Dancing With The Devil
by Esther Iverem
Many of us are shocked by the shootings this weekend in Arizona that left six dead and 14 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat of Arizona, who is fighting for her life. Just as alarming, I think, is the fact that voices throughout the mass media refuse to acknowledge the truth about the backdrop to this tragedy and have been lulled into substituting to group think and talking points for facts.
Much of the media coverage has focused on the need for so-called cooler political rhetoric, offering the flash analysis that the right-wing and the left-wing in this country are equally to blame for the heightened atmosphere of guns and violence in politics. My question is this: In what world are these purveyors of false equivalency living? Why this rush toward equal opportunity blame at a time when right-wing politicians, commentators and hate groups are the ones lighting and tending the fires of violence? By denying their complicity, aren’t we dancing with the devil?
By now, we might all know about the graphic on the page of Sarah Palin’s Web site, using crosshairs to mark a bulls-eye on Democratic congressional districts around the country, including Gifford’s Arizona district. Maybe we will remember Congressman Giffords own warning about the graphic.
Maybe we remember hearing about Palin’s famous tweet: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" (reload in all capital letters) on the day last March that President Obama signed the heath care reform bill into law. During the vitriolic health care debate, members of Congress, including Giffords, had their district offices vandalized. Many also received death threats. During the same debate, right-wing protesters showed up at town meetings and rallies with guns. On August 17th of 2009, a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, were among the protesters outside a Phoenix, Arizona Convention center where President Obama was giving a speech.
This was only one incident that summer during the health care debate in which protesters openly displayed firearms near the president. (In contrast, during the presidency of George W. Bush, protesters simply wearing anti-war slogans on their t-shirts were arrested because they were near the president or vice president.)
Maybe this might be the best time to mention that since President Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 percent, from 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service. In the months right after he took office, there was a spike in violent rhetoric as well as acts. In March 2009, the controversial Representative Michelle Bachman, Republican of Minnesota, said that she wanted her constituents to be “armed and dangerous” over President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce global warming.
In May of 2009, Dr. George Tiller, a doctor who performed abortions in Kansas, repeatedly dubbed by Fox News Show Host Bill O’Reilly as ‘Tiller the baby killer,’ was shot to death on Sunday morning while attending church services. Less than two weeks later, Stephen T. Johns, an African-American security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, was killed by James von Brunn, an anti-government White supremacist. This might also be the best time to mention that Giffords is the first Jewish woman elected from Arizona.
Read the Full Essay @ SeeingBlack.com
***
by Esther Iverem
Many of us are shocked by the shootings this weekend in Arizona that left six dead and 14 wounded, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat of Arizona, who is fighting for her life. Just as alarming, I think, is the fact that voices throughout the mass media refuse to acknowledge the truth about the backdrop to this tragedy and have been lulled into substituting to group think and talking points for facts.
Much of the media coverage has focused on the need for so-called cooler political rhetoric, offering the flash analysis that the right-wing and the left-wing in this country are equally to blame for the heightened atmosphere of guns and violence in politics. My question is this: In what world are these purveyors of false equivalency living? Why this rush toward equal opportunity blame at a time when right-wing politicians, commentators and hate groups are the ones lighting and tending the fires of violence? By denying their complicity, aren’t we dancing with the devil?
By now, we might all know about the graphic on the page of Sarah Palin’s Web site, using crosshairs to mark a bulls-eye on Democratic congressional districts around the country, including Gifford’s Arizona district. Maybe we will remember Congressman Giffords own warning about the graphic.
Maybe we remember hearing about Palin’s famous tweet: "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" (reload in all capital letters) on the day last March that President Obama signed the heath care reform bill into law. During the vitriolic health care debate, members of Congress, including Giffords, had their district offices vandalized. Many also received death threats. During the same debate, right-wing protesters showed up at town meetings and rallies with guns. On August 17th of 2009, a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, were among the protesters outside a Phoenix, Arizona Convention center where President Obama was giving a speech.
This was only one incident that summer during the health care debate in which protesters openly displayed firearms near the president. (In contrast, during the presidency of George W. Bush, protesters simply wearing anti-war slogans on their t-shirts were arrested because they were near the president or vice president.)
Maybe this might be the best time to mention that since President Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 percent, from 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President's Secret Service. In the months right after he took office, there was a spike in violent rhetoric as well as acts. In March 2009, the controversial Representative Michelle Bachman, Republican of Minnesota, said that she wanted her constituents to be “armed and dangerous” over President Barack Obama’s plan to reduce global warming.
In May of 2009, Dr. George Tiller, a doctor who performed abortions in Kansas, repeatedly dubbed by Fox News Show Host Bill O’Reilly as ‘Tiller the baby killer,’ was shot to death on Sunday morning while attending church services. Less than two weeks later, Stephen T. Johns, an African-American security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, was killed by James von Brunn, an anti-government White supremacist. This might also be the best time to mention that Giffords is the first Jewish woman elected from Arizona.
Read the Full Essay @ SeeingBlack.com
***
Esther Iverem is a journalist, poet and author whose most recent book is We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder’s Mouth Press).
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