How liberals exploited a mass murder for political points
U.S. President Barack Obama’s unofficial motto was coined by his first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel: “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Emanuel was talking about the banking crisis that Obama used to nationalize General Motors and health insurance.
And so last weekend when a lone gunman in Arizona killed six people and wounded 13 more, including a congresswoman, the Democrats saw their chance.
Clarence Dupnik, the Democrat who is the sheriff for the crime scene, knew what to do. The investigation was just beginning, but Dupnik declared the killer was motivated by conservative political rhetoric, and blamed talk show host Rush Limbaugh in particular.
Next came the media: The New York Times said toxic Republican rhetoric created a “climate of hate” that caused the murder. The Daily News said “blood is on Sarah Palin’s hands.” A veteran Democratic operative outlined the strategy: The White House needs “to deftly pin this on the tea partiers, just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”
Except there was one problem: It wasn’t true. The accused murderer, Jared Loughner, isn’t a Republican and according to friends, he never listens to talk radio or follows the news. They say he was a liberal whose chief political activity was smoking pot.
Loughner’s profile isn’t political, it’s psychiatric. He is given to paranoia and rants about mind control. He had a shrine of skulls at his home. He had been reported to police — that would be Dupnik — before, but was not prosecuted, nor committed to a psychiatric institution. He was stopped by police the very day of the shooting, and let go.
No wonder Dupnik wants a scapegoat.
Demonizing Republicans is only half the fun. The other half is exploiting the panic to pass new laws. Within days, Democratic politicians were talking about censoring talk radio under the Orwellian name of the “fairness doctrine.”
Support for Obama is low in the polls. The number of Americans who define themselves as “liberals” is, too. U.S. unemployment remains near 10% and debt is out of control. The 2012 presidential election is looming, and it’s shaping up to be a wipe-out.
That’s what this week’s blamestorming was about — trying to criminalize conservative opinions, by framing them as murderers.
Canadian liberals jumped on the bandwagon, too. Even the drab Edmonton Journal.
Columnist Graham Thomson singled me out as a Canadian journalist who is a “fringe element” who is “hijacking” Canada’s national debate. I guess Thomson didn’t notice that he was using extremist and violent metaphors himself.
Thomson’s sole example was I once called a Greenpeace activist “disgusting” during a debate, after he compared Canada’s morality to Saudi Arabia’s morality.
That was apparently too much for Thomson. Which is odd, given that on the day of the murders, his own column graphically described a political personnel change in Edmonton as “a Mafia hit,” carried out by an “assassin.”
That shows Thomson’s bad taste and bad writing.
But the answer to poor journalism is to ignore Thomson, as so many people do — not to blame him for real Mafia murders.
Obama himself says things like, “we’re going to punish our enemies” when talking about Republicans. He talks about “hand-to-hand combat” and finding “an ass to kick.” “Get in their face.”
That skinny loser can’t even throw a baseball. He has never done anything close to hand-to-hand combat.
I don’t think Obama should be banned from using braggadocio like a second-rate rapper. Because I believe in freedom of speech.
Too bad the Democrats don’t — and neither do their media friends, including in the smug opinion pages of the Edmonton Journal.
P.S. Here's the lame column by Thomson lumping me in with a mass murderer, because I called someone "disgusting".
P.P.S. Here's Thomson's own column, literally on the day of the murders, wherein he describes a routine political firing as a Mafia assassination. And then his next column is to complain about violent metaphors. Is he really that dense?
P.P.P.S. Here's the letter to the editor that the Journal ran from me in reply. It is edited down to less than half its original length. Of course it was -- the Journal would be too embarrassed to run the whole thing. So here's the full text of my letter, as I sent it in:
Re: Vitriol in U.S. politics influences Canada, by Graham Thomson, Jan. 11
In his column accusing me of bringing vitriolic langauge into Canadian political discourse, Graham Thomson calls me a "fringe element" who is "hijacking" the debate. Did no-one at the Journal notice that Thomson himself is using violent and extremist metaphors to condemn me?
Thomson is correct that I called a Greenpeace activist "disgusting" during a debate last year after he compared Alberta's morality with Saudi Arabia's morality. Because that is disgusting. Based solely on that comment, Thomson thought it was appropriate to include me in a column about a psychotic mass murderer. And the Journal published even more extreme smears on its website, including one calling me a "walking grenade with the pin out". I'm sure this has nothing to do with the fact that I write for a rival newspaper in town.
Of all the people at the Journal who might have condemned violent imagery in politics, I wouldn't have thought it would be Thomson. On Jan. 8, the very day of the Arizona murders, Thomson's political column opened with these sentences: "In the best tradition of a Mafia hit, they sent a friend of the victim to do the dirty work. The assassin arrived at Neil Mackie's doorstep on Wednesday with a smile and a handshake. Mackie, we are told, never saw the end coming." I'm sure Mackie's family appreciated the Journal describing their father being fired as an execution-style murder.
I'm not interested in taking lessons about overheated rhetoric from Thomson. Like Greenpeace comparing Alberta to Saudi Arabia, Thomson's column was disgusting.
Ezra Levant
Calgary
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