Pima County Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, has had enough. “We are the tombstone of the United States of America” Speaking at a press conference yesterday, about the shooting of a US Congresswoman and eighteen others, he took three opportunities to drive home the following point.
“There’s reason to believe that this individual may have a mental issue. And I think people who are unbalanced are especially susceptible to vitriol,” he said during his televised remarks. “People tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it’s not without consequences.”
“The anger the hatred the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous, and unfortunately I think Arizona has become sort of the capital,” he said. “We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”
He is right and at this very moment those people making their living inflaming Americans are pushing back as fast as they can. A headline on Fox Nation seeks to diminish Dupnik by radicalizing his remarks – “Tuscon Sheriff Politicizes Press Conference, Blames Talk Radio”.
Sarah Palin set about scrubbing all reference of her hit list and her target graphics from Facebook and her political action websites. By removing this imagery, Palin may be admitting responsibility, even if she will not do it openly. Today, an aide to Palin, making a correlation between the graphics and the shooting.
“We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights. It was simply cross-hairs like you’d see on maps,” said Rebecca Mansour on the Tammy Bruce radio show. Moreover, there was “nothing irresponsible” about the image, and to draw a line connecting Palin and Saturday’s shooting is “obscene” and “appalling.”
Even if the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner is mentally imbalanced, he deliberately targeted a politician, therefore, his actions, yesterday, can only be categorized as political. It isn’t possible to separate the violent rhetoric others used against Rep Gabrielle Giffords and this tragedy.
TPM reports that the Arizona Tea Party deplore the acts that occurred yesterday but have no intention of dialing back their rhetoric.
UPDATE:
Megyn Kelly at Fox News debate Sheriff Dupnik. “With respect, sheriff, I know that you’re a Democrat and you ran for office as a Democrat, and I just want to press you on that a little. I’m sure some of our viewers are asking themselves why you are putting a political spin on this when they may be asking why you the sheriff aren’t just focused on the facts, on uncovering the facts,” she said. Again, a politician was targeted therefore it is a political issue and concerns everyone, Democrat or Republican. Anyone, that is, with any common sense.
The vitriol in political is discourse is a fact, whether Kelly likes it or not, and these matters need to be explored. One shoe bomber and millions of Americans meekly stand in line to remove their shoes at airports. One underwear bomber and we placidly allow ourselves to be further degraded and groped in the name of ‘safety’. A mentally ill man shoots a member of Congress whose image was repeatedly aired on Fox with cross hairs and now we have push back. A child was murdered and they aren’t willing to consider that violent imagery is inciteful.
