Former Irvine mayor Beth Krom has written a letter to the Orange County Register regarding the Tucson shooting. In this letter, Krom, a Democrat who recently lost her bid to defeat John Campbell for a congressional seat, mirrors the knee-jerk reaction of leftist commentators like Paul Krugman and Keith Olbermann.
http://letters.ocregister.com/2011/01/10/arizona-shooters-anger-inflamed-by-rhetoric/
In the introductory paragraph, Krom immediately "contrasts" the "aspirational vision" of President Obama to the "angry, frustrated tone conveyed by the tea-party". Again, it must be repeated that there is no known connection between the lone shooter and the tea-party-or anybody else, for that matter. The is just the first of many irresponsible charges levied by Ms Krom, who as a public official, former mayor and member of the Irvine City Council, should know better.
It continues:
"Whether the shooter in Saturday’s assault was mentally unstable is not the central question. Removing him from the street will not address the underlying interests of those who have driven the conflict and chaos that has made America more fractured over the past few years. When we allow political pundits who rely on ignorance and disinformation to gain credibility by virtue of their media overexposure we should not act surprised when their words incite hatred and aggression."
First of all, it is the central fact. The issue of political pundits who engage in ignorance and disinformation is rapidly becoming the central issue. To accuse conservative pundits of having responsibility for this incident is the height of ignorance and disinformation when no such link has been yet shown to exist. By all indications, there is no such link.
"....yet with all the sources of information at our disposal, we’ve never been more ignorant."
How arrogant is that statement? What Ms Krom means is that disagreeing with the administration and her liberal world view means we are ignorant.
".....Accuracy, context and journalistic integrity have become irrelevant in today’s sound-bite-driven world."
Is she talking about MSNBC?
"It will be interesting to see how the assault on Rep. Giffords and those injured and killed will be covered. When the lines between opinion and fact are blurred, and CNN feels it must operate more like Fox News to compete for viewership, we are left with news agencies that inflame rather than inform and that agitate rather than educate."
Why speak in the future tense? We already see how the media is covering this. Krom can't resist the urge to take another gratuitous shot at Fox News, which has actually been the most responsible. If she wants an example of inflammatory and agitating coverage, she need look no further than MSNBC. Where is the educational value of Keith Olbermann?
"Free speech is the cornerstone of our democracy, but when irresponsible speech and the demonization of public officials lead to tragedy, the First Amendment is not a shield for accountability."
And what do you mean by accountability, Ms Krom?
Krom has (once again) demonstrated that she was not qualified to become a US Congresswoman (and that's a pretty low bar, at that). In condemning what she disagrees with, she engages in the very tactic that she writes about. She throws charges at Fox News and ignores the very outlet (MSNBC) that is engaging in what she supposedly deplores. She throws out an attack at the Tea-Party, which has not engaged in any acts of violence and has never advocated violence. She dismisses the question of the shooter's obvious mental issues and lays the blame on conservative discourse, which, at this point, appears to have had no influence.
Ms Krom has joined the mob she herself refers to. She has taken a tragic shooting and blamed it all on conservative commentators, the Tea Party and Fox News. He statements have no basis in fact.
Just prior to the last election, I publicly asked Ms Krom (since she was a candidate for Congress) to state her position on the on-going controversy at UC-Irvine involving tension between Jewish and Muslim students. She completely dodged the question regarding the issue that was arguably the most significant issue in the Irvine community. In contrast, she comes out here with both guns firing because of her political orientation. To make it worse, her arguments are easily refutable.
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22 comments:
Gary, I haven't seen you directly mention or respond to this image yet.
Here's how the above image was introduced by Ms. Palin on Twitter.
Both have since been removed from their respective pages.
Your thoughts?
Anonymous,
Don't be silly. There was a very similar one produced by the Dems a few years ago.
Do you really imagine that this ad really insinutates we should go out and shoot candidates from the other party? Both parties uses gun metaphors to refer to winning political campaigns. I assume Palin does it because she is a hunter and outdoorswoman who promotes that image.
What else do you object to? maybe football should rename the shotgun formation.
Get real.
I agree with your statements about Beth Krom. She does not realize that she is part of the problem and not the solution to this very tragic shooting. I really feel for the victims of this senseless act of violence and give my condolences for those who lost love ones. We needs solutions to help prevent this sort of incident, so we can protect our leaders.
Instead of looking for a solution, Krom started out with citing the "aspirational vision" compared to "angry tone of the tea-party, when she should have mentioned possible solutions to targeted violence. Clearly, she was selfishly pushing her own agenda.
