- Regardless of all the political nonsense, the focus should be on the people who got shot. They're the story here, they're the ones who suffered, and that's where our attention belongs.
- Great speech by Obama last Wednesday. Him at his best. And you can tell he did a good job because most people on the right praised it and those who didn't were left laughably grasping at straws.
- No, Sarah Palin and other politicians who have used gun sights and other violent imagery for political purposes are not directly to blame for what happened in Tucson. But it's still a terrible, ill-advised and callous thing to do, and does not speak well of people who have done it (and Democrats who have done it in the past, I'm talking to them too.) As soon as the shooting happened, and it got out that she had put Giffords on a gun sight map, Palin should have come out and apologized. But she didn't, because she can't, because her brand is that she never, ever apologizes.
- When it comes to political rhetoric, don't talk about, or hint at, shooting people. That's not a crazy standard to ask for, right?
- Conservatives who believe that the biggest outrage to come out of this is that people are being too mean to them need to get a grip. First of all, I thought they were against victim mentalities. Second of all, the biggest tragedy is that five people are dead. That bothers me much, much more than people getting their feelings hurt. Being criticized is better than being killed.
- I don't want to hear that the shooting shouldn't be "politicized." The assassination of a politician always is just that, political. And the shooter did have a political motive- it may not have necessarily lined up with right or left, or even with reality. But he did have a reason for wanting a particular elected official dead.
- It's interesting that gun control is now virtually a dead issue in American politics. I get why- the Democrats have realized that it's not a winning issue for them and therefore, aside from at the city level, it's not even being discussed. I'm not even saying I'm necessarily for gun control- I just think there should be a debate about it.
- Someone should tell the people who ran out and bought guns after Obama was inaugurated, fearing he was about to take them all away, about the previous paragraph.
- Gaby Giffords is going to survive and become an important person in politics for a long time.
Posted by Stephen Silver at January 18, 2011 11:58 AM