Rep. Gabrielle Giffords: Culture War Casualty

[Aught3]

Of course it was political.

In the Fort Hood shootings of November 2009, the right was quick to link Nidal Malik Hasan to terrorism, while the left insisted he was merely deranged. The reactions to the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others this weekend offered a mirror image: Many on the left blamed right-wing political extremism, while conservatives insisted that Jared Loughner, the alleged killer, was a lone lunatic, without political motivation.

If a whiff of political opportunism clings to both these sets of reactions, it's because the categories that we use to explain political violence draw bright lines where none really exist. Throughout history, political assassins,even the most clearly unhinged among them,have possessed political motives. That doesn't mean that Tea Party-style rhetoric incited Loughner. But his choice of targets,an officeholder, not a post office or a mall,can't be dismissed as arbitrary. The problem lies in the artificial distinction we routinely draw between political and psychological motives.

http://www.slate.com/id/2280697

 

[televator]

Equivocation. There's a broad gulf between influencing someone's opinion and being responsible for their actions.

Supposition. And people's opinions CAN influence their actions. What can you expect from people scared into believing their religion is under siege? Some might take action. What can you expect from people scared into thinking the president is a threat to their way of life? I don't think it's ambiguous enough to deem as "equivocation".

Which all has nothing to do with a mentally unbalanced person grabbing a gun and killing people. Just as the video game does not tell people to kill, the morons on the "news" don't tell people to kill; regardless of how polarising and/or ridiculous their position is.

Right except for when these morons have implied using violence... and think about it. You are convinced that Obama = Joshep Stalin and is an immediate threat to your way of life. What are you going to do about it? Perhaps you might just voice your contempt, but could you say that for the next guy? And again Music and Video games aren't an outlet for telling you what is factually going on in the world. Metaphors and hyperbole are intrinsic to them. Ideally, such things aren't supposed to be in news.

If you think that this is some pervasive problem, please explain the lack of daily murders of this sort.

Simple, it coincides with the amount of rhetoric in the echo chambers. Like the brick throwing incident while Faux News had the Obamacare scare turned up to eleven. Then the fatal shooting in AZ of a Hispanic man by his neighbor who apparently spewed some racial slurs beforehand. Again, Faux News at that time had the anti immigration vitriol in full force.

It does appear like this guy was pretty unstable to begin with though. I'll give you that. So the argument could be made that he could have attacked anyone randomly without much motive at some point right? But why this Representative and her supporters specifically? What gave him that "direction"?

This thread is nothing more than a repeat of people like my father blaming the "liberals" for "murdering babies" and "wanting to kill people" to save trees when E.L.F. was active. Oh ya, he also liked blaming the media for people being murdered, in fact you nearly quoted him verbatim in the last two sentences. All you need to do is replace "faux" with liberal.

Except that there really is no dominating "liberal" presence in the news. Nothing has the reach and the pervasiveness that Fox News has in the US. Your father was irrational in his idea that liberal media has the ability to influence opinion so greatly, especially since it's so obvious that "liberal" ideals are losing quite handily in their presence on the news and effectiveness on the political stage...

 

[Giliell]

Crimes against property are not considered violent.

So, according to Arthur, this is a peaceful, non-violent protest:

 

[Epiphyte]

Does anyone remember this?
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/17/men-tote-assault-rifles-at-obama-event/

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I think it's also worth pointing out that music nor video games are presented or seen as authoritative outlets of facts....unlike Faux News. When they tell people that "Obamacare" is going to introduce death panels as a matter of fact, many more people are inclined to believe this than something they hear from a Manson Album.

No kidding... Marilyn Manson was never the Republican candidate for VP. No video game designer has an hour-long TV show plus a 3 hour radio show five days a week, plus a 4-book deal with a major publisher.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Does anyone remember this?
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/08/17/men-tote-assault-rifles-at-obama-event/

Sure, but that's COMPLETELY UNRELATED to every other situation where Democrats are threatened with guns. In the right-wing mind, not only are actions and consequences completely detached from one another, but every situation is completely isolated and unrelated to every other situation. No patterns exist, no one has any influence over any other person... unless it is a vast and completely false conspiracy theory about Democrats. They dismiss the things Republicans openly state on the record no matter how disturbing, and embrace made-up quotes from Democrats if it puts them in a negative light.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I was at a party a few years ago, lots of drinking going on, all of us knew each other. I was walking out of the kitchen at the same time that one of the girls was walking in. We bumped into each other, she fell down, and I helped her up to her feet. We talked for a couple of minutes, and then I went outside to smoke. Some instigating jackass ran to her boyfriend and told him that I had pushed his girlfriend on the floor and tried to grab her tits. Next thing you know I'm about an inch from having to hand the boyfriend his ass in a paper bag because he's all pissed off because he thinks I assaulted his girlfriend. Who's responsible for the situation?

