Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
In my initial judgment about the nut who shot up the UU church in Tennessee. AP reports that a letter was found in the shooter's car saying he did it because he was mad at liberals and gays:
An out-of-work truck driver accused of opening fire at a Unitarian church, killing two people, left behind a note suggesting that he targeted the congregation out of hatred for its liberal policies, including its acceptance of gays, authorities said Monday.A four-page letter found in Jim D. Adkisson's small SUV indicated he intentionally targeted the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church because, the police chief said, "he hated the liberal movement" and was upset with "liberals in general as well as gays."
The report also indicates that had the man not been tackled and subdued by members of the congregation, a lot more people would have died:
In Adkisson's letter, which police have not released, "he indicated ... that he expected to be in there (the church) shooting people until the police arrived and that he fully expected to be killed by the responding police," Owen said. "He certainly intended to take a lot of casualties."Witnesses said the attack was cut short after some church members tackled the gunman and held him until police arrived.
He had 76 shells for his shotgun, so he could have done a lot more damage than he did.
Politics
Comments
I concur with Shygetz's proposal in yesterday's blog posting on this matter. The Feds should be seriously investigating this event and if the facts argue in support that this attack was an act of terrorism, indict accordingly.
If you agree and we see no action in the next couple of days, an email to your Congress-people promoting such would be helpful.
Posted by: Michael Heath | July 29, 2008 9:38 AM
Well, that plus his ex wife was a member of the church. That had to factor in somewhere.
Posted by: Wes | July 29, 2008 9:39 AM
I don't understand the inevitable pissing contest that ensues following one of these tragedies, or in looking back at historic atrocities.
Although motives are important, I suspect if it turns out that this guy hated liberals, gays, and Christians, then quite a few people will be disappointed.
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 9:48 AM
Although motives are important, I suspect if it turns out that this guy hated liberals, gays, and Christians, then quite a few people will be disappointed.
Something like this should be making the guys who are making let's kill all the liberals "jokes" sit up and take notice that their rhetoric can lead to people actually getting killed. Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity - these are the folks who put the bug in this guy's brain that everything that was wrong in his life was due to "the liberals". They need to take responsibility for what they're doing and cut it out, or there's going to be more blood on their hands.
It doesn't matter if it turns out that he also had a problem with "Christians" - he chose to turn his guns on "liberals and gays" and wrote a letter telling folks exactly why he was doing it. So please, stop with your persecution complex and start paying attention to what the hatemongers are doing when they spew their idiocy.
Posted by: NonyNony | July 29, 2008 10:05 AM
NonyNony,
It has nothing to do with a persecution complex, you jackass. Anyone who knows me knows the disdain I have for the Christian persecution complex. It is the rush to pigeon hole this guy and his motives, and to use the musings of a nutjob to make a political point that I find repulsive. Perhaps you cannot grasp the distinction.
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 10:14 AM
"Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity - these are the folks who put the bug in this guy's brain that everything that was wrong in his life was due to "the liberals". They need to take responsibility for what they're doing and cut it out, or there's going to be more blood on their hands."
Well spoken as a rational person., but I don't think any of them had any problem sleeping last night, they are hate-mongers, and proud of what they do.
Posted by: RAM | July 29, 2008 10:17 AM
I posted the following on the earlier thread on this incident, then realized there was a later thread, so I'm reposting it here. If this is a problem, please delete the comment from the earlier thread...
Re: the fruitfulness of speculating on the shooter's motives and mental state, I would say that there is a good lesson to be learned about the effects of chronic abuse and scapegoating rhetoric. This guy is clearly crazy; but he was not born crazy, he was MADE crazy by certain influences: such as an authoritarian organized religion (and possibly abusivbe parents) that treated him like crap and never tolerated any sort of dissent; and hateful right-wingers encouraging him, and others like him, to redirect their anger according to the convenience of the right-wingers, rather than at those who actually caused his problems. The people who used and abused this poor fool, also managed to make him a compliant tool in his own destruction, by leaving him so lost and unable to think for himself that he would lash out at whoever his abusers told him to lash out at, rather than take positive action to solve his own problems, at the possible expense of his abusers.
This is an example of how ignorant bullies manage to gain power over others, without having to actually offer anyone anything beneficial in return for their cowed compliance.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 10:19 AM
Heddle,
No one is "pigeon holing" his motives. He wrote a frickin' letter saying he wanted to kill gays and liberals. What's so unclear about his motives to you?
And the only "evidence" I've seen of him "hating Christians" was some hearsay from one of his neighbors, who said he didn't want to do a Bible study with her, or something like that. Besides, if his goal was to kill Christians, why attack a UU church? UU churches are so diverse, there's no guarantee that the person you kill is actually a believing Christian. If his goal was to kill Christians, why not attack the Presbyterian church next door?
Posted by: Wes | July 29, 2008 10:19 AM
Michael Heath:
Based on the note, it was an act of terrorism. Does the definition of terrorism require a conspiracy? I don't think so. Is a suicide bomber in Israel a terrorist only if Hamas or some other organization equipped him and sent him on his mission, or also if he acted on his own? I assume it is the latter.Now if this idiot did act on his own, what is the government to do? Spy on all right-wingers and shut down their web sites and other propaganda venues? That would be rather ridiculous, which illustrates how ridiculous the whole concept of a "war on terror" is.
Posted by: bullfighter | July 29, 2008 10:25 AM
"I don't understand the inevitable pissing contest that ensues following one of these tragedies, or in looking back at historic atrocities."
I think the "pissing contest" ensues when people try to explain the "why" of tragedies and atrocities. Some folks like to simply write them off, attributing them to some archetypal "lone nut" or "Hitler," and leaving it at that. Others like to dig more deeply than that, which always ends up rubbing some folks the wrong way.
Take the TVUU Church case, for example.
Some might just want to sum it up as a crazy guy doing something crazy for his own crazy reasons. Since he's crazy, why bother trying to analyze any further?
Others, though, look at his avowed hatred of "liberals" and his possession of written material (I won't dignify it as "literature") by Hannity, O'Reilly, and Limbaugh.
In this case, it is obvious to those with eyes to see that right-wing hate speech and the demonization of all things "liberal" were a substantial contributing factor to the killing of two innocent human beings last Sunday morning.
Adkisson wasn't acting randomly; he had a specific POLITICAL target in mind --- liberals.
Of course this analysis rankles the people who idolize O'Reilly while imagining themselves apolitical, and so the pissing contest ensues.
Posted by: Jason | July 29, 2008 10:28 AM
Wes,
Maybe he had no intention to kill Christians. Maybe he loves Christians. But if he wanted to kill liberals, those friendly to gays, and Christians, then a UU church is an understandable target. You are assuming he knew the details of the composition of a UU church, but as far as I know we have no info about how savvy he was in that regard. There was one report that he hated Christians--but maybe that was in error, or maybe irrelevant.
The point is that many commenters desperately want him to fit a certain mold. It is like the Finnish school massacre that some Christians tried to paint as "the consequence of accepting evolution."
