While it’s still too early to say this conclusively, I think that people who want to read their various political narratives into Jared Lee Loughner are ultimately in for a disappointment. The man’s mind is so messed up that he’s the political equivalent of schizophrenic word salad (schizophasia):
Judging from Mr. Loughner’s own website, his mind was a mess of conspiracy theories, influenced by tracts like “Mein Kampf” and the “Communist Manifesto.” His main complaint about government seems to be that he believes it is trying to control American “grammar.” Yet this becomes an excuse for the media to throw him in with the tea partiers as “anti-government.”
His mental illness, while obvious to nearly everyone now, did not stand out enough for him to merit attention (which means he won’t be much of a poster boy for advocates of new laws targeting the mentally ill):
Interviews with friends, as well as online comments attributed to Mr. Loughner, suggest the 22-year-old high school dropout had struggled with mental-health issues.
Officials say Mr. Loughner had psychological problems but plotted his attack in a deliberate and orderly manner–buying a Glock 9mm semiautomatic pistol in November and bullets the morning of the shooting. He wrote notes that suggested a grudge against Ms. Giffords over a perceived slight during a 2007 public event.
Mr. Loughner’s parents told investigators they didn’t realize the severity of their son’s mental problems, say people familiar with the matter. Campus police had been notified of his disruptive behavior during classes at a community college. He was expelled in October.
Mr. Loughner has a petty criminal record, but investigators have found no evidence he was ever treated for mental-health problems.
Obviously, if he was never treated, they will never find any such evidence. Even his parents didn’t seem to know:
The parents told investigators they didn’t realize the severity of their son’s problems, say people familiar with the matter.
Of course, it could be argued that they should have known, and should have been put on notice by the meeting with college administrators:
From February to September 2010, Loughner had five contacts with Pima Community College police for classroom and library disruptions. On September 29, 2010, college police discovered a Loughner-filmed YouTube video in which he claimed that the college was illegal according to the United States Constitution. The college told Loughner that if he wanted to come back to school, he needed to resolve his Code of Conduct violations and obtain a mental health clearance indicating, in the opinion of a mental health professional, that his presence did not constitute a danger to himself or others. On October 4, Loughner and his parents met with Campus administrators and Loughner indicated he would withdraw from the college.[8] During his time at Pima a teacher and classmate both said they thought Loughner might commit a school shooting.[9]
In retrospect, it seems the college came pretty close to predicting what he would do.
Every time I look at Loughner’s picture and see his pointlessly vapid stare, I am reminded of Arthur Bremer, who nearly succeeded in assassinating George Wallace in 1972. While there was no Internet or blogosphere in those days, Bremer had plenty of nutty-sounding thoughts:
After Bremer’s arrest, his apartment was searched. Found were Wallace campaign buttons, a Confederate flag, boxes of shells, old high school themed pornographic magazines, newspapers, Black Panther literature, a booklet entitled 101 Things To Do in Jail and various newspaper clippings, including one on the difficulty of providing security for campaigning politicians. In Bremer’s diary were comments such as “My country tis of thee land of sweet bigotry”, “Never say colored, say Negro, so here is a negro card”, “My blood is black”, “Cheer up Oswald”, “White collar, conservative, middle class, Republican, suburbanite robot”, “A Thundering of hooves and out of the western sky came the colored man” and “If I live tomorrow then it will be a long time”.
Confederate flag plus Black Panther literature? Evidence of resentment over words and expressions commonly used to influence or control people’s thoughts? As to where he fits on the political spectrum, Bremer is impossible to call. Politics wasn’t really the point. He had wanted to kill President Nixon but found it too difficult. The man’s real motive seems to have been a desire to prove his manhood:
On March 1, 1972, Bremer began his diary with the words, “It is my personal plan to assassinate by pistol either Richard Nixon or George Wallace. I intend to shoot one or the other while he attends a campaign rally for the Wisconsin Primary”. Bremer’s purpose was “to do SOMETHING BOLD AND DRAMATIC, FORCEFUL & DYNAMIC, A STATEMENT of my manhood for the world to see”.[12] The following evening, Bremer attended an organizational meeting for Wallace at the Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee.
