our foundational freedoms by those who mock its greatness by being intolerant of differing opinion and seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults."
- Sarah Palin has every right to be angry,
given the
unprecedented level of real death threats
she is receiving because of the media's blood libel.
- And "muzzling dissent" is exactly what this is all about.
As
John Nolte says:
"The .. degenerate mainstream media .. spent three entire days feasting off the corpses of the dead in Tucson in the hopes of destroying Sarah Palin and turning the Right into something that will raise its hand for permission before criticizing ObamaCare".
- The left and "civility"
- Incredible: 5 years later,
Irish Times writer Una Mullally, 10 Aug 2016, is still promoting the Tucson myth as if it is true!
- "Previously, a graphic on Sarah Palin's website showed crosshairs aimed at states of House Democrats who voted for health care reform, and then listed the politicians in question. One of those politicians was Gabrielle Giffords, who was subsequently shot in the head in an assassination attempt. It is common sense that creating an atmosphere of intimidation and violence causes intimidation and violence."
- Palin created "an atmosphere of intimidation and violence"?? What is Mullally on about?
-
For some leftists, clearly, this Tucson myth will never die.
It will end up in textbooks.
"Can't you see just how dangerous Palin's violent rhetoric really is? This mentally disturbed guy had absolutely no connection to or interest in Palin or any right-winger for that matter, yet Palin's rhetoric still drove this kid over the edge. Just think, if this kid, whose political influences were all far-left, can be driven mad by right-wing rhetoric that he's never even listened to, those of us who actually like Sarah must be ready to go on a murderous rampage as soon as we receive her coded message to do so. Dangerous, dangerous woman that Sarah Palin."
-
Brilliant comment.