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 10:29 AM
We know he targetted gays. And that particular church had a sign saying they were gay friendly. And we know his ex-wife was a member of that congregation.
You can put 2 and 2 together...
Posted by: gwangung | July 29, 2008 10:41 AM
This was a heinous at - no doubt about it but prior to 9/11 would this of been considered a terrorist act? Or has the definition of terrorism been broaden so much in the last few years that crossing the street against a red light would be considered an act of terrorism.
IMHO, like the phrase "hate crimes" the word terrorism has been used to describe nearly everything that the word itself has become totally meaningless.
Posted by: yoshi | July 29, 2008 10:45 AM
Not only that, but the sick motherfucker was goaded by sick-fuck right-wing scumbag media vampires, all of whom have blood on their hands as if they pulled the fucking trigger themselves:
FUCK YOU.
Posted by: PhysioProf | July 29, 2008 10:46 AM
I can't believe I'm typing this but I think Heddle may have a point, the discussion is worryingly close to saying something like.
"this guy was violent because of his politics, his politics was right wing, therefore right wingers in general are violent or support violence"
If he *had* shot up a baptist church because he hated christians would we assume that critics of christianity had somehow caused his actions? I hope not, but I'm struggling to see how that is different to blaming conservative comentators because he hated liberals.
Of course my only exposure to Bill O'Reily is the youtube flip out video so I may be utterly wrong, perhaps he does directly incite violence rather than just being disparaging about his opponents.
Posted by: Matty | July 29, 2008 10:48 AM
I can't help feeling that the playing up of the "he hated liberals 'cuz Coulter/Hannity/etc. told him to" angle is partially an understandable reaction to the "it's the fault of atheism/evolutionism" crap we got after nearly every previous shooting. Of course, it doesn't hurt that in this case, we've got irrefutable evidence that liberal-hating *was* part of the motivation, and the background noise of conservative hate-speech is far more plausibly linked to it than some vague notion of evolutionary theory is linked to, eg. Columbine.
The most similar incident I can think of is the massacre at L'Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, in which the shooter (similarly a dysfunctional loner with issues) targeted women and "feminists".
Posted by: Eamon Knight | July 29, 2008 10:52 AM
gwangung,
You are missing my point. Let's grant that his twisted beliefs had him target liberals and gays. That is interesting in its own right. It does not, however, mean that Limbaugh, whom personally I detest, is responsible. Any nut job with an agenda will find someone who "speaks" to him. People kill after watching movies--should we blame the writers, directors, and actors?
I'm not a political conservative, but conservatism is a legitimate view. If some nutjob distorts his conservatism to the point where he rationalizes that it is OK to kill liberals and gays, the underlying viewpoint is not culpable. A Christian who bombs an abortion clinic is grossly distorting the teachings of Christ. A student who kills to "help evolution along" is grossly distorting the teachings of evolution. This nut is grossly distorting the teachings of conservatism, but many here want it to be an indictment of those views, when it isn't.
I stand by my previous statement that there will be some disappointment if the neighbor's report is true, and this guy hates Christians as well. He won't quite fit in the convenient niche that's been carved out for him.
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 10:58 AM
Spy on all right-wingers and shut down their web sites and other propaganda venues?
Absolutely not. What we SHOULD do, though, is publicly confront those asshats whenever possible, and force them to either stand by or renounce their hateful rhetoric. Get them to admit the shooter's actions were wrong; then prove that the shooter's actions were suspiciously similar to what they themselves have advocated for years without a trace of shame; then, when they refuse to accept responsibility for the shooter's actions, ask them why they (explicitly or implicitly) advocated actions they knew were wrong, and for which they did not want to feel responsible.
These scumbags need to be named and shamed. It's the right thing to do.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 10:58 AM
I stand by my previous statement that there will be some disappointment if the neighbor's report is true, and this guy hates Christians as well. He won't quite fit in the convenient niche that's been carved out for him.
He will still "fit the niche" of someone who was abused, lied to, and mistreated by certain right-wing "Christians," but was so deceived and infantilized by their ignorant teachings that he didn't know who or what to blame for his problems, and instead lashed out at the people who had always been presented to him as "evil." The fact that his rhetoric was less than 100% coherent does not change the truth of this narrative.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 11:05 AM
No, it's really not. It's easier to find liberal Christians at a meeting of the local Democratic party or the local PFLAG meeting than at a UU church--I'm a member of the UU congregation in my town, and I don't know a single congregant who thinks Jesus was divine. His ex-wife was a member of that church, so I would imagine he had more than a passing familiarity with their composition. And to say that this guy was just nutters, so we should ignore the eliminationist rhetoric that this guy was a consumer of and obviously modeled his writings after is stupid. He specifically went after liberals and gay-lovers ("he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."), his bookshelves contained such great hits as "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder", but everyone just ignore all of that; there is no connection there.
No one is saying "Ban those books!" or even "conservatives are evil!", but I do hope that consumers and advertisers take a good, hard look at the kind of rhetoric they are funding, now that there are some apparent consequences to the widespread eliminationism. If there were popular books, TV shows, and radio programs talking about how Christians are traitorous scum who don't deserve to live, and someone who regularly consumed this media shot up a church because "he could not get at the Christian leaders, so he targeted those who put them in power", then I would be calling for an end to the anti-Christian eliminationist rhetoric; however, such rhetoric is not popular or widespread, and he didn't shoot up a church, so I won't shut up about it. Eliminationist rhetoric (from any side of the political spectrum) should be criticized, not published into best-selling books and broadcast over public airwaves.
And if we are punishing terrorists by a different standard, this was definitely terrorism and he should be punished under the harsher penal codes. If not, let's be honest and admit that we are punishing terrorism by swarthy people.
Posted by: Shygetz | July 29, 2008 11:07 AM
"the term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents"--U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d)
Jaywalking does not fit this definition; gunning down a congregation of liberals to punish them for putting Democrats in office does.
Posted by: Shygetz | July 29, 2008 11:12 AM
Raging Bee,
OK, I see how the spin will go. If he hates liberals and gays only, then blame rests with hyperbolic conservative writers and talk show hosts. But if he hates liberals, gays, and fundamentalists Christians, then the lion's share of the blame is with fundamentalist Christians.
You've got your bases covered, I'll grant you that.
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 11:14 AM
"I stand by my previous statement that there will be some disappointment if the neighbor's report is true, and this guy hates Christians as well."
Likewise, there will be disappointment of Christians if the fellow does not turn out to be an atheist or anti-Christian. I have only see one anecdotal account of hostility to Christians, but there is mounting evidence of antipathy toward liberals and gays. I am the guy's neighbor. Everyone here knows the UU is a bastion of liberalism; the minister often writes letters, and occasionally columns, in the local paper espousing his views. The church is widely known to be gay-friendly. The man drove by many much larger churches on his way to the UU church. But they were conservative Christian churches.
