There will be politics

THERE is much talk today about whether Obama’s Tucson speech will suddenly inspire civility in our political discourse. Will pols put their pettiness aside, join hands and sing Kumbaya? If history is any guide, the answer is no. American politics – forged in the cauldron of revolution and tempered by Civil War – has always been a raucous, occasionally violent, and often boorish affair. Chalk it up, in part, to the limitations of the passionate brain, an imperfect organ often governed by its reptilian, eat-or-be-eaten impulses. This Darwinian fact isn’t changing anytime soon. Neither is the nature of American politics. The question we should ask is: How might we leverage technology to access our better angels? For what is different today is the signal-to-noise ratio. Thanks to the rise (and symbiosis) of cable news and the Internet, the noise is drowning out rational discourse altogether. As Henry David Thoreau said prophetically, “Men have become the tools of their tools.” Only when we realize that can our body politic begin to change course. One brilliant speech isn’t enough.

Amazing grace

I fully expected Barack Obama to hit it out of the proverbial ballpark in Tucson. He did, and then some. But I wasn't expecting the sheer poetry of the "ball’s" trajectory as it arced high into the clear Sonoran night. The president’s eloquence, heart, astuteness and buoyant audacity were on full, brilliant display. By the time it ended, there wasn’t a dry eye in the auditorium – or, I suspect, in the homes of millions of Americans, including mine. Here was the spellbinding orator, the “skinny kid with the funny name,” of the Democratic 2004 convention. Here was the besieged candidate who in 2008 looked America square in the eye and enlightened it about race, saying, “In no other country on Earth is my story even possible.” Here was the humbled president-elect in Grant Park who waxed majestically about “a long time coming” and America’s “defining moment.” Obama was all of those men rolled into one last night. President Obama is already worthy of Christina Green, the little girl who is now “jumping in rain puddles” in heaven. The question is, are we?

Palin #Fail

MSNBC's Chuck Todd: "While Obama tried to uplift, Palin tried to settle scores. While the president called for more civility, the former Alaska governor talked about duels and 'blood libel.' And while Obama's message was, well, presidential, Palin's was not. We'll say this: If Palin has ambitions for the White House -- and we're still not sure she does -- then her tone, message, and timing from her eight-minute video was a serious miscalculation."

The Tucson Speech

"Gabby called it 'Congress on Your Corner,' just an updated version of government of and by and for the people." -- President Barack Obama

Gallows humor

For some reason, this joke is getting wide circulation on Twitter: "An SEO copywriter walks into a bar, grill, pub, public house, Irish, bartender, drinks, beer, wine, liquor..." Get it? Funny. In fact, it’s hilarious. Yet, SEO (short for search engine optimization) really only has meaning to journalists chafing under newsroom edicts to compose their prose in a manner that will lure page views. (You see the flaccid end-products – what passes for writing – everywhere on the web today.) With luck, we’ll get pass this deluge of editorial shortsightedness before the art of well-crafted words disappears altogether. Otherwise, the joke will be on all of us.

Paranoia, USA

Harold Meyerson pens a terrific column today: "The primary problem with the political discourse of the right in today's America isn't that it incites violence per se. It's that it implants and reinforces paranoid fears about the government and conservatism's domestic adversaries. ... That doesn't make Beck, Erickson, Rupert Murdoch and their ilk responsible for Tucson. It does make them responsible for promoting a paranoid culture that makes America a more divided and dangerous land."

Palin obsession

On Twitter this afternoon, Glenn Greenwald asked: “Has there ever been a non-President capable of dominating the news cycle with every mere utterance the way Sarah Palin can?” Answer: Nope (with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton during the run-up to the 2008 election). But the obsession says more about the news media than Alaska's former half-term governor.

Palin flunks the test

I don't have much to add to the debate about Sarah Palin's self-serving video. It is self evident that the 8-minute screed is as shallow and intellectually bankrupt as its author.

I wholly concur with Andrew Sullivan's spot-on critique:

"To call this understandable concern about the impact of violent rhetoric and imagery on disturbed minds a manufactured "blood libel" - equating critics of extreme rhetoric of being the equivalent of Nazis or medieval anti-Semites - is to up the ante at a time when leaders really need to calm emotions. We know this much right now: Palin does not possess the self-awareness, responsibility or composure to respond to crises like this with grace. This message - even at a time of national crisis - was a base-rousing rallying cry, perpetuating her own victimhood and alleged bloodthirstiness of her opponents."

