Motes and beams again: the mean-spirited vitriol of the left

GZLives

Its Giffords NOT Cliffords

andreas

Very, very good column Ms. Phillips. But I think you made a mistake with Gabrielle's last name. It's spelt with a G not a C. Gabrielle Giffords. Also, I would like to point out that on Mrs. Giffords's YouTube account, she was subscribed to Jared Loughners YouTube channel. He isn't subscribed to hers; I don't think, but she was subscribed to his. She had hundreds of subscribers but on'y two subscriptions, one to his channel. But now it's gone. I'm guessing her people or the Left took it down.
Perhaps there was a connection with her and her shooter.

http://www.youtube.com/user/giffords2

Jim Ramsey

More and more coming out that the perp had made multiple death threats in the community previously, and that the sheriff had done nothing about it because the perps mother worked for the county. Looks like the blame may end up on his shoulders, not on Sarah Palin. Blame the Democratic Party Hack, not the Tea Party.

Okey

It was predictable that the left / Democrats would cynically, callously and mindlessly exploit this tragedy for their narrow, self-serving ideological ends.
I doubt that many Americans will subscribe to their perverse misrepresentations.

Bogdan from Australia

P.S: If those mark indeed were cross-hairs (and they are not) and would in somehow mystic way trigger the murderous rampage, that atrocity would have happened almost one year ago when that map was produced.
That map has already been forgotten practically by everyone and only has been brough to attention by the Left to slime Palin.
Remember those Danish cartoons? The riots that have allegedly been sparked by those cartoons started also one year after they had been published.
The motives of American commies are as deranged as those of Islamists.
But we certainly agree 100% at least on that subject.

Charlene

Spot on Melanie, shame so few today have the insight and honesty of opinion that you have. Cannabis is toxic however would the media dare to blame that, not at all. Apparently this man was involved in the occult and had very strange ideas eg being controlled by government by language. Obviously the toxic combination of the occult and cannabis and strange ideologies led to this tragedy. Rather than bash the tea party the drugs culture should be addressed. I am due to do a module on Themes of American History at University starting the end of this month. I am a mature student, it will be interesting what slant will be taken and of course when there is so much anti-american rhetoric and sentiment.

matthew

"Can it really be the case that an American Secretary of State believes that an attack upon her country that murdered thousands of people and which chalked up another marker in the holy war against the west being waged from within the Arab and Muslim world -- in the defence against which America is sending its young men to die on the battlefield -- has the same significance as one deranged gunman running amok?"

It would be extraordinary had she made such a statement. Fortunately she did not. Indeed you've been good enough to record her exact words.
"We have the same kinds of problems, so rather than standing off of each other we should work to try and prevent the extremists wherever they are from being able to commit violence."
Trying to find common ground, abjuring violence and attempting to split the moderate majority from the extremist minority seems to me an emininently sensible strategy.

Yisrael medad

I presume the US should learn from Israel as it plunged into intllectual nightism after the Rabin assassination when "Rabbis" were accused, without any proof, of instigation and "undergrounds" were rumoured when it turned out that the main culprit of the incitement activity turned out to be an official GSS agent provocateur, that Avioshai Raviv.

Santorum

Not just "the left" though is it. Read comments in today's Telegraph, Mail and Times. They all pose the question of whether the increasingly shrill and violent language of American politics offers some explanation of why this incident happened.

And as for "Can it really be the case that an American Secretary of State believes that an attack upon her country that murdered thousands of people .......has the same significance as one deranged gunman running amok", well no it can't and she didn't say that.

tiki

There is murder with guns and murder with words. As the "Left loves to call themselves the 'Intelligencia, Liberals, Thinkers, Progressive, we can safely assume they are 'guilty of the latter. In their o so
civilized world, the Left couldn't bear the thought of killing someone with weapons (so cruel and primitiv), only with words, which is much more sophisticated, but as deadly!!!!

Australians for Non=Bigoted Thinking

This story has come to reveal the true colours of the Left, that they would stoop so low to exploit this tragic event for political purposes, rather than be concentrated on the health and well being of the victims, which we have heard precious little about.

However, I am not shocked, the Left are not averse to the devaluation of human life, for the sake of the cause.

john

This is on a par with Charles Enderlin's exploitation of Mohd. Al Dura's alleged murder by the IDF, much to the delight of the `Hard/SoftLeft and their Islamist allies. It's a form of Stalinist McCarthyism of the Left. These MOLs will do nothing to stop the destruction of true democratic debate. It's been going on for decades. I remember if from the '50s when the Communist parties led a constant campaign of denigration against the West and its values. Why are we surprised?