"I don't understand the inevitable pissing contest that ensues following one of these tragedies, or in looking back at historic atrocities."
The pissing contest is easy to explain. Someone points the finger of blame to bolster his side of an argument, i.e., "The Christians burned witches", and someone responds with "Yes, but Russian and Chinese atheists killed millions", and after that we scrupulously use each atrocity to put additional arrows in our quivers. It may not be very helpful, but it certainly isn't hard to understand. All sides are guilty of it.
Posted by: Robski | July 29, 2008 11:20 AM
Robski,
Exactly.
Exactly.
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 11:24 AM
No, heddle, you've got nothing covered. The "lion's share of the blame" for the shooting goes to the shooter no matter what. The "lion's share of the blame" for pandering to, excusing, and exacerbating, hatred of people who have done no wrong -- hatred on which this shooter was clearly acting, additional hatred of Christians or no -- rests with certain radical right rabble-rousers who have pretty explicitly championed the most vindictive and hateful attitudes toward the same people this shooter happened to target, in both his writings and his actions.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 11:45 AM
If you're going to keep repeating this, Raging Bee, you'd better present some evidence for both clauses of this sentence. Right now I'm not convinced of either one.
Sure, get the right-wingers to repudiate this guy's actions. But that's not going to make them admit that saying liberals are dumb or wrong makes them culpable for this act, and it shouldn't. "Wrong" does not mean "should be killed," and the vast majority of right-wingers do not advocate the death of liberals. You go on all of the time about the crimes of Republicans, but that doesn't mean that if somebody blows up the Republican convention, you should be even partially blamed for it.
heddle,
If it turns out that this guy hates liberals and gays and Christians, I will not be disappointed, but I will be confused, because it does not fit most patterns of bigotry. I am also, however, not willing to blame anyone for this guy's actions-- fundamentalists, liberals, gays, right-wingers-- except for him. Shame on bigots of all stripes, but that does not make them culpable for these murders.
Posted by: Gretchen | July 29, 2008 11:54 AM
Gretchen,
Thank you for saying what I was trying to say more eloquently
Posted by: Matty | July 29, 2008 11:57 AM
Heddle:
Well, yes, but what if Christ had taugh that abortionists should be killed? Should we not blame him a little bit? And what if evolution somehow did imply that killing people you don't like is a good idea? Should we not raise our eyebrows somewhat? And what if some prominent conservatives do call for violence to be exerted on liberals, atheists and gays?
Well, what do you know, some prominent conservatives do call for violence against people they oppose! Not all of them, indeed, but some, and we do lay a little bit of blame on them when someone does follow the instructions.
Posted by: Valhar2000 | July 29, 2008 11:58 AM
Gretchen: first, I'll be the first to admit that this is an armchair diagnosis based on incomplete information. But as such things go, the connections are pretty clear here. This guy was acting on well-known, obvious and pervasive attitudes to which radical-right authors have been pandering without shame or irony since the '90s. He was in a bad personal state and suggestible, and he followed the most prevalent suggestions he was most likely hearing. If the prevailing attitude had been "blame the Joos" rather than "blame the libruls," I have no doubt he would have driven to a synagogue instead.
Second, "freedom of speech" does not mean you can't be held responsible for your words. The radical right are not responsible for the shooting, but they ARE responsible for egging each other on and publicly saying things -- and rewarding each other for saying things -- which, when acted on, result in criminal actions. I'm not saying they should be charged as criminals, but I AM saying that they should be confronted and shamed for their hateful and ignorant words, both because they're wrong, and because they do indeed contribute, in a small but visible way, to hateful and ignorant criminal actions.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 12:08 PM
Posted by: Herod the Freemason | July 29, 2008 12:14 PM
Not all of them, indeed, but some, and we do lay a little bit of blame on them when someone does follow the instructions.
Exactly. At the very least, we should prove that certain right-wing authors did indeed make such "instructions," and ask them whether or not they condone one man's acting on them. If they say yes, then they are guilty of knowingly advocating criminal violence. If they say no, then they are guilty of saying things they didn't mean, and encouraging people to do things they themselves knew were wrong. It may be less than 100% fair, but hey, was it fair that they get paid for selling their books in the first place?
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 12:17 PM
This notion that the guy was "made crazy" by reading right wing pundits is very, very dangerous. How is it any different from claiming that if a child molester had some porno movies or magazines, the porn made him do it? Or from claiming that we can't let kids read books or see movies that have sex or violence in them because they'll emulate what they read or see? It's the exact same argument and equally specious. Just like 99.9% of those who watch porn or watch violent movies don't become rapists and murderers, 99.9% of those who read or listen to Rush Limbaugh don't shoot liberals. A little perspective, please.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | July 29, 2008 12:17 PM
Raging Bee:
Is a guy who shoots up a Baptist church because he hates the misogyny "acting on" well-known, obvious, and pervasive attitudes to which radical left-wing authors have been pandering without shame or irony since the 90's? Does that mean those left-wing authors "made him crazy"? Are they in any way responsible for his actions?
You're blurring the lines. As I said, you publically call Republicans every name in the book, all of the time-- if somebody kills a bunch of Republicans, is he "acting on" what you've said? Or is he taking what you said way, way too far? I'd say the latter, and it's no less the case with what morons like O'Reilly say. You cannot hold people responsible if someone takes "Those people are evil" and translates it into "Those people should be slaughtered." Oh, you can sure hold them responsible for their words-- you can hold them responsible for being bigotted assholes. You cannot hold them responsible for murder, or even encouraging murder.
Posted by: Gretchen | July 29, 2008 12:18 PM
Valhar2000 ,
OK, I rarely watch/listen to conservative talk shows. (Or any political show, for that matter.) Has some prominent conservative guru actually, and I am not talking about a poor attempt at humor, called for someone to kill liberals or gays? And was it one of the one's whose writings were found in this guy's home?
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 12:18 PM
"OK, so we elect some guy to take all the blame, and we crucify him, and our blame gets cleansed, then we're all good. S.O.P."
No,no,no! He has to volunteer.
Posted by: Robski | July 29, 2008 12:23 PM
"Wrong" does not mean "should be killed," and the vast majority of right-wingers do not advocate the death of liberals.
The only right-wingers I've seen mentioned in connection with the case so far are O'Reilly, Savage, and Hannity. All three have well-documented instances of advocating the death of liberals. It took about 3 minutes to find the following quotes:
It's not about people saying "liberals are wrong" and somebody taking that belief to a ridiculous extreme. It's about people saying "liberals should be killed" and somebody actually doing it.
I'd be reluctant to assign a causative effect there (after all, most people will not murder others regardless of what some asshole on talk radio says), but that doesn't necessarily mean that this sort of inflammatory rhetoric didn't have some effect on this particular nut.
It's the nature of that effect that's the most interesting bit, and that's something we may never know.
Posted by: unicow | July 29, 2008 12:35 PM
Has some prominent conservative guru actually, and I am not talking about a poor attempt at humor, called for someone to kill liberals or gays? And was it one of the one's whose writings were found in this guy's home?