I'm not responsible, I didn't do anything wrong.

The girlfriend isn't responsible, she was crying and telling her boyfriend to stop because nothing happened.

The boyfriend is somewhat responsible, because he flew off the handle without getting the facts. On the other hand, if I had done what he thought I did, I would have deserved an ass-kicking, and he would have had a good reason to beat me up(or at least try... he would have gotten hurt).

The instigator is also responsible. He told a lie that he KNEW would cause trouble, for the purpose of creating drama. He was standing in the corner laughing at the whole thing. Who cares if he never said the exact words "you must get in a fight with Joe"? He said things that he knew would likely lead to a fight, so he didn't have to say those specific words. If you say things that you know will cause people to act in a violent way, you bear some responsibility.

Someone says "Hey, I heard some guy is molesting your kid. I'm not saying he did, but that's what I heard. Don't you have a gun? His dad and uncle are both cops and you know THEY won't stop him. Here's his address. Somebody needs to do something before he molests your kid again, you know, if he did or whatever... I'm not saying who should do something, or what you, I mean 'they' should do." When the supposed molester gets shot, and then it turns out he didn't do anything wrong, you can't say that the person egging on the shooter has no blame in it.

 

[Memeticemetic]

analogy gold.

I predict we will now hear where the analogies are not perfectly aligned with the situation under discussion, while completely missing the point that ancillary participants bear responsibility for the actions of those they influence.

 

[kenandkids]

Right except for when these morons have implied using violence... and think about it. You are convinced that Obama = Joshep Stalin and is an immediate threat to your way of life. What are you going to do about it? Perhaps you might just voice your contempt, but could you say that for the next guy? And again Music and Video games aren't an outlet for telling you what is factually going on in the world. Metaphors and hyperbole are intrinsic to them. Ideally, such things aren't supposed to be in news.



It does appear like this guy was pretty unstable to begin with though. I'll give you that. So the argument could be made that he could have attacked anyone randomly without much motive at some point right? But why this Representative and her supporters specifically? What gave him that "direction"?


Except that there really is no dominating "liberal" presence in the news. Nothing has the reach and the pervasiveness that Fox News has in the US. Your father was irrational in his idea that liberal media has the ability to influence opinion so greatly, especially since it's so obvious that "liberal" ideals are losing quite handily in their presence on the news and effectiveness on the political stage...

1) Implied violence? Do you realise just how loosely that definition can be applied? You are also completely missing the point. I speak and write a lot about religion and it's ill effects on society. Should someone shoot a priest and mention me, by your logic I am guilty.

2) He apparently had been focused on her for quite some time. It was a personal obsession that had political undertones, not the other way around.

3) 35%-40% agree with you that the news media is conservative in nature. 35%-40% find the news media to be liberal in nature. So fucking what. Every society has, and will continue to have, surges of belief in political directions. It is the nature of politics. Getting rid of the opposing side doesn't help. To call other people irrational (although I agree) when you are saying the same thing they are is nothing more than conspiracy theory. "That guy didn't know what he was talking about, the Men In Black Suits are after me, not him!"

 

[kenandkids]

Of course it was political.

In the Fort Hood shootings of November 2009, the right was quick to link Nidal Malik Hasan to terrorism, while the left insisted he was merely deranged. The reactions to the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six others this weekend offered a mirror image: Many on the left blamed right-wing political extremism, while conservatives insisted that Jared Loughner, the alleged killer, was a lone lunatic, without political motivation.

If a whiff of political opportunism clings to both these sets of reactions, it's because the categories that we use to explain political violence draw bright lines where none really exist. Throughout history, political assassins,even the most clearly unhinged among them,have possessed political motives. That doesn't mean that Tea Party-style rhetoric incited Loughner. But his choice of targets,an officeholder, not a post office or a mall,can't be dismissed as arbitrary. The problem lies in the artificial distinction we routinely draw between political and psychological motives.

http://www.slate.com/id/2280697

And again the problem is that he didn't choose the first available democrat. He went after a woman he had already been obsessed with.
The parallel is a good one though, just as morons were quick to point fingers and blame the opposition then, so do different morons now...

