When I think about Jared L. Loughner’s attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, it’s hard to know what to say. My thoughts, of course, are with her and her family and with the families of all the others who were wounded or killed; but I have to admit that part of me, when I first heard about the shooting, was not surprised, and that makes me very, very sad. It’s not that I am someone who’s been thinking it’s only a matter of time before those right-wing “crazies” start coming after left-wing politicians–and I know Giffords is a centrist in a lot of ways–the way there are right-wing “crazies” who go after abortion providers; it’s that so much of the rhetoric coming from the right since President Obama’s election has been so violent, so focused on portraying not only Obama himself but what comes out of his office as hate-worthy in the way that one hates a scourge that needs to be eliminated, that the commission of violence against someone on Obama’s side simply did not seem all that surprising–though my lack of surprise didn’t make it any less horrifying.<\/p>\n
I am not<\/em> saying that the rhetoric of the right is at all directly implicated in Loughner’s act. By all accounts, he was a deeply disturbed man, and I agree with David Frum<\/a> that “any suggestion that the Tucson shooting was somehow inspired by the extreme anti-Obama political rhetoric of the past 2 years” is just plain wrong. As Frum says, “that point should be acknowledged, accepted, and internalized.” Nonetheless, the fact that I was not surprised by the shooting gives me extreme pause, and so I appreciate–as I usually do not, since I don’t normally like him all that much–Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment” on the shooting, even though I think he was not explicit enough in making the point that I quoted David Frum as making above. Olbermann does do a good job of naming names and giving examples, though, and I appreciate the fact that he at least nominally took the left to task as well, though I am guessing that a more objective look at the political rhetoric from the left than Olbermann is likely to provide would reveal that it is not quite as innocent as he implies.<\/p>\n