Note: This piece was originally published on The Brad Blog
under the title "Sheriff Dupnik is Right: Radio Lies, Our Culture Dies."
But after President Obama's remarks at the Tucson Memorial,
I am changing my tone - a bit.
under the title "Sheriff Dupnik is Right: Radio Lies, Our Culture Dies."
But after President Obama's remarks at the Tucson Memorial,
I am changing my tone - a bit.
A moment in the culture.
A moment like Columbine, like Fort Hood, like Oklahoma City, yet
different; different because the madman's rampage that targeted Tucson,
Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was predictable.
It's hot in Tucson --- temperatures soar to 117 degrees in the
summertime. But that's nothing compared to the political heat generated
recently in this community just an hour north of the Mexican border.
Nowhere in the country were the 'Tea Parties' angrier than in Arizona;
rage over healthcare and immigration reform boiled over in Tucson.
It had been bad already, even before Obama had been elected to office in 2008. Take a look at this remarkable list of eliminationist rhetoric coming from the Right, as compiled as long ago as March 2007. But, as if that wasn't horrible enough, things have gotten even far worse since then.
Who
wouldn't be incensed? Reports of increased crime, beheadings on the
borders, government takeover of health care, death panels. Given all that, who would not stand and fight to protect their grandmothers?
If all that were actually true. But of course, it is not true.
Those reports and other fabrications like them are a creation of Right
Wing Talk Radio. It isn't just the vitriol spewing from Savage and Hannity and Boortz and others, it is what is behind the vitriol: a genuine fear born of propaganda. And as a culture, we the people are buying into it.