Well, Ann Coulter has said some pretty nasty things, and then, after all of it gets debunked and discredited, her followers PRETEND it's humor. Does that count?
What about all the "Conservatives" who have explicitly said that people who disagree with Dear Leader's foreign policy are "supporting the terrorists," "pro-terrorist," "pro-Saddam," "anti-American," and "want America to lose?" What about the repeated chorus that Democrats want Americans to die, and America to lose in Iraq, because that would be politically expedient for them? Comparing your critics to indiscriminate mass-murderers is as good an excuse for killing them as they get. If I actually believe that you're in any way complicit in the murder of about 3000 people at once, then I WILL want you dead.
What about all the centuries of anti-Pagan propaganda? That HAS been used as an excuse to kill (suspected) Pagans. And it's been so ingrained in Christian "thought" for so long that many Christians never even THINK to question it.
What about all the thoroughly outrageous gay-bashing? Once you've accepted that gays are as bad as a nuclear attack (yes, Republican Senate nominee Alan Keyes really did say something like that), how could you NOT want to eliminate such a threat?
Some right-wingers have been saying for years that "liberals" are not "American." And the far right sure as Hell didn't treat the people of New Orleans as fellow Americans back in 2005.
What about the aggerssive attempts to "Christianize" the military?
The radical right have done everything they could, consistently since the 1960s, to create and cultivate a culture of division, intolerance, hatred and inequality, in which people outside the "mainstream" were not merely wrong, but a threat that had to be suppressed, even to the point of refusing to recognize their legal rights. It was this very culture in which the Knoxville shooter got the idea that "liberals" are to blame for his problems, and that he should "solve" his problems by killing them.
And let me be clear (again) on one thing: I am not advocating legal action against the wingnuts, nor am I advocating any reduction in their basic rights. I am advocating individual popular action, preferably on a large scale, to confront and shame the wingnuts, and those who profit from selling their crap, and make them ashamed to advocate overt bigotry against people who have done no wrong -- just as, say, Borders would be ashamed to stock a book by a Holocaust-denier or a Nazi.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 12:47 PM
unicow,
If hyperbole counts, I could probably summon up quotes from prominent liberal voices advocating the death of conservatives as well. However, I don't think people on either side should be held responsible for the hyperbole-impaired taking their words literally.
Posted by: Gretchen | July 29, 2008 12:47 PM
I could probably summon up quotes from prominent liberal voices advocating the death of conservatives as well.
Go right ahead. How "prominent" are they? I can't even think of ONE such "prominent liberal voice" offhand. I remember Ted Rall's career virtually ending when he implied that he thought Ronald Reagan was in Hell. From what I'm seeing, most liberals have enough sense of shame to avoid such extreme rhetoric.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 12:52 PM
Great, we should be doing that already. That has nothing to do with this guy's actions.
So Mein Kampf is out of the question? Good lord, I hope Borders isn't restricting the books it sells to those that only advocate "the good" (whatever that is)!
Posted by: Gretchen | July 29, 2008 12:54 PM
Raging Bee,
I'll take a rain check. I'm in Vegas and have no intention to spend all day doing research.
Posted by: Gretchen | July 29, 2008 12:56 PM
unicow,
All reprehensible statements. All are hyperbole. I would say that only the third could possibly be construed as an actual call for ordinary Joe to go out and kill someone--and that would be a very, very big stretch. Did Hannity actually say that? I mean, is this
(a) verifiable and
(b) in context and
(c ) not some misguided attempt at a joke?
I can hardly believe he was not fired, if he did.
Raging Bee,
If someone recently read PZ's blog and got so fired up over all the statements about the evils of Catholicism and they went out and killed a priest, are PZ's commenters responsible? If someone reads your comments and gets fired up over racist, homophobic Republicans and takes one out, are you responsible?
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 12:57 PM
If someone recently read PZ's blog and got so fired up over all the statements about the evils of Catholicism and they went out and killed a priest, are PZ's commenters responsible?
Either in some small measure or not at all, depending on what was actually said, and the circumstances in which the priest was killed.
If someone reads your comments and gets fired up over racist, homophobic Republicans and takes one out, are you responsible?
Probably not, although I would at least consider that question in the event. But I have never advocated illegal violent action, or depriving Republicans of their rights; nor have I knowingly lied about them -- the truth is harsh enough to bash them with.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 1:06 PM
Gretchen,
Sure, please do provide those quotes from prominent liberals calling for the deaths of conservatives. I'd be interested to see them.
These three are big enough names to generally avoid saying something they can't later explain away as "satire" or "hyperbole."
I was going to point you to conservative radio host Hal Turner, who has quite blatantly advocated violence, but upon going to his website I discovered he actually commented on the issue at hand.
So now I just feel sick. Done for now.
Posted by: unicow | July 29, 2008 1:07 PM
I think the whole issue of whether or not he was crazy only goes to answer one thing:
How likely are we to see this again?
It's one thing if we have a couple nuts who would have snapped anyway, and just found a juicy target to latch on to. It's quite another if we see a resurgence of Klan style violence, or Good Old Fashioned American Lynch Mobs targeted at political enemies.
Eliminationist rhetoric is the soil that genocide grows in. Without it, Lynchings would be lone acts of murder, not community picnics.
Posted by: Left_Wing_Fox | July 29, 2008 1:07 PM
once Gretchen gets back from Vegas, i too would like to see which liberals --- and how prominent they really are --- could justifiably be compared to even the one Hannity quote unicow posted in this thread already.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | July 29, 2008 1:23 PM
I'm with Ed on the fact that blaming a broad ideological segment of the society for a single crime is both absurd and dangerous (and stooping to the same level as the idiots who claimed that the 9/11, Columbine, Virginia Tech, etc. massacres were the fault of liberals), but I also think that there is merit to the claims that the far right-wing culture in this society has some serious violent tendencies. My personal opinion is that the people drawn to that end of the ideological spectrum often struggle with feelings of rage, helplessness, and fear. Not all (or even most) of them wind up killing people with whom they disagree, but for many of them I think that the anger they experience is cause for concern. Don't believe me? Check out the comments issued by members of Free Republic, WND, etc.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying that you don't see pathological adherents of the far left, it's just that, for whatever reason, our society seems to breed a more pernicious far right-wing subculture that, unlike its (practically non-existent) far-left counterpart, grounds itself in highly authoritarian principles.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | July 29, 2008 1:26 PM
Can we all just agree that Unitarians are not Christians? I keep seeing that assumption repeated over and over in this thread, despite multiple challenges.
Unitarian = not trinitarian = Jesus not divine = not Christian
I'm neither Christian nor Unitarian, but I do have a fondness for knowledge.
(The UUC has a really interesting history. Here's the joke that got me to do some research on Unitarian history: Q: What's the difference between the Unitarian Church and Count Dracula? A: One comes from Transylvania and abhors the sign of the cross, and the other is a fictional character created by Bram Stoker.)
