When Sarah Palin spoke about Gabrielle during the Congressional campaign for last months election she at one stage identified Gabrielle as one of the Democratic members of Congress she wanted to see defeated in the mid-term elections. At one stage Palin's face book page featured cross-hair symbols superimposed over the constituencies of Gabrielle and others. Cross-hair being the scope sight of a rifle to bring to bear a target. Palin told voters 'don't retreat, reload.'
A Republican candidate Jessie Kelly in June 2010 invited voters to join him and shoot a fully automatic M16 rifle, urging them to 'get on target' and help 'remove' Gabrielle from office. Gabrielle herself said that she was Palin's targeted list, saying 'the way she has it depicted has the cross-hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realise there are consequences to that action.'
Gabrielle drew the ire of the right wing conservatives, called the tea party, for her support of health care law approved in the House of Representatives in March. Later her offices were vandalised and been the target of protesters. Sarah Palin listed Gabrielle's seat as one of the top 'targets' because of Gabrielle support for the health care reform.
Gabrielle was shot in the head and survives on life support. Yesterday Palin took down the offending graphic from her website and offered her condolences. A Republican representative Trent Franks urged caution to in ascribing political motives for the shooting. While Sheriff Clarence Dupnik suggested that 'vitriol' in recent political discourse might be connected to the shootings. Saying, 'this may be free speech, but it's not without consequences.'
I agree with the Sheriff's view. I can't agree with any effort to disconnect from incitement to 'target' a political opponent using a telescopic sight to make the point, or the request to join a candidate to help remove a political opponent from office by joining the candidate in shooting a fully loaded M16. Any reasonable person must have know that it was an appeal to other volatile nut cases and not the language of a Democracy. I hadn't followed this until today, mainly because any mention of Sarah Palin raises astonishment that she is taken seriously. My only interest is rather macabre in that there is something fascinating about the prospect she could take a whole country in and become President when she a light weight thinker of no substance.
At the very least I hope it is the end of her political career, her departure would hopefully stop the freefall into the word imagery and the incitement to violence her rhetoric relys upon. And at the best I hope she is charged, along with the ex-marine Kelly, for incitement to commit murder (for the death of the others - who included a Judge) because I think the link is clear, and I don't believe it has to be a traditional incitement because any reasonable person would know because of the unrest over the health care bill, inciting others to shoot somebody out of office or to look at them through cross-hairs was likely to find home in the head of another nutter willing to be called to arms and not 'retreat, but reload.'
What a sad moment in time, firstly for Gabrielle and for the American people to see the underbelly so willingly appealed to by political aspirants in a free country and against somebody with the courage to reach out to the poor and caution for moderation of language and temperance.
A problem with all published media is that there is no awareness of who might be reading it. There are real nutters out there: nutters who think they are being sent coded messages; nutters who fixate on some idol and do things to 'serve' that idol (poor John Lennon!); nutters who take things literally that are said figuratively. Perhaps this is one such case, who knows?
ReplyDeleteNewspapers and the like know they have a responsibility which includes (as far as possible) not inciting such nutters, and have hundreds of years of experience of misinterpretation, litigation, and dire consequences which guide their operating procedures.
Messageboards, social networking sites and so-on are equally available to nutters - perhaps more so. And the nutters read and post. It's not possible to tell who is which. If someone makes or suggests a threat against someone else on a messageboard - say, to string them up from a tree, or cause a disruption at their workplace, or harass their children - how is anyone to know whether they are serious or not? How is anyone to know whether some dangerously disturbed person might read it and be inspired to do what is suggested, or worse? As far as the Counterspinners go, they have already demonstrated that at least some of their members are crazy enough to act on their threats. This is not merely a war of words, it is a real and considerable danger.
And going back to the Newspapers - what is their level of responsibility in all this? I hope one day it will be exposed for the grubby thing it has been.
One of the dangers of the imagery of langauge that Palin and Kelly used is for the number that see the language as an endorsement of violence, of wiping out opponents. Unfortunately, some would see it as legitimisation of their views, understand that there are others like them (in fact, one who may become a Presidential candidate with a mandate to 'take' America back) that share the same view as to what will resolve things they see as problems in society. The only way to avoid that is care with the language, trying to ignore that there are nutters out there doesn't work for me.
ReplyDeleteI have to give credit for our politicians for understanding this generally, and it's another reason why I'm glad David
Garret is out of Parliament, his appeal was to rednecks in the same way Palin sees them as middle America when they're not. I was surprised that Judith Collins used the word moronic or similar in the last couple of weeks describing those concerned about Police pursuits and can only think is was a one off slip of the tongue and not a step into the style of rhetoric that will rattle the cages of the bitter minded and mentally dispossessed.