One solution is to pay attention the behaviors of potential shooters who pose a threat of targeted violence. The Pima College cut Jaret Loughner from their program on the basis of being"harmful to self and others". The question is: Did they offer service or recommend services to help this individual so he could possible return? Also, did they contact local law enforcement, the FBI or the DoJ so they could make sure that Loughner does not get the opportunity to purchase a weapon, based upon his disturbed mental condition?
Schools, colleges and universities have a resource that has been ignored. This resource has been developed by the United States Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education. A document called: "Threat Assessment in the School: a guide to managing threatening situations and to creating safe school climates" provides the necessary information to help schools prevent incidents of targeted violence, especially shooters. So far, I have heard one reference to this strategy, on Fox News, with Magen Kelly. This is only one solution, but political pundits must look for these resources instead of pushing their own ideological agendas.
Hopefully, this excellent resource, will be used in the future to help prevent such tragedy.
Squid
Gary, you know that I don't think that Palin should be blamed for this, but that doesn't change the fact that what she did was in VERY poor taste. Did the Dems really do that? If so, then they should be criticized for it as well. I have yet to see proof of that, but I'd be willing to look at it if it were out there.
The thing is, the vitriol in this country is out of control. It's a separate issue from this shooting though.
Palin scrubbed the cross-hairs from her web site shortly after the shootings. Her team had a guilty conscience, and rightly so. They had created an atmosphere in which it is statistically more likely that a paranoid nut would actually take more than one 30-round clips and go shoot a member of congress talking to citizens at a local mall.
She pointed the finger at herself. Nothing more needs to be said. Beth Krom certainly didn't add anything to the obvious by ranting about it.
I will have to look for the US map with targets that the Dems used. I have seen it repeatedly on Fox (of Course). If you have not seen it, maybe you watch the wrong channels.
I've seen it, Gary, and it's not comparable for two big reasons:
1) The Democratic map used bullseyes, not crosshairs. Big difference.
2) The bullseyes were on states. Not people, not names. States.
OK, Anonymous (LOL),
Go ahead and split hairs. Do you really think that anyone-Dem or Republican really meant to push a message that someone should be shot?
I am not suggesting for a minute that the Dem map had any evil intentions. perhaps, in the future, in the light of what has happened that both sides will think twice before using any gun metaphors, but to try to make a case that either side or either ad or either map had sinister intentions is just plain stupid or dishonest.
That wasn't at all what I was trying to say, but thanks for putting words into my mouth and setting up that nice little straw man.
The point is that such rhetoric and imagery, coming from Palin specifically in this case, is irresponsible and tasteless. She ought to have known better. No one is saying Palin actually WANTED this to happen. Of course she didn't. Any sensible person knows that. But she contributed to a toxic political environment. Such an environment was not a good one for a crazy like the shooter.
The point isn't the causality of the assassination attempt and massacre. The point is that the violent tea party rhetoric that is always making reference to revolution is now being confronted with what that revolution would look like. They've used violent imagery and talk of revolution in a flippant and petulant manner. It's not so smart looking now to protest outside the White House with firearms, is it? It's not so cute, not so you-betcha-with-a-wink, when a perfectly kind and good government representative has a f****** hole in her face.
"The point is that the violent tea party rhetoric that is always making reference to revolution is now being confronted with what that revolution would look like."
Always?
The point I am making is that the Tea party is being condemned -not just now-but from its inception for opposing the agenda of the Obama administration. Revolution has many forms. Nobody has called for a violent revolution. Nobody has called for violence.
All this talk about toxic and overheated rhetoric is code for don't oppose the Obama agenda.
Before you try to make the case about the rhetoric of anyone, first you need to establish the motive of this shooter. What drove him, what inspired him? There is no indication that it has anything to do with tea parties, conservative talk radio, Sarah Palin or anyone else.
Establish the facts. Then come back and make your case.
Here is Palin's take on the shooting.
http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/2011/01/12/accountability-where-art-thou-palin-addresses-arizona-shootings/
Personally, I can't find anything wrong with it or the basis for the Left's obsession with her. That's another topic.
On this topic, I can't help but recall how the Democrats and the others farther Left reacted to Major Hassan's murdering of American servicemen at Ft. Hood. There was a general admonition "not to rush to judgement" about him and that he was generally a "sick" man, perhaps with financial problems. That he was shouting "Allah Akbar" while he was shooting, or had ongoing Muslim rants beforehand, and links to a terrorist imam was considered irrelevant. I doubt if Beth Krum wrote any blame letters about that episode.
The Left's outrage seems to depend on the situation.
It turns out in this case, I read somewhere, the shooter was obsessed with Giffords as far back as 2007 even before there was a Tea Party. He had some form correspondence from her thanking him for appearing at one of her events.