Emmet Sweeney

The speed with which the mainstream media in the U.K., even supposedly "conservative" publications such as The Express and The Telegraph, rushed to put the blame on American conservatives is deeply worrying. This is a graphic illustration of Melanie's earlier observation that there now exists nothing but a gaping hole where British conservatism used to be. When even "the right" in Britain endorse the deranged hysteria of the American left, then we're in deep trouble.

David Bouvier

I laughed so much when the BBC US correspondant on Newsnight, said that she thought that the Republicans wouldn't take this claim from the left lying down and "would be shooting back".

She seemed oblivious to her confirmation that violent metaphors are as universal in politics as they are in sport, business or many other areas.

Margaret Muller-Johansson

I don't know when the leftist are going to stop covering up things, this guy is "individual" who was not fit but the extremist gangs from the desert who want to kill innocent people in the west do what they do because of Jihad.

There is right and wrong

Thank You, Thanks You, for your voice of sanity amid all the convoluted right and wrong. And thank you for being strong enough to say it.

Lynn Fox

We have to agree that both sides are and are not responsible, ok? When you get ugly rhetoric going, it stirs up the anger...no matter who or what that person's circumstances and who knows when it will trigger a tragedy. Right and left need to remember we're all in this together. You can take all the "sound bites" and publish them, but out of context who knows the intent...but yes, words are powerful. But what you have missed in this article is a 9 year old girl whose life was cut short. I think Sarah Palin (and others) needs to look at this from the perspective of a mother who has lost her precious child to gun violence. Think deeply about that and maybe some of that "anger" against left or right doesn't seem so legitimate. In fact, I think ALL politicos and media who would use such feeble, ugly rhetoric need to apologize to the mothers and fathers out there who are trying to raise their children to know right from wrong and to live safe, happy lives. That's what we've forgotten, too. Pretty sad, don't you think?

Raymond in DC

Nut-jobs like Loughner don't act in response to some vague "political climate", rather to their internal demons. Think back to the deranged shooter at Virginia Tech who took dozens of lives a few years ago. Or the attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981 by John Hinkley as the latter sought to win the attention of Jody Foster.

What Clinton's obscene comparison leaves out is that one is mentally unbalanced and his actions condemned by the populace, while the Islamists are acting according to *doctrine* and draw support from a broad swath of the Muslim populace.

Campbell

But didn't Ms Giffords herself call out Sarah Palin on some of Palin's more agressive rhetoric and didn't Ms Giffords herself predict that someone would get hurt?
If one believes that violent video games/films etc lead to a coarsening of society, a habituation to violence and an increasing view of force as a solution for feelings of frustration then you can't exempt political rhetoric from that view.
If Ms Giffords had been a right wing politician then the left would have had to take its licks; she wasn't so, naturally, it is right wing rhetoric that comes under the microscope. After all didn't her Republican opponent invite people to a come along to a shooting range and let off some rounds to symbolise their determination to unseat Ms Giffords at the last election?
Two final points -
Bogdan - of course they were cross-hairs, lets face it theodolites have zero graphic punch especialy on Mama Grizzly's website. Don't be silly.
Andreas - that is a truly tacky piece of innuendo and if you had any idea how YouTube subscription works I hope you wouldn't have stooped to blaming the victim.

Pall Leosson

I have always had my reservations concerning Hilary Clinton, but after her equating the lone lunatic killer in Arizona with the Islamic Jihadists of 9/11, I have lost all respect for her whatsoever.

Paul from Texas

Please see Michelle Malkin's compilation of violence and real hate speech from liberals:

http://michellemalkin.com/

John Holland

Of course- anyone who suggests that the American Right's fetishistic obsession with lovely guns and shooting things could ever have any possible negative repercusions should be sent to North (or is it South?) Korea where they belong.

The fact that this woman Gifford stated her concern at the time that Palin's rhetoric could be dangerous only goes to prove that it's entirely the Liberal's fault, or something.

When Tea-Party speakers describe their elected government as a terrorist oppressor, I think it's fair to say their sweet reasonableness is a lesson to us all in the virtues of intelligent political debate.