Although Bremer’s main aim was to assassinate then-President Richard Nixon, on March 23, Bremer attended a Wallace dinner and rally at Milwaukee‘s Red Carpet Airport Inn. During the next two months, Bremer would trail Wallace, across the USA, travelling by car, plane, ferry and bus.
It’s a hell of a way to prove “manhood,” but the guy seems to have been a loser with women.
As to whether Loughner had issues over proving his “manhood,” who knows? No one seems interested in the slightest. There has been no discussion over his sex life, whether he had girlfriends, and the girls who have known him and been quoted have said he was angry and aloof.
Lynda Sorenson said she took a class with Loughner last summer at Pima community college. He was “obviously very disturbed”, she told the Arizona Daily Star. “He disrupted class frequently with nonsensical outbursts.”
Gabriella Carillo, 22, said she remembered Loughner as a tall, intelligent teenager who was good at basketball, liked to read and worked hard in his high school band classes, but didn’t seem to apply himself in other courses.
“I know that he caused a lot of trouble in his classes other than band,” she said. “If he tried, he would probably be at the top of our class. But he kind of just wasted his life.
“There are some guys who are just angry,” she said. “I never really saw a smile on his face at all.”
Don Coorough, 58, who sat two desks in front of Loughner in a poetry class, described him as a “troubled young man” and “emotionally underdeveloped”. After another student read a poem about an abortion, Loughner compared the young woman to a “terrorist for killing the baby”, he said.
OK, I am not much of a feminist theoretician, but there is something I find odd about the way people — especially on the left — are not looking at this case.
What cannot be denied is that the target of his assassination attempt was a female politician. A prominent woman. And Loughner had been stalking her. Shooting any woman strikes me an awfully peculiar way for any man to prove his manhood, but then, I’m not a shrink. What might Freud say?
Might the “manhood” issue be implicated, even remotely?
Has any female politician or powerful woman ever been the subject of an assassination or attempted assassination before? I can’t think of any in this country, although there was the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. In her case, the identity of the assassin seems to be in dispute, and certainly no one has been tried:
Al-Qaeda commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid claimed responsibility for the attack, describing Bhutto as “the most precious American asset.”[100] The Pakistani government also stated that it had proof that al-Qaeda was behind the assassination. A report for CNN stated: “the Interior Ministry also earlier told Pakistan’s Geo TV that the suicide bomber belonged to Lashkar i Jhangvi–an al-Qaeda-linked militant group that the government has blamed for hundreds of killings”.[101] The government of Pakistan claimed Baitullah Mehsud was the mastermind behind the assassination.[102] Lashkar i Jhangvi, a Wahabi Muslim extremist organization affiliated with al-Qaeda that also attempted in 1999 to assassinate former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is alleged to have been responsible for the killing of the 54-year-old Bhutto along with approximately 20 bystanders, however this is vigorously disputed by the Bhutto family, by the PPP that Bhutto had headed and by Baitullah Mehsud.[103] On 3 January 2008, President Musharraf officially denied participating in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto as well as failing to provide her proper security.[104]
While there is disagreement over which Al Qaeda/Taliban faction did it, there is little doubt that the assassination was carried out by sexist men. To say they do not believe in equal rights for women is understatement; one of the alleged assassins said in 2005 that women should be punished for the crime of voting, and advocated “a complete ban on female education.”
As to what Jared Loughner’s views of women might be or whether he has any, who knows? Other than the reported statement that he thought a woman who had an abortion was a “terrorist,” there’s nothing.
Yet he tried to kill a prominent, politically powerful woman, and her sex is irrelevant.