The Left seems to feel that since they won the 2008 election they are entitled to do whatever they want. If you oppose any of their policies you are crazy, irrelevant, racist, or violent, or hate mongering or oppositional just for the sake of it. "The Party of NO"
This categorical blaming the Tea Party and talk show hosts without basis in fact is typical of the Left.
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Miggie wrote:
I can't help but recall how the Democrats and the others farther Left reacted to Major Hassan's murdering of American servicemen at Ft. Hood
That's funny, but I thought the same thing. However, I'm being consistent. I don't blame Sarah Palin and right-wing pundits for this, and I don't blame Islam for that one. A mentally unstable person will find something to hang on to in order to justify his crazed actions. (I once again want to point out that as of right now, it doesn't even seem like the guy in Tucson was even a fan of right-wing media. However, I still wouldn't blame right-wing pundits even if he was.)
Crazy is as crazy does. With the Virginia Tech Massacre, they tried to blame video games - turned out he didn't even play them, but even if he did, it wouldn't prove anything. With Columbine, they tried to blame heavy metal music, despite the fact that there are millions of kids who listen to it and wouldn't harm a fly.
It's the mental illness that's the cause. The rest is just details.
I also want to point out that there are definitely voices on the left who have spoken out against playing this sort of blame game. Both Stewart and Colbert made statements about it being a mistake to do so, for instance. And, well, you guys think of me as a "liberal" and you can see my initial comments on this whole thing. I also have several friends whom you would consider to be leftists who agree with me.
Here below is the link to the article where I read that this screwball was intent on killing Giffords before there was a Tea Party and before anyone ever heard of Sarah Palin. If the hatred preceded them how can they be the cause of the hatred? In case of Major Hassan, there are centuries of Islamic intolerance and violence within the religion itself and he was immersed in the religion. It was heightened by their perceived sense of the injustice of it all that the US would choose to retaliate against those who committed the attack on us or gave them shelter.
There are other good observations in the piece as well.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/11/AR2011011106068.html
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Miggie, if you're addressing me, I don't know why you're trying to prove to me that this guy wasn't influenced by the Tea Party. I don't think that he was.
Your point about Islam is valid, but one can also say the same thing about Christianity even though it's become more peaceful in the last couple centuries whereas Islam seems to be...well, where Christianity was when it was the same age. The point is, it has a history of violence as well.
But the thing is this, there are 1.5 billion Muslims out there. The vast majority of them do not commit acts of violence. Why is that? If Islam made every one of its followers violent, then we'd be steeped in blood to our knees.
I would definitely agree that there is something about Islam that would attract the mentally ill. However, Islam itself does not make a person mentally ill. I suppose that there are some things that attract the mentally ill more than others. You never hear of a die-hard Beatles fan committing acts of violence as a result of their devotion to the band. (Oh, wait, there was Charles Manson. How about a die-hard Herman's Hermits fan?)
Lance, Good thing you remembered Helter Skelter at the end because I was about to remind you. We won't get into the influence of their drug-glorifying drugs.
I agree on part of what you say about Islam except that around the world, there are many imams in many mosques who are indeed exhorting their followers to violence. In some cases the violence occurs immediately after Friday prayers.
I agree on part of what you say about Islam except that around the world, there are many imams in many mosques who are indeed exhorting their followers to violence. In some cases the violence occurs immediately after Friday prayers.
That's a good point. I was referring more to the Hassan incident that Miggie wrote about and the random, isolated incidents in this country.
When you have a violent system where everybody is indoctrinated into it from early on, that's a whole new ball of wax. If Christians were being told to commit acts of violence in churches around this country, then you'd probably see a lot more Christian-related violence. Now when you have the random violent Christians, they might be latching on to their religion, but those crazies would have probably latched on to something else if not for that.
Oh...to be fair to the Beatles though, Manson had an interpretation of their lyrics that only a crazy person could have. That dude could have listened to The Archies and found messages for him to start a race war.
I wasn't addressing my comments to Lance.
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Yes Gary, I think the PalinRepublicans DID mean to (in jest of course) imply that their opposition should be shot (oh, not really, but, just as a fantasy, you know...) They knew what they were saying. Do you really think that Henry Ward Beecher believed rifles were better than Bibles? Well, John Brown did. And they were both heroes of the nascent Republican Party. How's that for tying a knot in the proverbial ideological tail.
Lance,
The Archies! I like that!
Shoot! I just read that this guy was a Beatles fan! Maybe it is those damned Liverpudlians who are to blame! I've been a fan all my life; I'm liable to snap at any moment now!
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