Posted by: HP | July 29, 2008 2:00 PM
My personal opinion is that the people drawn to that [far right] end of the ideological spectrum often struggle with feelings of rage, helplessness, and fear.
True. And their fears, combined with ignorance and/or inability to think rationally, lead them to these views. And then those people appeal to the same feelings, and try to exacerbate them, in order to get more adherents and mobilize them to action.
We can't hold writers responsible for the actions of their readers; the only person who needs to be charged with a crime here is the shooter himself. But we can't pretend the writers don't exist or have no effect at all, especially when the writers WANT to have an effect, and sometimes even brag about the effects they have.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 2:11 PM
HP: many Unitarians ARE Christians, even by your specific definition (which not all people who call themselves Christians would support, BTW).
Unitarian = not trinitarian = Jesus not divine = not Christian
NONE of these connections you assert are true. Some, possibly many, Unitarians ARE trinitarian; "not trinitarian" does NOT lead to "Jesus not divine;" and it's perfectly possible to believe Jesus was not divine (any more than the rest of us at least) and still be a "Christian" (Christians have always debated Jesus' exact nature, and continue to do so).
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 2:18 PM
The only thing I disagree with is that you didn't put enough nines to the right of the decimal points, Ed. As much as I detest the rantings of the right-wing blowhards mentioned, if they had any significant motivational effect we'd be seeing incidents like this at least weekly, if not daily.
Posted by: Pieter B | July 29, 2008 2:21 PM
This man was not criminally insane, when he rampaged. He premeditated the attack, and fully expected it to end with his being killed by police. He knew what he was doing was unlawful. The standard for trial is criminally insane, and he should be charged and convicted for murder one.
A terrorism charge is probably applicable under current statutes, but I am opposed to those asinine laws. Pre-existing statutes for murder and homicide are adequate for dealing with this this, and terrorism charges will only be misused as a political tool in the end. Terrorism charges smack of double-jeopardy, and as such should be opposed by anyone who truly believes in justice.
Do you believe a moronic greenie who goes on a counter-productive rampage through Wisconsin farmlands, committing serial acts of trespass and release of little furry semi-domesticated farmers' chattel, whose hides are intended for use in the manufacture of furs, causing them to die horribly of starvation, or be eaten by bigger, wilder furry creatures, actually rises to the level of "terror". If this does indeed terrorise you, I'd recommend that you run down to the nearest store and pick-up an emergency supply of the product that is essential for you homeland's defense, Depends®. You're going to need them.
This man is broken, and need be forcibly removed from public interaction, but any of you who both scream for retribution and claim to be Christian, would be well-advised to remember the words of Paul:
or how about:
In my experience, the Christian Path is one of the most difficult disciplines to traverse, in that it promises only a life of suffering and pain. If you cannot accept this, put down your damn cross, which you surreptitiously corked in the dead of night. It does not become you.
Posted by: a knight | July 29, 2008 2:29 PM
heddle,
I'm not sure the appeal to hyperbole makes any difference. It's an easy thing to claim one was engaging in hyperbole after the fact to excuse one's statements, but when those statements are really just an extension of the pundit's everyday diatribes how do you imagine the average viewer will interpret them?
Additionally, most people upon making an ill-conceived hyperbolic statement will realize they went too far and later apologize. There's a notable lack of apologies from these folks.
As for Hannity's quote, it is cited as coming from an episode of Hannity & Colmes on June 15, 2005.
Also, I neglected to mention in my quoting of the execrable Hal Turner that Turner was a frequent guest on Hannity's radio show. Once Hannity moved to tv he tried to distance himself a bit from this lunatic. Hannity's an extremist, but even he knows that there are some things you can't get away with.
Gretchen,
I dug up those quotes from conservative pundits in less than ten minutes. If it would take you "all day" to provide similar quotes from liberals, doesn't that tell you something about their relative prevalence?
----
I have no problem with people saying that the shooter's actions weren't caused by right-wing pundits, but let's not try to whitewash the fact that a fair number of these pundits do in fact advocate violence against liberals, often to massive audiences.
Even if we were to grant that those statements are intended as jokes (which I do not believe in most cases), they're still joking about killing people for their beliefs. I worry about the person who's sitting at home laughing about that.
Posted by: unicow | July 29, 2008 2:31 PM
Wow. All this hatin'. We need to move the discussion over to safer ground - like Gun Control, or Host-bashing.
Posted by: J-Dog | July 29, 2008 2:31 PM
unicow,
As for Hannity, I would still like to know if, when he said that on June 15, 2005, he intended it as it reads. Is there a transcript for that show? I'm not disputing you--I just find it amazing that he could say such a thing we impunity. Color me naive.
If celebrity talking heads are held responsible for those who cannot discern reprehensible hyperbole, or if something was intended tongue in cheek, then that puts a bit of a crimp in free speech.
I think you just have to conclude that in a society with a free exchange of ideas and 300 million folks, some chowderhead is going to say, now that's what I'm talking about and do something evil. It could be a movie, a talk-show, a book, a news report, and editorial, or a blog comment that reinforces his lunacy--but there really isn't anything palatable to do about it.
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 2:47 PM
I'm not someplace where I can do it right now, but someone please cache Turner's site with that crap on it. Even Turner may end up with a backlash over this.
Posted by: Taz | July 29, 2008 3:01 PM
I'm not disputing you--I just find it amazing that he could say such a thing we impunity.
I can certainly understand your amazement. If some leftie said it would be okay to invade America, kill our leaders, and convert us to Islam, that leftie's career would have ended right then 'n' there, and rightly so; which makes it all the more amazing that Ann Coulter could say something very similar and get away with it. And the amazement is compounded when we realize that's not the most insane thing she said. The far right are getting away with sayihng a LOT of truly insane things, they've been doing it for decades, and I'm STILL amazed at it.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 3:04 PM
For those of you interested in prominent liberal voices advocating the death of conservatives may I point you to this link that does an excellent job of citing such cases:
http://patterico.com/2007/03/05/leftist-hate-speech/
Posted by: Pensy | July 29, 2008 3:14 PM
Going back a few topics:
The Montreal shooter, Marc Lepine, was born Gamil Rodrigue Gharbi and apparently absorbed his father's rabid Islamic misogyny.
The attack at the Ecole Polytechnique was functionally indistinguishable from jihad terrorism against Western values, specifically the legal and social equality of women. We have seen enough of these incidents to know them by now.
Posted by: Reality Czech | July 29, 2008 3:31 PM
Pensy: Thanks for the link to leftist hate-speech. The first thing I'll note is that VERY FEW of the people you quote have any visible central role in national politics. Some of them I've never even heard of; and of those I know about, such as Alec Baldwin, I've never heard their offending quotes repeated in any forum.
The most central figure quoted is Jesse Jackson -- who explicitly apologized, at the Democratic national convention on prime time, IIRC, for the offensive remarks he made during his 1984 campaign.