It baffles me that the feminists are not screaming in the usual predictable manner. If we suppose that Loughner’s victim had been black or hispanic, I think there would be a pretty loud chorus on the left that the racist motivation for the shooting was obvious. Similarly, had Barney Frank been shot, there would have been immediate cries of homophobia. (And of course the “racist” and “homophobic” Tea Party movement would be blamed.)
So why the total silence over possible sexism? Didn’t this man stalk and shoot a woman?
Feminist writer Jessica Valenti is quick to blame guns, and what she calls “violent masculinity.” And while she notes that Giffords is “the first female politician in America to be the subject of an assassination attempt,” she studiously avoids attributing any sexist motivation to the shooting. Instead, she goes out of her way to twist the shooting into a rampage against conservative women:
What’s not being discussed, however, is that a fair amount of this violent language and imagery is coming from female politicians on the right. Giffords was a “target” on a map created by Sarah Palin’s political action committee – Giffords’s district was marked with an image of gun cross hairs. In a March interview that would prove eerily prescient, the congresswoman criticised the image, telling MSNBC: “When people do that, they’ve gotta realise there’s consequences to that action.”
In June, Nevada politician and former Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle suggested that if Congress “keeps going the way it is”, people would turn toward “second amendment remedies”. (The second amendment of the US constitution outlines the right of Americans to bear arms.) And in an interview with a local Nevada paper, Angle said: “The nation is arming … If we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?”
Stephen Ducat, author of The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, says that masculine and violent language is often used in elections and campaigns – especially by men on the right – because of a fear of being perceived as feminine. In a sexist society, what could be worse than being called a girl? So it doesn’t seem unlikely that conservative female politicians feel the need to peddle their ideas in gendered and violent language in order to fit in with the masculinised right.
After all, the phrase – and sentiment – “man up” was one of the most popular in the 2010 elections. In the Colorado Senate primary, Republican Jane Norton accused her opponent of not being “man enough”; in the Delaware Senate primary, Republican Christine O’Donnell said that her opponent was “unmanly”; Angle told Harry Reid to “man up”; and Palin praised Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer as having “the cojones that our president does not have” to enforce immigration laws.
In a country that sees masculinity – especially violent masculinity – as the ideal, it’s no wonder that this type of language resonates. But it’s a sad state of affairs when women in politics have to resort to using the same gendered stereotypes that kept all women out of public service for so long.
The convoluted argument seems to be that conservative women have become victims of some male-generated need to “peddle their ideas in gendered and violent language” in order to prove that they have balls or something. Conservative women have some misdirected neurotic need to to prove their “manhood.” As to how all of the “violent masculinity” of which she complains might “trigger” a man to shoot a liberal woman, I am not sure. It just strikes me as very odd that despite the considerable hoopla and demagoguery on the left, no one has called the shooting sexist — especially when it would otherwise be a very obvious call.
There is only reason I can think of that they don’t, and that is because it is at total cross purposes with the left-wing narrative that Sarah Palin made him do it.
Ditto the Tea Party movement, which is heavily female.
Let’s face it, as narratives, go, “Sarah Palin forced man to commit sexist killing” just doesn’t make it. Nor does “Tea Party forced man to commit sexist killing.”
A major problem for the left is that they would love to be able to accuse Sarah Palin of being a sexist and a male chauvinist but they can’t because the claim is ludicrous on its face. And obviously, making her into a “victim” of the male chauvinist sexist culture of violent masculinity isn’t working too well either.
While Sarah Palin is a true feminist in the literal sense of the word, she has done incalculable damage to left-wing hack feminism. They are being forced to throw core beliefs (in this case, the time-honored sexist narrative) under the bus.
Seriously, if “Sarah Palin made him do it!” is a feminist narrative, it speaks volumes about the current state of feminism.
It is also a total failure of a major left-wing narrative.
I just hope they keep it up.
MORE: Speaking of “manhood,” it isn’t much, but my search did turn up a line from a poem Loughner wrote, titled “Meat Head”:
Looking around, the cute women are catching my eye…
probably waiting for their hot boyfriends wandering in the locker room.
