richardhutnik said:
That was a very good piece. What is interesting is that, in trying to comment on what happened in a constructive manner, it is hard to not get partisan. This editorial is about as good as one can expect a person to get. It still did show what camp the person was in though. But the ending did touch on the issue here, in that it does look like that the drive to be partisan prevents a chance to be able to take a break to mourn the act of a madman. One can add that "blood libel" talk and playing the victim card also in response is more of the playing politics here, but to harp on that is again to miss the bigger picture. There needs to be times to turn off being a partisan animal and be human. I did give that a thumbs up and save to favorites on YouTube. |
Agreed. It was very well said. I'm not sure that the montage in the background had a lot to do with what he was saying, though. It would have sufficed to just show a big picture of Paul Krugman, but that might have violated Canadian obscenity laws.
Regarding Palin's response, do you really think she played the victim card? It seems to me that she was damned if she did and damned if she didn't. People castigated her for removing her Magic Map of Inspiring Evil from the SarahPAC site in the wake of the shooting; they would have done the same if she had been so "callous" as to leave it up. Similarly, a lot on the left have pounced on her use of the term blood libel, but it smells pretty trumped up when so many of those same people have also used the term outside of its historical context. (Most notable here is Andrew Sullivan, whose Palin obsession is second to none. The guy took months away from his blog to investigate Trig Palin's true parentage; I still laugh whenever he denounces "birthers".) And the common refrain from ABC to CNN to MSNBC is, "Oh, that Palin! Somehow she's managed to insert herself into this story! What a gloryhound!" Yes. I'm sure those networks constantly mentioning her name in the same breath as Loughner's has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
I'm no terrific fan of Sarah Palin's. She strikes me as a total lightweight, sort of a less eloquent Obama. Call me crazy, though. I think anyone has the right to defend themselves against baseless accusations of inciting murder. If it were just a fringe thing in the darkest corners of the internet, she could have - and probably would have - ignored it. But it was front and center in the New York Times and elsewhere. So, again, damned if she did and damned if she didn't.
