With the massacre last Saturday in Arizona the question has been raised (and fairly in my opinion) about whether people who spew hate and rhetoric that fuels this sort of madness should be culpable for the damage done. Perhaps so, but it's tricky.
6 people were killed Saturday, including a federal judge and a little girl born on 9/11 (and featured in a book about children born that day - damn). The intended target, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, survived - albeit only barely - along with 11 other people wounded. It doesn't border on madness, it crosses over. This is murder. This is terrorism. This is inexcusable.
It's looking more and more like the gunman was a loon even without the guns, but that's hardly any excuse. You have to ask what fueled his madness and the blame falls squarely on the people and outlets giving him the fuel - Faux news, Sarah Palin and her crosshairs, Glenn Beck, Bill ORLY, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, and countless other outlets that routinely say in words and paradigms that it is okay to hate a political viewpoint you don't agree with, and to hate the people that say them even more.
Sharon Angle talked about "2nd Amendment remedies". Well guess what bitch, this is what that looks like. Ms. Unemployed Palin, you put cross-hairs on a person someone might think they're a target. Those are cross-hairs - claiming anything else makes you a fucking liar. You're all culpable. Notice the word I used. Culpable.
I don't hold these fucking idiots responsible - after all what they did was talk, not put the gun in a madman's hand. But a certain amount of liability exists, from the people who gave him ideas to the people who think it's okay to carry a weapon that can unload 31 bullets in a few seconds to the supermarket. It's all just madness.
So where does that leave me? As some people might notice, I use the exact same rhetoric, or at least a level close to it, as these dickheads. I do so intentionally, but only as a response to how they act. In other words, I'm mocking them but unlike Jon Stewart I am not a class act in this regard - nor have I ever pretended to be. However, the right uses this device a lot more than the left does, and you can tell this simply from the body count. Crooks and Liars does some heavy lifting in that regard and you should read it.
Thing is, if you rounded up all of us who use this sort of rhetoric, it would be a huge freakin' room, with us liberals over in one corner making up less than 1% of the total. The people who call us out and claim that both sides are doing it are full of shit. It's true, but there's a degree factor that they don't mention. It's not a 50/50 split, it's 99/1. "2nd Amendment remedies", "Don't retreat - reload", elected officials in cross-hairs, "beat him to a bloody pulp", misusing the quotes about the tree of liberty and revolution can be a good thing, "Giffords is dead to me" - these are all things said by people seeking elected office or television figures this past election cycle weighing in just on the race that re-elected Congresswoman Giffords. How many of them were left-wing? Do you hear the crickets?
But getting back to my original point, what should we do about it? Do we take threats of this nature and turn them into federal crimes? That's already been suggested in the House of Representatives. I worry about that - it could be abused readily, just as the creation of the Department of Homeland Security was in the President Drunken Chimp era. It's a slippery slope and people smarter than me will need to address it. But I do have a suggestion:
How about we take these fuckers off the airwaves? I don't mean have the government do so, how about we the people? It's real fucking easy. Stop watching their television shows. Stop listening to their radio shows. No one's 1st amendment rights will be interfered with. They can still speak. They can blog to their heart's content. But if no one is listening to them on the airwaves they'll be gone in seconds, because they won't be producing revenue. Money talks, and if they don't produce revenue they'll be gone faster than you can blink. Look at how Glenn Beck got dropped from radio in New York. It wasn't political - it was about money.
So if you walk into a room, a bar, an airport, any public or private room anywhere in this country and they're running these people - ask for the channel to be changed to turn the bloody thing off yourself. Now THAT would be a statement - and a big one we could make.
Despite what these fuckers repeat over and over, the constitution does NOT guarantee the right to be listened to. You don't have to listen to them, and you don't have to listen to me. But I don't make a single fucking penny off of this, while they make millions of dollars. That's wrong and the answer isn't to give me millions (although I'd take it - are you nuts?); the better answer is to take the money away from these other people. The moment saying incendiary shit stops becoming profitable very few people will continue to use it. Certainly not in TV and radio, that's for sure. So let's take that away from them. And whatever the fuck you do, don't apologize or carry water for them.
Otherwise we're going to descend further into madness.
Cheap shots:
And because I love you, Heather Porcaro and the Heartstring Symphony. Yes, she's the daughter of Steve Porcaro of Toto.