Looks more like envy of manhood than manhood, but that’s not much of a narrative.
UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn for the link, and for quoting from this post!
A warm welcome to all!
Looking at this post again, I’m afraid I missed an important point that needs to be emphasized. When I said this:
If we suppose that Loughner’s victim had been black or hispanic, I think there would be a pretty loud chorus on the left that the racist motivation for the shooting was obvious. Similarly, had Barney Frank been shot, there would have been immediate cries of homophobia.
I should have noted that it would not be true if the black, hispanic or gay victim happened to be on the right side of the political spectrum. Thus, if, say, Clarence Thomas or Alberto Gonzales were assassinated (especially by leftist gunmen), they would not be seen as victims of racism. Similarly, when Pim Fortuyn was assassinated by an anarcho-primitivist nut, this was not condemned as homophobic by the PC classes.
It is a basic law of identity politics that such identities are conditioned upon being on the left. Which is another reason that no indignity heaped on Sarah Palin can ever be condemned as sexist.
No, not even this:
I admit, that’s a pretty sickening example (to be fair, I have friends on the left who would be sickened by it too), but I think it’s worth keeping in mind the next time we’re treated to another scolding about “incendiary rhetoric.”
MORE: As the story continues to unfold, I see that today’s Wall Street Journal has a front page article detailing Loughner’s “Rejection by Women.”
Rejected by women, he stalks and tries to kill a woman. But it’s not sexism, because Sarah Palin was responsible.
Riiight.
MORE: Loughner’s rantings included writing “Die Bitch” on a letter from Congresswoman Giffords, and get this:
They are peppered with displays of misogyny.
Back in the day, the narrative would have been about sexism.
Comments
39 responses to ““Sarah Palin made him do it!” means Narrative failure”
See, while Loughner is mostly a screaming leftist, that wasn’t why he did what he did, really. Apparently, the Congresswoman didn’t show him proper deference when he spoke to her at another public meeting in 2007. That then grew in his mind into a giant insult.
The guy’s probably whacked. But there are a lot of people out there who write wacky stuff. 9/11 Truthers, Birthers, conspiracy theorists of other kinds, cultists of various kinds. Some if it is internally consistent, some not.
At any rate, his violence was personal, not political. He happened to hate someone who is a political figure, and others just got in the way.
That’s my theory so far, anyway.
If Sarah Palin made him do it, then all her opponents should give up already — there’s nothing she CAN’T do. (Edited to hide THIS Sarah’s need for a copy editor.) Seriously? Nonsense. The man is insane. And while I hate the idea of regulating the mentally ill more (the end of that road being the USSR) perhaps that says something about our ability to CONNECT and keep a non-regulatory eye on each other these days. Yeah, as someone who likes her privacy I hate that too, but I’m thinking of how Pratchett’s witches visit each other and watch for “the cackle”. And yet I can’t even say I’d know if one of my kids were doing this stuff. One of them? Probably. By nature, he brags about what he’s going to do, does it, then brags about having done it. His brother is the one my parents wished on me. I suspect there are things he’s doing I’ll find out about when he’s thirty, and others I’ll mercifully never find out about.
In this as in all other things, we have to accept no system is perfect. Sometimes, there will be sensless attacks…
Sarah,
Of course the alternative to the USSR is to have the insane living on grates under bridges.
I do believe we can do better than that without becoming the USSR.
And could you explain this:
“His brother is the one my parents wished on me.”
You have the context. I don’t.
Has any female politician or powerful woman ever been the subject of an assassination or attempted assassination before? I can’t think of any in this country, although there was the 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan.
Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, in 1984, by Sikh bodyguards avenging her action against an occupied Sikh temple. Her son Rajiv was also assassinated, in 1991, by Tamil Tigers,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi
M. Simon
Wished on me “you will have a child, who will be exactly like you” 🙂
Yes, I know there are gradations — tons of them — between effective help for the insane and the USSR. OTOH depends on how committed the state is to defining dissent as mental illness… and how gradually they do it.