"... Palin cannot acknowledge misjudgment, as she cannot admit error. ... And she has decided that this occasion for introspection is actually an opportunity to double down. There is something menacing about that."

I think that's all that needs to be said.

Insanity in high-def

Today, I watched two talking heads (one conservative, one liberal) on MSNBC's "The Ed Show" debate the inability of politicians or pundits to engage in civil discourse. Maybe 30 seconds elapsed before the “discussion” degenerated into an incendiary, context-free, shouting match. Even scarier, both guests and the host (firebrand Ed Schultz) seemed utterly oblivious to their behavior. The irony is almost painful. Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It was unnerving to see the proof of Professor Einstein’s adage unfold live in high-definition.

Media Psychosis

In his column today, Timesman David Brooks grapples with inflammatory rhetoric and the news media role in it:

"We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons."

Brooks is basically right. And I've witnessed the herd mentality in newsrooms up close and personal. But grasping for a silver lining, Brooks adds that the "good news" is that the "mainstream media usually recovers from its hysterias and tries belatedly to get the story right." Well, that's something, I guess. But the media’s approach is akin to leveling a town with artillery fire just to cleanse it of criminals. Sure, it gets the job done, eventually. But the price seems a wee steep.

Fanning the flame

I'm not a huge fan of Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi (he's a bit too reactionary for my tastes), but the man has written a truly brilliant piece about the media and heated rhetoric in the wake of the Tucson tragedy. By all means read it.

An excerpt:

Most all of us are grownups and can handle extreme argument, but clearly some people are not, and obviously I'm not just talking about Jared Loughner.

To see that, all you have to do is attend almost any family gathering, where once-loving relationships have been completely lost because of the overheated right-left culture war. If real family relationships are being lost to this kind of political debate, if someone on TV can reach into your living room and break up your family without knowing anything about you or even knowing that you exist, that tells us that this mechanized mass-media rhetoric has been almost unimaginably successful at dehumanizing whole classes of people.

He's right, and it's scary.

Quote of the Day II

"This shouldn't happen in this country, or anywhere else, but in a free society, we're going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative," -- John Green, father of Christina Green, the nine-year-old girl slain in Tucson.

If I only had a brain

WHEN digesting politics, there are times when I feel a great affinity for the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, the straw man who forlornly sings “If I Only Had A Brain” in the film. I'll explain why. National Review columnist Heather Mac Donald has written a smart, sane piece about the right's defensive reaction to charges it accommodates violent speech. She thinks they protest too much. It's worth a read. Though I mean no diss on Mac Donald, her piece contained a mystical, Oz-like passage. She wrote: "I find the charges that Obama hates America and intends to destroy it ludicrous and, yes, gratuitously inflammatory. And yet I know that many smart, sober people believe -- in sincerest good faith — that such charges are literally true." Excuse me, but how can one possibly be smart and sober with such beliefs? Like the Scarecrow, with “my head all full of stuffin'”, I simply lack the ability to comprehend such people.

Quote of the Day

"There's a clear and impermeable line between the progressive mainstream and the left fringe. The line between the Republican Party/conservative movement and the far-right fringe barely exists. Whereas Dems kept the fringe at arm's length, Republicans embrace the fringe with both arms. Both sides have nutjobs; only one side thinks their nutjobs are sane." -- Steve Benen (The Washington Monthly)

The right image

THERE was something odd about those initial, widely-circulated press photos of alleged Tucson shooter Jared Loughner. The first one, a grainy, black & white mug shot, appeared to have been lifted from a high school yearbook someone had hidden away since the 70s. But Loughner, 22, wasn’t born until 1989. Another showed the antagonist in a sweater cap smiling irreverently as if he were posing for a SNL commercial. The third, a full body shot in brilliant Technicolor, depicted a healthy young man smiling confidently into the camera lens. None of these images computed with me. Enter the correct boogeyman. After incarceration, Loughner shaved his head bald. In his official mug shot he appears older than his 22 years. His demeanor is smug. His eyes gleam of madness. His smile smacks of Hannibal Lecter. In short, he now looks appropriately like the criminal asshole that I imagine he is. I suspect a jury of his peers will agree.