Ian Hills

Churchill predicted that the anti-fascists of his day would become the fascists of tomorrow. He meant, of course, the left.

charles soper

Well written, I wholly agree.
Incidentally it's still easy to confirm that Giffords' youtube channel does contain a mysterious subscription to Loughner's hideous and deranged channel (classitup10) (something only someone with her login password could do), by looking at the search engine caches.
This won't last long. Bing for example last crawled the site on 10/1/2011.

charles soper

The only plausible explanation I've found for this link (other than some kind of curious hack or a mistake) is that there had been a previous threat from Loughner and Gifford's team wanted to keep a watch on him, but very strange to do so publically in a way that recommends his site.
Very odd.

John Holland

Ian Hills- what, exactly, do you mean by your last post?
Liberals are Fascist because.... what? They make rather simplistic correlations between a deranged shooting and aggressive rhetoric? That's Fascist? Do you really mean that, or do you just type the first thing that comes into your head?

Here's a suggestion for a quiet evening- get a dictionary and look up the word 'Fascism'.
Then get a history book and read a couple of paragraphs on the Fascist movements of the 1920's and 30's. Not the slightly left of centre movements, like the evil Roosevelt Democrats, but the Fascist ones, that's Mussolini, Franco, maybe even Hitler if you've got time .The people who slaughtered millions of innocent people (though at least they didn't slightly change the law on the provision of health care. That really would have been a step too far).

Then again, why bother? Why bother trying to make any connection between the words you use and language or history? No-one else in the U.S. seems to at the moment.

Herb

Excellent work on this. I write from the American side of the pond and what is going on from the liberal left side is absolutely appalling, but in no way surprising. The media has ignored all the vitriol coming from the left and that includes from Obama who has called those who differ with him "enemies". The Democratic Party has put out maps just like the one Palin put out, and they have been doing it for quite a while, but the press doesn't ever report on that,and it hasn't mentioned in these last two days. But they fill the airwaves with rhetoric condemning Palin. Here is a sample of a map put out by the Democratic Party back in 2004. There are others that have now been taken down. http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=253055&kaid=127&subid=171
And by the way, I haven't seen anyone speculate on the possible connection between the murderer's affection for Mein Kampf and the fact that Ms Giffords is Jewish. I can easily imagine what the headlines would be had a Muslim been shot by someone who merely had a book by someone critical of radical Islam. The hypocrisy is beyond belief.
I tip my hat to you, Ms Phillips, for all the great work you do.

Herb

A small sample of left wing rhetoric in the US. This first one is from Jay Nordlinger: Even before [George W.] Bush was elected president, the kill-Bush talk and imagery started. When Governor Bush was delivering his 2000 convention speech, Craig Kilborn, a CBS talk-show host, showed him on the screen with the words "SNIPERS WANTED." Six years later, Bill Maher, the comedian-pundit, was having a conversation with John Kerry. He asked the senator what he had gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry answered that he had taken her to Vermont. Maher said, "You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone." (New Hampshire is an early primary state, of course.) Kerry said, "Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone." (This is the same Kerry who joked in 1988, "Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they're to shoot Quayle.") Also in 2006, the New York comptroller, Alan Hevesi, spoke to graduating students at Queens College. He said that his fellow Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer, would "put a bullet between the president's eyes if he could get away with it."
Just this past October, then-Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania told the Times-Tribune of Scranton: "That [Rick] 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." This is from leftie journalist Paul Krugman (there are enough of these inflammatory statements from Krugman and his paper to fill a small book) of the NY Times only a year ago: "A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy."

The list is endless, and it's easy enough to go find them all over internet. And these are from prominent people from the world of politics, journalism, academia, and the arts. Western intellectuals, nearly all on the left, are decadent and bear a heavy responsibility for much of the craziness we are seeing.

St Bruno

If the killing had been done by one of our ‘Asian’ friends would there be the amount of comments and finger-pointing. It was done by a white male so all the forces of the left media gather round to muddy the waters of truth yet again.

Not like when on November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood an ‘Asian’ man killed thirteen people after shouting "Allahu Akbar!" Taboos and shibboleths may apply.

Seems to me they are both classic examples of extreme acts of violence and are both treated completely different. Could this be an insight to the thinking of the ‘progressives’, liberal, or left Americans. One of the violent acts is fit to be exploited for political gain by slagging off the ‘extreme right’, Fox News and Glen Beck, Tea-Party et al. The other act of violence rich in many threads of hatred can be left to die on the vine and quietly be forgotten as total exploitation would be far too dangerous politically and could be censured in the UN and other organisations as ‘racist’ or even worse.