Of course we should be able to do better, but are we?
I think the excuse for disinstitutionalization WAS that we were arresting people just because they were “dissidents” like the USSR — an excuse I always found revolting.
But this kid wasn’t living on grates and peeing on himself. I’m not sure HOW scary he was from the outside. Seems to have scared the college a lot, but his parents clearly weren’t alarmed. Are his parents blind, or could he seem functional at times?
I’ll bet her context is the same as mine. “May you grow up to have children just like you.”
😀
“In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.”
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at the Communistic Revolution. The Proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!”
~Karl Marx, “The Communist Manifesto”
Say, wasn’t Gabby Giffords a member of the existing political order?
And, say, didn’t Loughner actually read this book? Or at least claim to?
Seriously, though, this book is literally a call to violence and revolution. It is doublethink on a grand scale to hold this book as acceptable AND believe violent rhetoric should not be acceptable.
I’m not blaming the Left for this shooting. I’m not even going to go with the retarded notion that they created a climate of hate. The responsibility belongs solely with Jared Lee Loughner.
I am irate, however, at the way I have been accused in a round about way of having anything to do with this tragedy. I’m even more irate at the whitewashing of past hate filled rhetoric by the same people blaming us today.
Can’t even say I want this for political reasons. Most of the country already agrees with us on this. I just want them to stop with the hate.
“The Palin made him do it”
And a hearty eat shit to you, ladies!
If his parents didn’t know how bad he was, they weren’t only not paying attention, they were deliberately not paying attention.
Having had the misfortune to watch a former [thank goodness] brother-in-law deteriorate in the grip of schizophrenia you’d have to be pretty unusual not to notice what’s going on, even if you didn’t know what it was.
Interesting POV regarding Masculinity; Have you seen Mr Laughner’s shaved head in relation to the balded husband of Ms. Gifford?
I know the shrinks must have a name for it…. displacement or something.
f Sarah Palin made him do it, then all her opponents should give up already — there’s nothing she can do.
If Sarah Palin can cause people to die so easily, imagine what damage she could do if she really put her mind to it. I would think that the people who are saying that she bears responsibility for this shooting would be cautious about provoking her, don’t you?
Unsuccessful, obviously, but I seem to remember an assassination attempt against Thatcher while she was Prime Minister, I believe a fatal IRA bombing at a Conservative Party conference.
the basic judgement comes down to whether an individual accepts that the acts of an insane person aren’t easily understood, or that the left is qualified to explain the nuances and motives of a psychotic mind.
I saw the polls. when a majority of one’s own party isn’t buying their version of doctor laura, it probably is a good time to cash out, not double-down.
The dems are making fools of themselves, distancing themselves further from the people they need to vote for them in 2012.
********************
I agree with the above onanist…if palin has the power of command over the mentally ill, her powers are beyond anyone’s control.
I get the impression that Loughner pretty much hates all politicians, and went after the one that he was familiar with and could actually get to.
Is it possible that he is now, in a wicked sort of way, the happiest man in America? He must be enjoying the political firestorm immensely, like an arsonist watching the blaze he started.
‘lanched
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/113030/
Sarah,
Thanks.
==
Clayton Cramer has a Pajamas post up discussing that very subject in the comments. He has looked for cases of unjust institutionalization and he has found very few. Not near enough to justify turning the severely mentally ill into street people. With the death by cold. Death at the hands of other street people. Hard living. etc.
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/mental-illness-and-mass-murder/
First, the tab sequence for the fields following Post A Comment on this web page could be improved.
Second,
In a sexist society, what could be worse than being called a girl?-Jessica :Valenti
Answer: Being treated like a man, i.e. as disposable. Never mind arguing about the military draft and the current draft registration requirement the U.S. imposes on men, just consider how much a house would cost if working conditions in the trades were safe and comfortable enough to make those jobs attractive to most women.