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I predict we will now hear where the analogies are not perfectly aligned with the situation under discussion, while completely missing the point that ancillary participants bear responsibility for the actions of those they influence.

My favorite part of that whole business is that the same people who will point to the fact that Fox "News" and other right-wing sources are hugely popular among some groups as some sort of evidence that they are speaking for Americans, will now turn around and claim that those sources have zero influence. That would be like trying to claim that while Jimi Hendrix was hugely popular, he had absolutely no influence on music, or that no one was inspired by the success of the "Twilight" books and movies to write young adult supernatural fiction or make movies in a similar vein. And as someone said earlier in the thread, if media can't influence opinion and behavior, there wouldn't be wall-to-wall advertising everywhere you look.

Glenn Beck, Sean Hannitty, and Bill O'Reilly don't have TV and radio shows and books on the bestseller list because they don't have any influence over people. Sarah Palin isn't news because she's got an informed opinion and decades of political experience, it is because when she speaks there's a segment of the population that listens. They know that their statements move people to vote a certain way, to buy or avoid buying certain products (gold!), and to show up at town hall meetings and political rallies... they brag up and down about how much influence they have over people! When something negative happens, they can't just say "oh, well, no one really listens to me!" and it all goes away.

 

[ArthurWilborn]

Of course it was political.

In the Fort Hood shootings of November 2009, the right was quick to link Nidal Malik Hasan to terrorism, while the left insisted he was merely deranged.

Nidal Malik Hasan wasn't insane, and noone claims he was. There's a difference between holding a strong belief and being crazy.

So, according to Arthur, this is a peaceful, non-violent protest:

You're conflating moral definitions and legal definitions.

Except that there really is no dominating "liberal" presence in the news. Nothing has the reach and the pervasiveness that Fox News has in the US.

Special pleading. They're more dangerous because they disagree with you? Having a cable channel somehow makes them more pervasive then all the rest of the cable channels? Please.

50 years of political assassinations:

Leaving aside the massive dishonesty in your post, you really think no-one's going to notice you left out what was arguably the most significant assassination in US history? Really?

And people's opinions CAN influence their actions.

You can't make that your point. I don't disagree with that. No-one disagrees with that. It's a basic fact of human nature. You FURTHER suppose that influencing opinions makes one responsible for the resulting actions, and it is THIS point that I disagree with. Address THAT point.

Does anyone remember this?

A completely legal action that resulted in no harm to anyone? The horror!

I predict we will now hear where the analogies are not perfectly aligned with the situation under discussion, while completely missing the point that ancillary participants bear responsibility for the actions of those they influence.

[/quote]

Bang on! Joe cited a situation where the speech was likely to cause imminent harm. There's moral (and legal) responsibility in that action. It doesn't transfer to a broader context because mass media lacks both the specificity and the imminence of the situation Joe cited.

 

[RestrictedAccess]

The most grating aspect of the U.S.A.'s War on Terror is its focus on everybody's terrorists but our own.

U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, a conservative Arizona Democrat, clings to life after being shot in the head by a 22-year-old terrorist who killed a judge, a nine-year-old girl and, though reports remain sketchy, possibly wounded or killed 3-4 others.

Words like "terrorist" and "assassin" are difficult to find among the early news reports. "Lone gunman," "history of problems" and similar sugar-coated phrasings abound along with "vitriol," a pre-sweetened word for "hate" in the context of this assassin as the reaped product of what hate media has sewn.

Is the cold Cultural War turning hot? How many cross-hairs must Sarah Palin draw or how many bullets need to fly before the Culture War becomes a civil one?

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/08/132764367/congresswoman-shot-in-arizona

Firstly, Palin and the media have absolutely nothing to do with the cause of the shooting. The guy was a nutcase and had a axe to grind with Giffords long before the 2010 elections and the rhetoric involved. A thread about rhetoric does not need to include the shooting, and it's tasteless to do so. You can argue the issues of political rhetoric without using the corpses of the recently dead as your soapbox. That's a point not directly issued to you, but one issued in general: people are using this shooting as fodder against their political enemies, and that childish nonsense needs to stop.

