The framing of Sarah PalinAndrew Bolt Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 06:59am
IT took just hours for the media to finger the villain responsible for the shooting of US Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. It was Sarah Palin what done it, officer. And other Right-wingers just like that witch. Such is the deranged hatred that so many on the Left feel for the former Republican vice-presidential candidate. The New York Times was one of the first to smear her, even before the alleged shooter of Giffords - and the accused killer of six bystanders - had been publicly identified as 22-year-old Jared Loughner. It implicated Palin because nine months ago she’d posted a “controversial” map on her Facebook page showing where Democrats were running for re-election. Gasp: “Those Democrats were noted by crosshairs symbols like those seen through the scope of a gun. Ms Giffords was among those on Ms Palin’s map.” Well, case closed. And so Markos Moulitsas, founder of the influential Left-wing DailyKos website, tweeted, “Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin.” Jane Fonda likewise insisted Palin “holds responsibility”, as did “the violence-provoking rhetoric of the Tea Party” movement she’d encouraged - a movement that’s just a grassroots protest by middle class Americans against big government and record deficits. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman used his newspaper column to also smear Palin, saying Giffords “might be a target” because she was “a Democrat who survived” an election challenge from “a Tea Party activist” and “was on Sarah Palin’s infamous ‘crosshairs’ list”. Fellow Leftists in the Australian media gobbled the bait, hailing Giffords as a martyr to Palin and the Right. Here is the ABC’s Jane Cowan on *AM* yesterday: “Political candidates, especially those aligned with the grassroots Tea Party movement, have increasingly invoked violent imagery. A campaign website by . . . Palin put gun targets across several congressional districts including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords’ and urged voters to ‘reload’.” The hunger to blame Palin and her political kind is palpable and no evidence is needed to proclaim her guilt. As Michael Tomasky of Britain’s Left-wing *Guardian* exulted, the shooter “went to considerable expense and trouble to shoot a high-profile Democrat, at point-blank range right through the brain. What else does one need to know?” That was sufficient “to see some kind of connection between (Right wing) violent rhetoric and what happened in Arizona on Saturday”. But there’s a few things wrong with this narrative. It’s false, it’s foul; and it’s savagely hypocritical. For a start, there’s zero evidence that Loughner, the alleged shooter, is a Palin supporter or took any notice of what she said about Giffords or anyone else. ON his MySpace and YouTube pages he never mentions Palin or health care, the issue on which she attacked Giffords. Both sites suggest he’s simply deranged, raving about bad grammar, thought control, “conscience dreaming” and a “third currency”. A typical post on MySpace - on December 30 - gives the temperature of his mind: “With every day on torture, the hours are my painful isolation; these dreams, which are realistic, vehemence feelings of greatness—finally!” Just add a gun to that explosive mixture of megalomania and angry failure and . . . boom. Still, if you think it worth trying to detect a political orientation in Loughner’s shattered thoughts, you’d have to conclude it’s sure not Palin’s. He was not a Christian, and his favourite film clip is of an American flag being burned. He denounced the US Constitution as full of “treasonous laws”. Simon Mann, of *The Age* and *Sydney Morning Herald*, led his report yesterday by implying Loughner was a neo-Nazi, noting his victim was Jewish and he’d listed Mein Kampf on his YouTube page as one of his “favourite books”. What Mann failed to add is that Loughner also loved A Communist Manifesto. Another problem for the blame-Palin brigade is that Loughner’s hatred of Giffords seems to pre-date Palin’s rise to fame. Caitie Parker went to school with Loughner, and played in the same band with this “loner” she describes as “Left-wing, quite liberal”. She claims: “He was a political radical and met Giffords once before in ‘07, asked her a question and he told me she was ‘stupid and unintelligent’.” So Giffords was allegedly shot by a madman with Left-wing notions who disliked her long before Palin hit the scene. Yet Palin is to blame? Still, are her critics right to deplore the violent rhetoric of political debate in the US today? Perhaps, although we should be clear there’s no proof this rhetoric affected the deranged Loughner, who is far more likely to have been influenced by violent movies and violent music. We should also accept that politics is properly a contest of ideas and has long invited the language of war by all sides, which is why I have on my blog not just Palin’s “crosshair” graphic but examples of similar Democratic Party maps with bullseyes over Republican candidates. But does this alleged culture of trash-talk really date from Palin’s rise, and who are the worst offenders? In fact, no president has been more vilified than the Republican George W. Bush, who was even shown being assassinated in one gloating film. And guess which president said this: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”? Whoops, that was Barack Obama? And which of Palin’s critics objected? Palin herself seems more sinned against than sinning. The kind of commentators now accusing her of a nasty tone are the kind who falsely accused her of calling Obama “Sambo”, and of only pretending to be the mother of her disabled son to cover for her eldest daughter. They sat by when TV host David Letterman joked that Palin’s 14-year-old daughter was “knocked up” by a baseballer during a game. They said nothing when Leftist comedian Sandra Bernhard warned Palin she’d be “gang-raped by my big black brothers” if she entered Manhattan. Now these people demanding a more civilised discourse accuse Palin of inspiring a murder, when all the evidence suggests she’s guiltless. So Palin’s accusers lie, and so foully that they commit the very hate speech they piously claim to deplore. -- ~~~~~~~~~ ~~ J O N ~~ ~~~~~~~~~ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WebTV Dawgs/Dittos" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/webtv-pals?hl=en.