Oh and don’t overlook the numerous times feminists have made sexist attacks on women in dissent to the feminist narrative, referring to such women as “a man in drag,” “not a real woman,” and in other such ways.
Micha,
If you were a man you would know that it is your duty to die (if necessary) to protect the women and children.
Personally, I’m honored to have the duty. YMMV.
TO: Eric
RE: The ‘Grammar’ Issue
His main complaint about government seems to be that he believes it is trying to control American “grammar.” — article cited by Eric
Ever hear of something called ‘newspeak?
Not that I support mass murder but I recall listening to a professor of constitutional law from Denver University tell a group of mensans that “there are no such things as Constitutional Rights”. She said that there are only ‘textual rights’. Her approach to the Constitution was that if you change the ‘text’ you change the ‘right’.
I can see a correlation between Orwell’s classic and the DU professor’s philosophy. And maybe that is what this tragic young man saw as well, albeit his form of expressing it is terribly confused and horribly wrong.
Regards,
Chuck
[Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls. — Ralph Waldo Emerson]
Seems to me that a lot of folks on the left are sliding into the same bizarre cognitive dissonance that they experienced during the Bush years.
On the one hand Bush/Palin are supposedly complete dolts, barely capable of a single coherent thought.
On the other hand, they are devious schemers who are constantly finding ways to accomplish their nefarious aims or (as “Mission Accomplished” Moulitsas would have it), manipulate the discourse in such a way so as to quietly “influence” the deranged right-wing “sleeper cells” that apparently lurk under every bridge and hide in every dark alleyway, waiting to hear the subtle code-words that will flip the switch in their brains and cause them to go kill liberals and Democrats.
I think that in fifty or a hundred years this sort of conspiracy-weaving will be interesting from a historical/anthropological standpoint for many of the same reasons that people today study McCarthyism or the Salem witch trials.
But then, as those two examples amply show, it is all too often that those who are absolutely convinced of their own moral or intellectual superiority are most difficult to convince of their own mistakes, which is why, since Saturday, the goalposts have moved from “this guy was inspired by Sarah Palin and her ‘eliminationist rhetoric’” to “it doesn’t matter if this guy ever actually saw Sarah Palin’s website or not, because she created the ‘atmosphere’ that did inspire him.”
It’s faith-based ‘reasoning’ that can’t be proved by any facts on earth. It’s religion. That’s why they’re falling back on it.
As one who was a political activist in the 80s (Libertarian Party, National Committee member, etc), I distinctly remember the discussions and arguments about keeping people hospitalized vs releasing them. The major problem was people who needed medication. When they received in, in hospitals under controlled conditions, they were essentially *normal* and resented being institutionalized. If they were *not* institutionalized, they went off their meds and wandered the streets talking to themselves and living on subway grates, in cars, etc.
I still think the proper solution should have been to have a more structured life but with more freedoms *as* *long* *as* they were on meds. But I was a voice crying in the wilderness (and still am).
That said, there is the added information that this guy’s mother worked for Pima County, which probably got him off the hook a lot of times that would have landed anybody else in a hospital for observation, at the very least.
The fact that the Pima County Sherriff has been blaming, variously, the Chinese, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin looks to me like misdirection and a huge amoung of CYA.
Bottom line: put this guy under observation, go through whatever records still exist and find out just *why* the ball was not only dropped, but kicked down the sewer.
P.S. By the way…..
Does anyone know if Jared read 1984?
TO: Eric
RE: [OT] What He Said
….the tab sequence for the fields following Post A Comment on this web page could be improved. — M. Simon
You should fix it. If I weren’t used to such ‘jumps’ from doing in-flight rigging of a planeload of paratrooper, I’d be getting ‘motion-sickness’ and hurling into the waste-basket under my desk.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick. — George Burns]
P.S. The ‘Remember Me” functionality….
….it doesn’t.
