"Rebecca Mansour, an aide to Palin, said the images were never meant to evoke violence. Mansour, who has been tweeting in defence of her boss since Saturday's massacre, said the cross-hairs were never intended to be gun sights. "We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," she said. "It was simply cross-hairs like you'd see on maps". "
Oh... like cherubs blowing from the corners and little sea serpents swimming around in unknown oceans. Of course.
Funny thing is I've NEVER seen cross-hairs on maps.
Not on ones that aren't hare-brained anyway.
"She added that "it never occurred to us that anybody would consider it violent" "
No. You don't see guns as objects of violence...
That and you're fucking stupid, lying, or both.
"Following initial controversy over the target map last year, Palin - who is known for her use of violent language and hunting lexicon - responded with her rallying cry: "Don't retreat. RELOAD." "
Yeah he tried to.
I was trying to be "nice" about Palin's remarks and attribute them to her stupidity, but I'm not sure it's possible to brush it aside any longer. When old people die unnecessarily, it's incredibly sad. When innocent, hopeful children are in the "butterflies," it's literally heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteThis nation needs controls on guns. I'm a gun owner, but we can no longer turn our heads to the constant violence in the U.S. No other weapon the general public has access to can cause so much harm in such a short span of time. The age old argument that a knife or even a baseball bat can kill someone is tired and narrow-minded. The kid who killed these people, the kids who shot up Columbine, ALL school "killings" could easily have been stopped had the shooters not had guns, but knives or baseball bats.
Gun control will not end violence, but it will certainly make it less potent and likely far less deadly.
Since February 1996, 58 school shootings have been recorded worldwide on this Webpage (there are surely more, but the statistics on this page are enough).
Of the 58 recorded here http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0777958.html all but 14 were committed in the U.S.
There is a massive social issue in this country and that social issue is perpetuated by absurdly easy access to deadly firearms.
Good post Magpie
Perhaps what Mansour was alluding to were register marks used in printing. Of course, Palin was only a half governor, and her aid is only half knowledgeable about such things. Figures!
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of pigs, how do you put lipstick on a squeal?
@Boomer Bob;
ReplyDeleteNo other weapon the general public has access to can cause so much harm in such a short span of time.
C'mon Bob. Home made bombs? Automobiles? A well-planned arson?
We allow the criminal and the mentally ill to roam free, endangering us all.
Magpie:
The crosshairs map could be considered over the top, but we must remember the crosshairs were over congressional districts, not pictures of the representatives.
Regardless, for better or worse, our political rhetoric is rife with marital allusion.
Please check out http://realclearpolitics.com/2011/01/09/
And scroll down to "Afternoon Edition." It contains links to articles discussing political language. Collectively, they put the issue in proper context.
President Obama himself has engaged in such "irresponsible" rhetoric:
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” -- Barack Obama
Again, we can debate whether such talk has a rightful place in the national dialog, but law-abiding citizens like Obama and Palin cannot be held accountable for the actions of the criminal and the insane.
To add to Silverfiddle's comment...
ReplyDeleteI hate defending Palin, or the Bush family, or insecure America who just. must. have. guns.
But...
A bit of balance wouldn't go astray. A simple internet search will find similarly dangerous examples orchestrated by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) during the Bush years (targets on maps and all).
Another quick search will find some staggeringly violent anti Palin commentary (often from the at least as influential as politicians 'rich and famous'). Frankly, it's a wonder she hasn't been attacked yet.
Blaming Palin for this is like blaming Jodie Foster for the assassination attempt on Regan, or heavy metal music or computer games for youth suicide. All these forms of expression could be toned down, but that's really just looking at the symptom rather than the problem.
Yep. We could all take it down a notch or two. Might want to deal with those guns first, though.
I'm not sure which response has been worse: the 'Hey, we had nothing to do with it' hand washing of the right, or the irrational lynchmob attitude of the left (are they really comfortable blaming Palin for this, when there's not a shred of evidence that this guy was even slightly inspired by her?).
Did I say "marital allusions?" I meant "martial allusions."
ReplyDeleteSigil: Thanks for the back up... kinda.
You agree "there's not a shred of evidence that this guy was even slightly inspired by her" yes in the previous sentense you criticize the right for washing their hands of it. Which is it?
Of course the right had nothing to do with this, and neither did the trash-talkers on the left. The man was deranged.
Bob,
ReplyDelete"No other weapon the general public has access to can cause so much harm in such a short span of time."
And no other object is as pregnant with such purpose.
Addressing Silverfiddle's comment at the same time... anything can indeed be a weapon. But neither JFK nor the victims of Columbine (for example) were run over by cars or killed by arson. The gun is the weapon of choice wherever the intent is to kill because a/ it's easy b/ you can be face to face for the murderous thrill and c/ it is purely a weapon as an object and thus satisfies every need for murderous symbolism.
Octopus,
If that riddle has an answer I can't wait to hear it....
Silverfiddle,
Good to hear from you.
"we can debate whether such talk has a rightful place in the national dialogue"
Yes you can. And it should have happened already. An insufficient number of Republican voice boxes would even consider that a worthwhile discussion. Their rhetoric is one of an oppressed people taking back the country from someone who somehow doesn't have the same rights they do to be in office. That has to stop. It is a completely undemocratic mode of political conduct.
It is not a question of whether Palin or Obama can be held legally accountable for what some nut does. It is a question of whether their personal conduct, and the conduct of the vast machines that represent them, demonstrate a regard for the consequences of their decisions.
Conservatives make a career of saying how young people need to be taught particular values. Reactionary conservatives make a career of saying that liberalism somehow saps the moral fibre of the nation. In other words, they hold their political opposites accountable for the most amorphous and anonymous of social trends and emotional impulses.
To now say that they have no case to answer for the use of violent imagery and eliminationist rhetoric, particularly after the victim herself warned of "consequences", is hypocrisy so vast it's hard to comprehend.
Sigil,
You're seeking equivalence for intellectual reasons where there isn't any.
My issue here is that Palin's camp is simultaneously unwilling to even entertain the idea that gun imagery is inappropriate, while denying it even is actually gun imagery - when Palin's rhetoric is redolent with it and her entire persona embraces it.
There is no evidence the shooter saw the map, no. He COULD have. Any nut could have. That's the point.
And saying "oh it's not our fault that guy in Arizona was a nut" is totally inadequate as a response to that point.
To use the phrase "lynchmob mentality" with regard to Democrats being upset that one of their own has just been near assassinated is to side with the Palin camp and also reference something in American history we shouldn't go near in this context, I think.
Silverfiddle, I know what you're saying, but when was the last time a murderous rampage in a school took place with a car or a bomb? Kent State wasn't a massacre using a car, no knives were used at Columbine.
ReplyDeleteI am not proposing abolishment of guns, I'm proposing abolishment of guns manufactured for the sole purpose of killing people - semi-automatic handguns with magazines containing 30 rounds each, semi-automatic, high-caliber rifles with a range of up to a mile, fully automatic weapons created solely for the purpose of mass killing.
Like I said, I'm a gun-owner and I do not want that taken away from me, but why does any citizen need such potent weapons? Have we become so insecure that we think someone else with such weapons are coming after us, so we need like weapons to defend ourselves?
Gun control is NOT gun abolishment. Gun manufacturers and distributors continue to campaign for very liberal access to such weapons while thousands in the US die every year from guns. In 2000, there were 76,000 people in this country killed by guns. That's the equivalent of a medium-sized city. Even home-made bombs and cars can't do that much damage.