Phony War

New Yorker writer George Packer unloaded on the right for its incendiary rhetoric. He, too, is taken aback at how conservative pundits are waving the false equivalency banner.

Packer writes:

"In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous."

To be sure, the vocal left is hardly pure as the driven snow on this issue. But Packer is right – let’s keep this debate grounded in reality.

Quote of the Day III

"Again: this talk did not cause [the Tucson shooting]. But this crime should summon us to some reflection on this talk. Better: This crime should summon us to a quiet collective resolution to cease this kind of talk and to cease to indulge those who engage in it." -- David Frum (Frum Forum)

Why so touchy?

Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent writes: "[Paul] Begala has a simple question for those on the right: Why are you reacting so badly to those who are insisting that we all exercise some judgment going forward? 'What has been striking has been their defensiveness and lack of introspection,' Begala said of right wing commentators. 'Even if this was simply the delusional act of a madman, there's no harm in reassessing, by saying, `Holy smokes, what are we doing here?'" It is a good question. And what we're seeing is the contorted face of guilt.

Prophetic words

Last March, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords expressed dismay at the political tactics used by Sarah Palin and likeminded conservatives. She told MSNBC's Chuck Todd that "we effect change at the ballot box" and not through "outbursts of violence."

Continuing, Giffords said:

"We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is that the way she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that action. You know, I can't say, I'm not Sarah Palin. But what I can say is that in the years that some of my colleagues have served - 20, 30 years - they've never seen it like this. We have to work out our problems by negotiating, working together."

Palin is not responsible for the tragedy in Tucson and I’m certain she does not condone it. But she is a prominent enabler of the kind of angry rhetoric that is poisoning our political discourse. This is a final wake-up call for the half-term governor from Alaska. Whether or not she heeds it will speak volumes about her character or lack thereof.

Dubious words

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat on the Tucson shootings:

”But if overheated rhetoric and martial imagery really led inexorably to murder, then both parties would belong in the dock. (It took conservative bloggers about five minutes to come up with Democratic campaign materials that employed targets and crosshairs against Republican politicians.) When our politicians and media loudmouths act like fools and zealots, they should be held responsible for being fools and zealots. They shouldn’t be held responsible for the darkness that always waits to swallow up the unstable and the lost.”

I'm surprised at Douthat's tone deafness. He sets up a false equivalency when arguing that both parties engage in inflammatory rhetoric. The left is surely not innocent, but it is indisputable that the venom is coming mainly from the political right. Yes, conservative “politicians and media loudmouths” are not directly responsible for the actions of the demented among us. But they bear the burden for creating a toxic environment in which these unstable minds can flourish -- and potentially turn violent. Ignoring that fact is foolish and irresponsible.

Wise words

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman ponders the Tucson shootings and the GOP leadership's reaction:

The purveyors of hate have been treated with respect, even deference, by the G.O.P. establishment. As David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter, has put it, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we’re discovering we work for Fox.”

So will the Arizona massacre make our discourse less toxic? It’s really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what’s happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual, and go on as before?

If Arizona promotes some real soul-searching, it could prove a turning point. If it doesn’t, Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning.

Shades of Columbine

Lynda Sorenson, 52, shared a community college class with Tucson shooter Jared Loughner (before the school kicked him out). She e-mailed a friend after the first day of class: "We do have one student in the class who was disruptive today, I'm not certain yet if he was on drugs (as one person surmised) or disturbed. He scares me a bit. The teacher tried to throw him out and he refused to go, so I talked to the teacher afterward. Hopefully he will be out of class very soon, and not come back with an automatic weapon."

Letter to the Editor

"American politics has sown the anger and unreasoning vitriol, and now it reaps the sorrow-filled harvest." -- Peter Ryan (Vancouver, British Columbia) to the New York Times

Quote of the Day II

"My question: At what point does the right to own a firearm begin to impinge on other people's rights? OK, try it this way: At what point does the right of crazy people to buy weapons begin to seem crazy? -- Thomas E. Ricks (Foreign Policy)

Quote of the Day

"In honor of the victims of the shooting, Congress will observe a moment of silence tomorrow afternoon. Fitting but insufficient. What we need is a permanent moment of restraint." -- John Dickerson (Slate.com)