[Consistency is the hobgoblin of good user interfaces.]
We had our own crazy go off the deep end here in California on Christmas Day. While some folks had found him a bit disturbing, even his folks didn’t know he would go out and murder folks. Eerily similar,except that he had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and this guy just wasn’t holding a grudge against his Congressperson.
It seems that neither one of these two fellows were living on the street, just that no one realized how dangerous they could turn out to be.
http://bit.ly/fql3iM (Link to San Luis Obispo tribune story)
We had our own crazy go off the deep end here in California on Christmas Day. While some folks had found him a bit disturbing, even his folks didn’t know he would go out and murder folks. Eerily similar,except that he had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and this guy just wasn’t holding a grudge against his Congressperson.
It seems that neither one of these two fellows were living on the street, just that no one realized how dangerous they could turn out to be.
http://bit.ly/fql3iM (Link to San Luis Obispo tribune story)
Grrr! Sorry for the double post…
It’s all a bunch of garbage, just the latest incarnation of the progressive party’s “Shut up he explained” strategy.
Even if they found a 5 foot tall stack of Limbaugh books, a love poem to Sarah Palin, and an official tea party membership card in his apartment, it wouldn’t somehow make them responsible for the murders. Palin, Limbaugh, and the tea parties are not advocating, condoning, or even hinting at a desire for violence, so why should they be blamed?
It also wouldn’t mean anything much to the progressives other than providing more ammunition for their blood libel. They’re not really scared that people on the right are advocating violence. They just want them to shut up.
While claiming that Palin’s cross hairs incited Loughner, LSM continues to maximize the map’s exposure well after Palin took it down from her website, ensuring that any crazy idiot who hasn’t seen it still has his/her chance to do so.
If they genuinely believe what they say, then the media is knowingly endangering the other congressmen whose districts are on Palin’s map.
So either the Liberal media is appallingly irresponsible or simply disingenuous.
The Left can’t seem to differentiate the act of using a gun to murder innocent people and using a gun to defend innocent people. Using a gun is bad, period. They say the Right is engaging in moral relativism when we promote gun rights.
The “violent masculinity” described by Jessica Valenti is typical of the anti-male rhetoric of left-wing feminism.
Notice Valenti’s obvious appeal to authority with the author, Stephen Ducat. (The irony of a MALE appeal to authority is cause for the giggles.)
Sarah Palin’s choices are not respected, which runs counter to the feminist goals of the 70’s, when the focus was on women having choices: choice to work, choice to be a homemaker/mother, or both.
As:
“All people are equal” flows to: “Some people are more equal than others.”
“All women should have choices” flows to “Some choices are better than others.”
There is much for the Left to hate about Sarah Palin: She uses masculine terms, she has a masculine husband, she hunts/owns guns, she had more than 1.5 children that weren’t conceived with a turkey-baster, and the real kicker: she didn’t abort an obviously damaged fetus. All those women who aborted viable, but damaged fetuses will get their feelings hurt by women like Palin.
Palin is the poster child for all the Left despises in women… And she speaks to women in a way that women haven’t been spoken to since before the hijacking of the feminist movement: “I am woman, hear me roar.” She’s bringing back the feminism of the 1970s and women like Jessica Valenti realize that.
Palin’s whole “Mama Grizzly” schtick makes the left-feminists crazy because it empowers conservative women to rise up to defend womanhood, not sisterhood. Conservative women defend motherhood: the love of traditional family, the bond with our (masculine) husbands, and our right to work and get paid using the same pay grades as men. “We can have and do it all” is Palin’s empowering reminder.
(But because I said “rise up to defend…” that must mean I want folks to start shooting at people.)
While I’m not a fan of Sarah Palin, I do admit to the giggles at the convulsive reaction she causes in Left-feminists.
All I can make of Ducat’s reference is the idea that Loughner’s madness MUST be caused by being pressured, by a male dominated and oppressive society, to man-up by using a gun (an obviously phallic tool) to try to kill dozens of people.