Also, quoting a BRITISH pundit was a bit irrelevant, given that the subject here is American politics.
The St. Petersburg Democrat's mention of shooting Rumsfeld was probably made in response to Rummy's casual disregard for the true cost of the Iraq war (more Americans dead, with nothing to show for it, is just a "bad day"). Since Rummy was so casual about loss of American lives, the Democrats responded by sounding casual about the loss of Rummy's life. Still wrong, but a bit more understandable in context.
All in all, this doesn't hold a candle to what some very influential Republicans, and right-wing "Christian" "leaders," have said with impunity. (Which brings me to my next question: what were the consequences of all that leftist hate-speech? Were the speakers cheered, rewarded, lionized, and quoted approvingly? Or did their friends distance themselves in shame and try to bury the offending words?)
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 3:34 PM
heddle,
Unfortunately, that's all I could find of the Hannity quote. I can understand your doubting it, but I've unfortunately been unable to find the broader context at this point. Skepticism isn't inappropriate.
I agree, there's not much we can (or should) do about this kind of stuff.
All we can do is talk about it and bring it to light. Certainly I wouldn't advocate censorship, but calling people out for what they said is just fine.
Pensy,
That list doesn't really provide a counterpoint. There are a few people saying that an individual who is also a conservative should be killed, but that's a much different sentiment than calling for the death of conservatives as a group.
Plus it's pretty lame. Is this seriously the best the right wing could come up with? Saying that Clarence Thomas' wife should feed him a lot of eggs and butter so he gets heart disease and dies young? Giving Gary Bauer the flu?
Oh, the humanity!
Posted by: unicow | July 29, 2008 3:40 PM
For what it's worth, the conservatives (no.. neocons) I regularly spar with frequently pull out the "liberals are a physical threat to this country and should die" rhetoric. And they're dead serious. At first, I thought they were being hyperbolic.
And incidentally, they admit to regularly listening to Limbaugh and watching O'Reilly. These people are their heroes.
That said, they don't actually go out and shoot up churches filled with liberals. Despite their massive frustration, they are content to exist within the political boundaries we've constructed.
The thing is, these sorts of inflammatory statements DO push people over the edge who were already considering, or are prone to considering, extremist behavior. It's a well-known phenomenon in which a person who was not previously planning an extreme event, when exposed to a catalyst, will quickly adopt it as a rational course of action. This is one of the reasons you do not discuss assassination in reference to presidential elections.
Posted by: Patrick | July 29, 2008 3:51 PM
Raging Bee and unicow,
Re. Pensy's list.
Oh, come on, some of them (assuming they are accurate and in context) are pretty nasty. Invoking justice to infect Helms and his grandchildren with AIDS? And why the arbitrary restriction to American yahoos? Maybe some American nut case thinks Charlie Booker is a political and cultural savant. As for not having heard of some of them, I confess the same--but then again I never heard of the Hal Turner creep until today.
The "oh, but those aren't the same thing at all!" argument doesn't seem particularly stout, in my opinion.
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 3:54 PM
Just a note for those of you returning from Patterico's list of liberal "eliminationist rhetoric"--there's a huge difference between saying "I wish Person X were dead", and "Someone oughta kill all people with attribute X", and if you can't tell the difference, I pity you. Similarly, there is a difference between a someone no one has ever heard of saying something eliminationist, and a person with a nationally syndicated show that reaches millions--how much more could I censure the unknown person, ignore him even more? Also, Farrakhan is not a liberal (or a conservative), he is a black separatist with theocratic leanings.
Posted by: Shygetz | July 29, 2008 3:54 PM
At the very least right-wingers seem to have the idea that they can specify who's allowed to be a US citizen. Even HW Bush claimed that atheists had no right to citizenship.
Posted by: Taz | July 29, 2008 3:57 PM
Can Justice be swayed by rhetoric? No? Now if he would have said "You oughta go and jab Helms with an AIDS-infected needle" that would be wrong; if you said "You oughta go and jab ALL conservatives with an AIDS-infected needle", that would be akin to what eliminationist conservatives have been filling the airwaves with for almost a decade.
I restrict myself to yahoos who have an American media platform, because I can affect these yahoos by my dollar-votes. I don't spend much money in Britain.
Had you heard of Michael Savage? Bill O'Reilly? Ann Coulter? Rush Limbaugh ("I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus -- living fossils -- so we will never forget what these people stood for.")? Now, let's line them up against well-known liberals pundits like...Richard Cohen (who visciously targeted the vast category of Newt Gingrich) and, er...well, he's the only columnist or pundit who said someone ought to be killed. We can stoop to comedians, if you like (yeah, Chris Rock telling a joke about beating up Ken Starr is EXACTLY like Michael Savage saying all liberals should be executed by vigilantes).
For the "a pox on both your houses" gambit to work, both houses should be equally poxy.
Posted by: Shygetz | July 29, 2008 4:06 PM
i think unicow gets things mostly right in this thread of comments. we absolutely cannot assign blame to anyone but the shooter, but that absolutely does not mean that we should not have a discussion about what influenced him. it's frustrating when people seem to insist that we must be completely extreme in how we discuss things. it is perfectly valid to place no blame for this crime on the pundits while still wanting to discuss the societal repercussions of what they are preaching. like it or not, these pundits reach a pretty wide audience, save, perhaps, for this turner fellow of whom i had never heard.
also, it has been mentioned several times that some of these statements are simply hyperbole and should therefore be dismissed as inconsequential. i don't know if classifying them as hyperbolic even gets them off of the hook.
e.g. - he didn't really mean KILL them, he just meant beat them up pretty badly.
perhaps one could argue that they are just jokes and we should all just relax. but maybe joking about killing those who don't share your political views isn't so funny, at least when it's done via a major media outlet.
Posted by: sdg | July 29, 2008 4:14 PM
Shygetz,
Why do they have to be equal?
To the right kind of nut, Totenberg's statement about Helms might have been viewed as a great suggestion.
At any rate, comparing who is "worse" seems a bit silly--like those asinine debates where people try to add up the number of people killed by religious regimes vs. the number killed by secular regimes.
Arguing "but the other side is even worse," especially when the criteria are rather arbitrary, is to "hang your jaikit is on a shoogily nail" if ya ken what I mean.
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 4:22 PM
Invoking justice to infect Helms and his grandchildren with AIDS?
Well, that's pretty much what Helms effectively did to others, every time he resisted any Federal attempt to deal with the (then incurable and untreatable) epidemic, and every time he joined with other right-wing idiots like Phylis Shlafly in rooting for the epidemic, not their fellow humans. So all in all, the anger behind that statement was perfectly understandable, if not justifiable. Hey, at least he/she didn't wish that fate on every right-winger on Helms' side -- there were plenty of them.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 4:25 PM
At any rate, comparing who is "worse" seems a bit silly--like those asinine debates where people try to add up the number of people killed by religious regimes vs. the number killed by secular regimes.