What part of murder don’t they understand?

Brian O'Connor

Note to censor: this is satire . . .

I blame chimp-Bush-Hitler for his baby-killing, blood-for-oil war-of-choice for the heated rhetoric that drove the otherwise peaceful shooter to go on his murderous spree . . .

(Yo . . . Censor . . . that's, you know, satire . . .

Poosh

Excellent article but the false narrative has already been cemented that this is Palin's etc fault.

The crosshairs was not irresponsible though, Democrats have done the same thing and I'm sure many other posters have likewise done the same thing. I have no idea why this is fixated on other than for manipulatory reasons.

benjamin

I think Ms Phillpips is dead right. There is no link between violent rhetoric on right wing talk shows and the tragic events in Tucson, just like there is no link between the violent jihadist rhetoric and the killings at Fort Hood. Nice to see that we all agree on something.

Israel

Poosh:

"The crosshairs was not irresponsible though, Democrats have done the same thing and I'm sure many other posters have likewise done the same thing. I have no idea why this is fixated on other than for manipulatory reasons."

Okay, i'll bite.

Give one example (with a link) to where a politician on the American left has created a poster or image where they specifically name twenty political opponents and have put bulleyes over them. The simple fact is that you cannot because it's not out there. Palin was not only called out by Mrs Gifford she was also called out by one of her media supporters on the right who along with many others saw the action for what it was, over the top and dangerous. You think Palin silence before her whiny speach was due to sad reflection?

I doubt it. It was probably an attempt to find some way to spin out of this (her spokeswoman failed with the first attempt. Surveyor's symbols? Really?) something she has failed to do expecially when you contrast her self pitying speach with that of the president's which has only found detractors amongst some of the usual suspects (but not the roundtable on Faux "News" who seemed to have listened to their boss Roger Ailes and toned things down).

Don't worry about Sarah Palin and her safety. What the majority people have seen in the last few days is someone who in no way, shape or form has what it takes to be President of the United States. What has been killed off are her chances, not that the stubborn, self absorbed narcissist could be told. She may have the base but that 25-30% won't get you elected, as people like Rove know so don't expect her to survive the primaries after this.

One thing to note, in a city of the state with the forthright adherence to the most virulent demonising policies against minorities (with Arizona's "papers please" law) and the US LGBT communities (John McCain's "Abe Simpson" impression against DADT) the life of the first Jewish female representitive in Arizona was probably saved by the actions of her gay Hispanic aide after she was shot in the head by a white male. I wonder just how those piously sitting in judgement would have acted if it were th eother way around?

A rhetorical question really as l have ben to this website before.

Richard

Sarah Palin's graphic was a surveyor's symbol, not a crosshair.

P. Atherton

John Holland- I'll try and interprete your incoherent, emotional ramblings:

Firstly, Churchill said what Churchill said. If you want to know what it meant, ask Churchill.

"..the American Right's fetishistic obsession with lovely guns and shooting things"

Ignoring the blatantly intolerant stereotyping you've done here, let me explain something to you. American attitudes towards guns evolved from a dramatically different environment and history to what you are no doubt accustomed. The taming of the West, and the pioneering eras, some of which continue today in places like Alaska for example, were accomplished with the help of guns. Whether it be law and order, or hunting and providing, they were and are an effective tool. Nowadays, with so many sub-cultures, population density and crime rates, self-defence with an effective weapon is something Americans expect, whereas the rest of us tend to cringe at the thought of a gun actually being useful.
So you don't like guns. Stop whinging. You don't have to. The figures on areas with gun control laws indicate that violent crime hasn't abated. Criminals will always find something to kill someone with, or they'll find a gun illegally.

Rather than use your unpleasant, anti-American stereotypes, perhaps you should examine some of their history more closely, or God forbid, actually get to know an American or two (preferably one who has built something, cut down the odd tree, raised kids, paid off a home, and had a job, as opposed to one with a heightened sense of self-entitlement who blames all their woes on everybody who disagrees with them/ has stuff which they don’t).

"Why bother trying to make any connection between the words you use and language or history? No-one else in the U.S. seems to at the moment..."

What, no-one at all? You really don't like Americans much, do you?