If Loughner had put Sarah Palin in the hospital, the Left would claim that she had it coming. I truly believe that the fact that Loughner targeted a Democrat is the only reason they are upset about this. It is an opportunity to attack the Right’s message of empowerment.
I think you may have your eyes off the goal, Eric. The Left doesn’t have to be successful at promoting the idea that Sarah Palin forced man to commit sexist killing…. (I don’t think there was anything sexist in Loughner’s actions. The fact that the Representative he targeted was a woman is not relevant. The fact that she was a person of power that he had met and felt “slighted” by is.) The Left is attempting to take words like “defend” and “rise-up” off the table, but only when the Right uses them. If the Left can control the narrative, or in their speak “turn down the volume,” then the Right is essentially castrated. After the Ft. Hood shooting, do you recall anyone complaining that slogans like We support our troops when they shoot their officers as an example of rhetoric that needed to be turned down? No, the Left fought against a “rush to judgement” on the Ft. Hood shooting.
The above was the long version.
The short version is:
[Insert issue of the day] is caused by a male dominated and oppressive society and that’s all Sarah Palin and the Right’s fault, and any violence or smear campaign against them is justified.
Somebody should write a book about this and call it “Anatomy of a Smear”.
I have never seen anything like this. Even as the evidence mounts that Jared Loughner is insane and that is why he committed these crimes, the left still maintains there is a link to the “violent rhetoric” from the right.
How crazy is that?
Chuck Pelto,
You must have been confused by the formatting. I didn’t say that.
If you want it fixed contact Moveable Type. http://www.movabletype.com/
We here at CV have no control over it. And believe me we would like to.
I’ve been reading the book “United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror”, and by sheer coincidence the paragraph where I left off reading starts with “The believer’s favorite mode of justification is the devil made them do it.”
To them, nothing is ever an individual responsibility, something other that the persons involved is always to blame.
I seem to recall reading over the weekend that the shooter described Giffords as “unintelligent” based on his dissatisfaction with her response to his weird question about the government controlling us with language. At any rate when I read that it immediately occurred to me that the Chris Matthews of the world should be the ones who note the potential power of vitriolic rhetoric in that he and the left routinely disparage and discount the intelligence of conservative women, simply based on their rejection of the liberal viewpoint. Interesting post.
TO: M. Simon
RE: The Tab Thingie
Well….
….when I ‘tab’ from the ‘Post a Comment’ ‘Name’ field, the screen jumps up to the ‘Search’ field in ‘Search this Site’ in the right sidebar.
Then when I tab again, it jumps back down to the ‘Email Address:’ field in ‘Post a Comment’. From there, the next ‘tab’ goes back to the ‘Search’ field in ‘Search this Site’ in the right sidebar. Then next ‘tab’ jumps back down to the ‘URL’ field in the ‘Post a Comment’.
A visual version of being jerked up and down by random air-pockets while flying through mountains ‘below the radar’. Reminds me of the airborne insertion for an operation in the northern Georgia mountains while going through the Ranger course. One moment, we’re all hooked-up and ready to go out the door. The next everyone is squatting down on the haunches. Only–the next moment–to be up in the air with our knees in our gut and our feet three feet off the deck.
A ‘fine time’ was had by all.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
P.S. I can’t recall how we all got out of that bird. I suspect that the pilot just up-ended the aircraft and we all just sort of spilled out of the lowered tail ramp….
TO: All
RE: Back On-Topic
I see Drudge is reporting that Jared didn’t watch television and didn’t listen to talk radio.
No details just yet, but I hope he can provide some.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out….]
TO: All
RE: The ‘Details’….
….of my earlier report are HERE!
Regards.
Chuck(le)
[The Truth will out….
….and the Left-Stream Media are NOT going to like it.]
TO: All
RE: Heh
For some strange reason, CNN has not reported this new business.
Three guesses as to why….
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[The Truth….it’s coming out….]