There's nothing silly about that at all. It's called facing reality. We almost always have to choose, not between a good party and an evil one, but between two parties each with significant evil elements. Therefore we have to figure out which party is the least evil, and support that one in the hope of achieving incremental improvement in our conditions. Those are the choices we inevitably have to make, at least until Jesus or some other good deity shows up undisguised and runs for high office.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 29, 2008 4:31 PM
Raging Bee,
Listen to yourself! The threat or death wish against Helms was legitimate? That is not much different from Hal Turner arguing "they got what they deserved."
Do you really want to take the position that "at least the hate speech from our side is understandable and justified."
Posted by: heddle | July 29, 2008 4:32 PM
If no one is influenced by anyone else's writing, or speech or music or other form of expression, is everyone who expresses him or herself simply doing it for his or her own pleasure or satisfaction?
I'm skeptical that our favorite polemicists think that they are writing in a vacuum, and are not trying to influence the way people think. Going a step further, I am skeptical that our favorite polemicists are not trying to influence the behavior of their readers/watchers/listeners.
When the drum to hate your neighbor is ceaselessly beating, some people are going to start to dance.
Posted by: bybelknap, FCD | July 29, 2008 4:46 PM
heddle,
As Shygetz pointed out, we're dealing with apples and oranges here. We've yet to get an example of a prominent liberal saying that conservatives as a group should suffer some sort of harm. I'm actually a little surprised by that, since no doubt there are some who think that way.
If Hannity, O'Reilly, et al just stuck to bashing individuals who also happen to be liberals I personally wouldn't care one bit. They don't. They bash liberals as a group.
To get back on topic a bit, it was liberals as a group that Adkisson blamed for his woes. Sure, maybe he was mad at Nancy Pelosi and Ted Kennedy too, but he didn't go to Washington. He went to kill some liberals.
As far as relevance to the shooting, the question remains whether the demonization of liberals as a group by the right-wing media had any effect on him.
There are lots of enemies you can pick to blame your troubles on. Why did he go with liberals? And did the violent rhetoric towards "liberals" affect his actions at all? Would it have been different if he had blamed his troubles on immigrants, or women, or businessmen?
I don't know, but they're questions that may be worth asking.
Posted by: unicow | July 29, 2008 4:59 PM
As disgusting as I find O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter etc., I am not at all in favor of silencing these idiots. First Amendment and all...
However, these hateful morons have a national soapbox with viewers in the millions, and what WOULD be appropriate is to link their bile with incidents like this shooting in such a way that they were shut down. Shame them out of the limelight and back into the lunatic fringe where they belong.
Posted by: Rick R | July 29, 2008 5:29 PM
To the right kind of nut, it might have been.
However, Jim D. Adkisson, an entirely real and non-hypothetical person, used a real gun to blow away actual liberals, and he wrote a four-page letter saying exactly what he was doing and why.
There's your first difference.
Furthermore, as people keep pointing out to you:
1) Helms was a single person who took deliberate, personal actions that exacerbated the AIDS epidemic because he felt the victims deserved to die. It would have been perfectly just if he'd found himself infected with the plague he helped to spread. Saying this is not the same as saying that he should be injected with HIV...and even that (which would be wrong, in my opinion) is not the same as saying that all conservatives are responsible for exacerbating the AIDS epidemic and should be injected with HIV...and even that isn't the same as repeating "all conservatives are responsible for exacerbating the AIDS epidemic and should be injected with HIV" into listeners' ears for years, writing books based on it, generally making it part of the national discourse in hopes that, by instilling people with this hatred of conservatives, you can get them to follow a liberal agenda. You're not comparing apples and oranges, you're comparing a few apples to a truckload of watermelons.
2) No one here is suggesting that Limbaugh, Coulter, or Hannity be charged with a crime, or even assigned ultimate blame for what was, in the end, a crazy man shooting up some people because it's easier to retaliate against humans than bad luck. Still, it would be nice if they showed even the slightest hint of remorse for any part they might have played in helping him choose his target. Stephen King doesn't allow his early novel "Rage" (a story about a high school student taking his class hostage decades before such things became tragically common) to be published anymore, because it was found amongst the belongings of several actual school shooters, and he didn't want any part in helping such things happen. Will the right-wing hate machine do the same?
They've been calling people witches for a long time now, and telling people that witches poison the wells and sour the milk and call up storms to sink ships. If they genuinely didn't want someone to get burned, maybe they'll rethink their rhetoric. But somehow, I don't think so.
Posted by: Seraph | July 29, 2008 5:33 PM
I'll avoid the "which side is nastier" debate, to observe that I don't think the joking-or-hyperbole defense really works. If I (being just an oridinary schmoe) say that a particular public figure should suffer some sort of violence, I'm likely to find myself investigated for making threats, hit with restraining orders to stay away from them, etc. Why should loudmouths (on either side of the political aisle) with a radio show or news column be able to get away with it? At what point does trash-talk become threats or incitement?
Posted by: Eamon Knight | July 29, 2008 5:38 PM
Ed,
while your point is well taken, i disagree that it is the EXACT same argument. just for argument's sake, would you consider a show that depicts a killing the same as a show that instructs or explicitly encourages its viewers to kill?
Posted by: sdg | July 29, 2008 5:52 PM
I may be skipping too near the line of reductio ad hitlerum here, but "scapegoating"/ "eliminationist" rhetoric gives me the willies, thanks to what happened in Rwanda, 1994. Maybe there should be a "reductio ad genocidus" or something.
But when one group is made into Them - to which We must be vs. - it's not a far step then to start dehumanizing that "type" of person. Genocide doesn't necessarily follow, of course (and neither do random killings by disturbed people), but nothing positive can come from when a whole group of humans (gay people, ethnicities, poor people, liberals, women, certain religionists, etc) is devalued.
Susan Benesch has said it much more coherently than I could, in Inciting genocide, pleading free speech (media in Rwanda):
Posted by: marnk | July 29, 2008 6:51 PM
Seraph wrote:
Along these lines, if all we had to worry about were the Adkisson's of the world, we'd probably still be better off.
Far more common, and far more insidious, are the mundane and daily acts of discrimination, oppression and outright violence that I fear we are sometimes blind to.
While that pathetic little creep in Montreal was murdering random people for being "feminist", millions upon millions of women all over the world are laboring daily under the kind of oppression that this loser could only dream of and wave an ineffectual and misplaced gun at. Adkisson killed a few liberals while millions of gays and other political and social undesirables are being oppressed and likely murdered in innumerable and unimaginable ways. Ways Adkisson probably couldn't conceive of. Ways that if we thought about would prevent us from sleeping at night.
I don't want to blame Hannity or Coulter or the Wahabi schools for what Adkisson did, I want to blame them for the daily suffering of millions. Which, in most of the world it appears, is the norm, not the exception. Adkisson is the exception. I don't want to minimize their crimes, but it seems like these pathetic, mentally ill, gun waving losers are little more than convenient targets.
Posted by: Leni | July 29, 2008 7:55 PM
What a debate. Full of sound and fury...