Secondly - the hateful speech and rhetoric goes both ways, and blaming the right solely for the animosity is just another form of rhetoric that fans the flames. Unfortunately, politics is two parts rhetoric and both sides cling to it like a life preserver. It's not going away any time soon.

 

[televator]

1) Implied violence? Do you realise just how loosely that definition can be applied? You are also completely missing the point. I speak and write a lot about religion and it's ill effects on society. Should someone shoot a priest and mention me, by your logic I am guilty.

2) He apparently had been focused on her for quite some time. It was a personal obsession that had political undertones, not the other way around.

3) 35%-40% agree with you that the news media is conservative in nature. 35%-40% find the news media to be liberal in nature. So fucking what. Every society has, and will continue to have, surges of belief in political directions. It is the nature of politics. Getting rid of the opposing side doesn't help. To call other people irrational (although I agree) when you are saying the same thing they are is nothing more than conspiracy theory. "That guy didn't know what he was talking about, the Men In Black Suits are after me, not him!"

"Implied violence" is something I used somewhat conservatively, although there are some pretty egregious examples that aren't very obscure about the implication. Like Giffords' own opponent telling folks to "get on target" and "shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly" in the November elections.

Now, how about something a little less implied, if not actually condoning? How about Glenn Beck fantasizing about killing Michael Moore? How about Rush Limbaugh telling people to not kill ALL the liberals, but to leave just a couple of them around?

If only it were so easy to deduce truth, fact, or determine level of validity from public opinion polls alone... Because most Americans identify with some religious denomination, does that somehow make disbelief less valid? It also doesn't account for what is very evident. There is nothing close in size or in character to Fox News. Fox News has higher ratings, and is the source for much of the scare phrases that spill over to other news outlets as exemplified in a leaked memo.

 

[Memeticemetic]

Bang on! Joe cited a situation where the speech was likely to cause imminent harm. There's moral (and legal) responsibility in that action. It doesn't transfer to a broader context because mass media lacks both the specificity and the imminence of the situation Joe cited.

Nailed it! Especially this part:

while completely missing the point

 

[Pulsar]

Joe cited a situation where the speech was likely to cause imminent harm. There's moral (and legal) responsibility in that action. It doesn't transfer to a broader context because mass media lacks both the specificity and the imminence of the situation Joe cited.

Do you remember this:

Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama


08 Nov 2008

Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

And that's just one example. Are you seriously claiming that Palin and others are not responsible at all for the consequences of their hate speech?

 

[ArthurWilborn]

And that's just one example. Are you seriously claiming that Palin and others are not responsible at all for the consequences of their hate speech?

That's exactly what I'm claiming. People are responsible for their own actions, not for what other people do; excepting statements likely to cause immanent harm, which simply isn't the case in this example. That people chose to make death threats doesn't mean that a third party bears responsibility, unless that third party gave instructions that they thought would be likely followed. Unfair characterizations of actual events doesn't even come close to that standard.

while completely missing the point

Your point is inane. :roll:

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Bang on! Joe cited a situation where the speech was likely to cause imminent harm. There's moral (and legal) responsibility in that action. It doesn't transfer to a broader context because mass media lacks both the specificity and the imminence of the situation Joe cited.

Nailed it! Especially this part:

while completely missing the point

It would be easy to the point of being cheap at this point to point out that the influence of the media over right-wingers is so strong that we can predict their exact posts on forums across the Internet. Cheap, so so cheap. :roll:

 

[ImprobableJoe]

And that's just one example. Are you seriously claiming that Palin and others are not responsible at all for the consequences of their hate speech?

Every person at those rallies is an individual, and the fact that they share political views and screamed out the same sort of violent rhetoric that Sarah Palin used is completely coincidental.

 

[Aught3]

Firstly, Palin and the media have absolutely nothing to do with the cause of the shooting. The guy was a nutcase and had a axe to grind with Giffords long before the 2010 elections and the rhetoric involved. A thread about rhetoric does not need to include the shooting, and it's tasteless to do so. You can argue the issues of political rhetoric without using the corpses of the recently dead as your soapbox. That's a point not directly issued to you, but one issued in general: people are using this shooting as fodder against their political enemies, and that childish nonsense needs to stop.

See, now this is a sensible response. Could I ask for a bit more detail on why the shooter was already angry at the Giffords?