On Saturday Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik called Arizona “the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.” Today the sheriff continued on the same theme:

“I think that when the rhetoric about hatred, about mistrust of government, about paranoia of how government operates and to try to inflame the public on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, has impact on people especially who are unbalanced personalities to begin with.”

He also called his state “the tombstone of the United States of America.”

[You can go to Clarence Dupnik is My Hero on Facebook.]

Inflaming the Public

And, as Michael Tomasky warned yesterday, already the excuses are flying for those who indulges in over the top rhetoric, starting with Howard Kurtz at the Daily Beast:

One of the first to be dragged into this sickening ritual of guilt by association: Sarah Palin. Last March, the former Alaska governor posted a map on her Facebook pagewith crosshair targets representing 20 Democratic lawmakers she was singling out for defeat after they voted for President Obama’s health care plan. One of them was Giffords. Palin, who touts her caribou-hunting heritage, also tweeted, “Don’t retreat, RELOAD!”

This kind of rhetoric is highly unfortunate. The use of the crosshairs was dumb. But it’s a long stretch from such excessive language and symbols to holding a public official accountable for a murderer who opens fire on a political gathering and kills a half-dozen people, including a 9-year-old girl.

He then goes on to say that because journalists use military metaphors all the time, how can it be wrong for others?

Let’s be honest: Journalists often use military terminology in describing campaigns. We talk about the air war, the bombshells, targeting politicians, knocking them off, candidates returning fire or being out of ammunition. So we shouldn’t act shocked when politicians do the same thing. Obviously, Palin should have used dots or asterisks on her map. But does anyone seriously believe she was trying to incite violence?

It’s hard to believe someone long given a national platform for commentary can be so obtuse.  Is language a binary signal system such that everything short of a direct order to kill is  innocent?  Does Kurtz, a media commentator, not use levels of emphasis in his own writing?  Has he never been in, or around, discussions with ranges of emotion up to and including threats?  Has he never felt fear because of e-mail, or comments made, or being shouted at by someone he doesn’t know? Does he really think whether Sara Palin, with her crosshairs, was trying to incite immediate violence is the issue?

The answers are obvious.  Like I say, he is obtuse.  Or perhaps he is a willing dupe of the see-no-evil friends of the right like Debra Saunders in the SF Chronicle and elsewhere.  Muddy the waters.  Pretend everything is equal.  No one is responsible…

Since they think it is quite OK for those who hate immigrants to say so loudly and with provocative images, for Tea Party opponents of Giffords to attend her public meetings openly displaying guns,  for high visibility celebrities to use as campaign rhetoric “lock and load,” and “Second Amendment Remedies,” I do find it peculiar that they don’t think it is OK to object to those things. This is freedom of speech for my friends, but not my enemies.

Since they both object to characterizing Palin, or Bachman or right wing radio hosts as in anyway connected to the killings, perhaps they will use the same objections to Tea Party Judson Philips urging Tea Party supporters to “blame leftists.”

The Atlantic reports that Tea Party Nation, led by Judson Phillips, is joining in the criticism: “TPN founder Judson Phillips, in an article linked off the e-mail ‘The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and the left’s attack on the Tea Party movement,’ described the shooter as ‘a leftist lunatic’ and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik as a ‘leftist sheriff’ who ‘was one of the first to start in on the liberal attack.’ Phillips urged tea party supporters to blame liberals for the attack on centrist Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot through the head and is now fighting for her life, as a means of defending the tea party movement’s recent electoral gains.”

Huff Po

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