Break the Cycle

Sometimes I think our immediate media society is a little TOO immediate. It allows us to vent our immediate visceral reactions to things without taking the time to think about it and adopt a measured tone. While our elected officials are parsing their words and trying to be diplomatic, all thought of that is abandoned by Left and Right alike. Sadly, we now have a brand new Exhibit A of such an immediate visceral response.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head by a deranged gunman who opened fire on not only the Congresswoman but practically anyone in the general area, killing 6 (including a child) and injuring 13 more. She was conducting a public event where she was meeting with her constituents at a Safeway, the kind of openness that we want to see from our elected officials. She's a Blue Dog Democrat, one of the few moderates left in our Congress, someone who sides with many of her fellow elected representatives from Arizona on border security issues. She had voted for the health care bill, but she also most recently suggested a pay cut for all House members as a first step toward fiscal sanity.

Let me put this right out there before I respond to the media's "first responders": NO public official should EVER have to fear for their safety when going out amongst their constituents. We shouldn't have to worry about whether our elected representatives need more or tighter security. Do we live in a climate of anger right now? You bet. There has been a general dislike of our president and our Congress since at least 2000 and maybe going back farther. But this is America, not Pakistan. Those who disapprove of the way things are in this country should NEVER resort to violence. PERIOD.

That being said, I should not only never have to log onto Twitter or other new media and immediately see a story about a member of the House of Representatives being shot, I should also never have to immediately see people leaping to political conclusions. It only took a matter of seconds after the Giffords story broke before the Left was screaming, "Sarah Palin! Look at her ad with the targets on the various Democrats!" And they were invoking Sharron Angle and her remark last year about "2nd Amendment remedies". Ever wonder where the phrase "knee-jerk liberal" comes from? This is it. See a news story, immediately go on the attack. Let's not wait for the facts to come out. Let's say all who oppose us are to blame. It was bad enough when people I know saw the story about the wastewater from hydrofracking and how it was causing problems in Pennsylvania and immediately blamed Republicans (when the outgoing governor of PA who green-lighted all this is a Democrat). This is a million times worse.

And when people (such as I) tried to point this out and settle them down, they listed the threats and the images of tea partiers with their guns and other incidents that spell out a willingness to state, "If the shoe fits..." Well, you know what, I DON'T CARE if the shoe fits. I am NOT going to make that leap. I am NOT going to rush to judgment. I am NOT going to think this is a "typical" Fox News viewing, Palin-following, tea partying conservative. My first public response to this tragedy? It was to tweet a message stating that anyone who IS making that rush to political judgment should be ashamed of themselves. And I'm not apologizing for that. It's one thing to admit that there is violent rhetoric in our politics today; that is all too true, and speaks to the fact that the anger is coming from BOTH sides. It's quite another to block the inflammatory statements of your own side from your mind and make what, in effect, are MORE inflammatory statements. IT DOESN'T HELP.

Having seen this initial burst of reaction, I tuned to MSNBC for a few minutes, and they had the local sheriff on, and when he ranted about the inflaming rhetoric on talk radio, I changed the channel. Great, I thought, even law enforcement is making the leap (to be fair, he later amended his statement to include "some on TV", at least giving a hint that he wasn't only going after conservatives). I tried Fox but they weren't much better... if a Congresswoman is in the hospital fighting for her life, shouldn't you show a LITTLE bit more respect than referring to her in your graphics as "Gabby"? So it was over to CNN, which wasn't doing that good a job either... they were relying on the reports of an affiliate with the unfortunate call letters KGUN, and they were continuing to run their normal crawl at the bottom of the screen, which included such inappropriate announcements as "Eminem to Star in 'Random Acts of Violence'." So I guess the broadcast media, while slightly more measured in tone, aren't necessarily that much of an improvement in terms of message. Those who were closest to the situation, those in Arizona, actually were most likely to say "I don't want to talk politics right now." The ones who may have been most emotionally rocked were saying that. Think about that.

Luckily, they got the gunman right away, Giffords is out of surgery, and doctors are optimistic about her recovering, which we all should be. So after all this speculation about what we THINK we know, what DO we actually know as of 8PM Eastern Standard Time? Well, this moron who allegedly shot Giffords is about a burger shy of a happy meal, posting a YouTube video about a new currency, brainwashing and mind control, and railing against "non-English speakers". And he apparently yelled something before opening fire but we don't know what that is. And he left a rambling "goodbye" message that said "don't be mad at me". A true nutjob if ever there was one. And apparently, he didn't act alone, so there is another suspect on the loose. But now we see (and will see) attempts to generalize and paint way too many individuals with the same brush of lunacy.

It's a cycle that has been spiraling downward for years now. The Left blames the Right and talk radio and so on. The Right will yell, "You can't shut up talk radio", cry 1st Amendment (how painfully ironic that Rep. Giffords read the 1st Amendment the other day during the reading of the Constitution on the House floor), and get more angry about attempts to "silence" them. And the cycle will continue and get worse. And all the while, those who decide to make immediate political grist of this attack will fail to see it for what it truly is: a tragedy. One that should never happen in this country to ANY elected official.

I worry about what we'll see and hear on Monday, as the regular originators of the rhetoric come back from the weekend and make their statements. To their credit, some of them have already spoken. After reading that Keith Olbermann was doing a special episode of his show tonight and that we would be shocked by his conclusions, I was moved to do the unthinkable: watch his show... particularly while my Jets were playing a playoff game. Although he did spend a lot of his show talking about the Palin "target" ad and Angle's statement, and he took the obligatory potshots at Beck and O'Reilly, when he said that those who utter the type of rhetoric that may incite violence need to repudiate that rhetoric... he included himself, apologizing for anything he has said in the past that could have led to violence. I read Rachel Maddow's response (which was very similar to what I am saying here about rushing to judgment) and did another unthinkable thing: I retweeted her. Will Limbaugh and Hannity take the same stand on Monday? Let's face it, a lot of the stuff that Limbaugh says is likely said just to get a rise out of the Left, to get them angry, and a lot of the time, he gets the desired reaction. I sincerely hope he does not choose to do that again on Monday. Worse yet, the local tea party head in Tucson just said that she doesn't see a need for this kind of rhetoric to stop.

Ultimately, both the Left and the Right need to take it down a notch. I don't care that these violent incidents are usually aimed at progressives and government. Again, I DON'T CARE. BOTH SIDES NEED TO CHILL. I don't want to hear about who is at fault or how unequally; to make such attacks is not only ignorant of the complete picture, it makes you a hypocrite. Although the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson (on Olbermann's show) started to go down that road, he backtracked, said we all need to look in the mirror, and try to break the cycle, although it may be very difficult to break the cycle. Our new Speaker of the House, John Boehner, sounded the appropriate tone when he stated that an attack on one elected official is an attack on all. And that should be our first reaction, that a member of one of our great institutions has been shot and critically wounded. Not "she's a Democrat, this HAD to be a tea partier!" Too many people have it as gut instinct now to make that sort of leap any time a news story comes out. I don't make that leap. I wish Rep. Giffords well and hope she can recover from her injuries.