Posted by: James Hanley | July 29, 2008 8:16 PM
James, meet the intertubes. Intertubes, meet James :P
Posted by: Leni | July 29, 2008 8:27 PM
What the fuck is all this discussion about the merits of a purported Totenberg death wish on Jesse Helms' grandchildren? Did anyone try to follow that link? It was a nonexistent URL. For all we know, the statement is made up.
Posted by: bullfighter | July 29, 2008 8:39 PM
Leni, I suppose I deserved that!
("When I was a kid," he said in a raspy, cantankerous voice, "intertubes was what we done use for floatin' down the crick."
Posted by: James Hanley | July 29, 2008 9:18 PM
fwiw, the totenberg quote appears in a recent op-ed piece in the boston globe. they include a messed up link to an mp3 so here is what it should be (i think). i have not listened to the audio clip.
http://www.mediaresearch.org/audiobias/vidclips/1999/1995-07-08-Totenberg.mp3
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/07/09/dancing_on_the_grave_of_jesse_helms/
Posted by: sdg | July 29, 2008 9:46 PM
sdg,
From the audio:
"I think he ought to be worried about what's going on in the good lord's mind. Because if there's retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion. Or one of his grandchildren will get it."
That's where it ended.
Posted by: unicow | July 29, 2008 10:21 PM
Retributive justice on his grandson? Totenberg needs to take some courses on the theory of justice.
Posted by: James Hanley | July 29, 2008 10:34 PM
"Has some prominent conservative guru actually, and I am not talking about a poor attempt at humor, called for someone to kill liberals or gays?"
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/03/eliminationism-in-america-appendix.html
I can not fathom how hate-mongers are not responsible for their hate-mongering. Should Hannity or Savage or O'Reilly be legally responsible for this act of violence? No, of course not. Should they be held ethicially accountable in the court of public opinion for routinely demonizing "liberals" or "S-P"s as radical terrorist loving treasonous communist fascists who want to destroy America? Yes.
I noticed that a few months ago I got a quasi-death threat in response to a post I wrote about Michelle Malkin loving the hate-mongering of Ann Coulter that mirrored the pretty much exact sentiments of the killer. The individual suggested that "all liberals should be killed, pronto."
http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/07/when-t-warriors-attack.html
Posted by: Hume's Ghost | July 29, 2008 10:52 PM
Re: Rwanda
http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2008/05/radio-rush.html
Posted by: Hume's Ghost | July 29, 2008 10:57 PM
The shooter was obviously mentally ill and angry about not having a job and/or his divorce. He was probably going to kill anyway, but he targeted "teh ebil libruls" because he identified them with all that was wrong in his life. Or, he targeted that church congregation because his wife was a member.
That is as far as you can really go and people should not be trying to score cheap political or rhetorical points over this. Leave that for the right-wingers. We are supposed to be more enlightened than that.
Posted by: Andrew | July 29, 2008 11:27 PM
Recognizing that the issue is not as simple as "the guy was just crazy" is not scoring "cheap political points." The fact is that there are many pundits out there, some of them prominent, who have called for violence against liberals (both on an individual and a collective basis). I don't think anyone here is advocating holding any of these talking heads responsible for this particular crime, but these partisan hacks in the media have absolutely contributed to a poisonous political culture, and if any of them have a moral bone in their body they will reconsider some of the things they have said.
Posted by: Sadie Morrison | July 29, 2008 11:47 PM
http://www.webcitation.org/5ZhDdV9PL
Posted by: Grammar RWA | July 30, 2008 6:04 AM
Sadie Morrison and others:
"...if any of them have a moral bone in their body they will reconsider some of the things they have said."
Well, there's the rub, they don't have a moral bone in their bodies, they don't have any love in their hearts and they sold their souls years ago. They are conscienseless pricks whose only motivations are self aggrandizement and making money.
I don't want anybody to shoot them. I hope their loving God doses them all with colorectal cancer or something equally painful and lets them die slowly.
On the bright side, that asshole Ted Stevens (Scumbag, AK) is indicted. Swwwweeeet!
Posted by: democommie | July 30, 2008 7:07 AM
Sadie @ 11:47
Yes. This is true. However, to claim that the partisan hacks should be held responsible in a legal sense as some earlier posters were saying is not a good move.
Let us just shine a light on them and say that a crazy person took their hateful rhetoric to heart and it was the thing he fell back on in his madness. They need to wind the hyperbole back quite a few notches and not alienate people as they are fond of doing (probably for shallow reasons like ratings).
I dunno Sadie. I despise what these people say on such a regular basis and I see from abroad the divisions it fuels, but they have their free-speech rights too. One can only hope that they moderate themselves of their own accord.
Posted by: Andrew | July 30, 2008 7:27 AM
Totenburg:
James Hanley:
Ever read the Bible, James? It explicitly states that children should be punished for the sins of their fathers even to the TENTH generation. Hell, the whole idea of "original sin" takes it even farther, dooming the entire human race to eternal torture for one imaginary mistake thousands of years ago. This is the kind of nonsense our culture is steeped in. No sane person would consider that "justice". But when you start seriously invoking the wrath of an invisible man in the sky, you've pretty much given up any pretense of being a sane person.
Posted by: phantomreader42 | July 30, 2008 8:52 AM
The problem is that these talking heads are not going to tone down the rhetoric. I fully support their right to say almost whatever they want. It is going to take their sponsors removing ad revenue and the court of bi-partisan public opinion condemning them in order to stop the vitriol. The fact remains that these talking heads are providing a service that a certain segment of the population (on both sides of the political spectrum) is more than willing to pay for. Until their bottom line is suffering, the comments will continue.
I think in the case of Adkisson, he already felt this way about the liberals and all that Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Reilly did was simply reinforce that worldview. These commentators gave his life some sense of validation. The fact remains though, he acted alone; he acted with pre-meditation (note, fully expecting to meet his own demise, driving past other churches of a more conservative stance, 70 something rounds of ammunition which would have required reloading). I do not think this incident alone is going to have enough financial backlash in order to tone down the rhetoric. Go to the Free Republic and see what the comments are about the TVUU-they are not a 'real' church/just because you shielded someone doesn't mean an automatic trip to heaven blah blah blah...In some ways, this incident has given a sense of community to these groups.
Posted by: Donna | July 30, 2008 9:20 AM
I can't find this story at the Fox News website. They are all over the guy who shot his lawnmower, though.
Posted by: Robski | July 30, 2008 9:39 AM
Listen to yourself! The threat or death wish against Helms was legitimate?
heddle, I know that you know that I never said such a thing. I said the anger behind the statement was understandable if NOT justifiable. I never used the word "legitimate." (I just checked.) Think and chilll a bit -- I KNOW you're smart enough to understand the difference.
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 30, 2008 9:41 AM
Robski: was the lawnmower Unitarian?! Enquiring minds want to know!
Posted by: Raging Bee | July 30, 2008 9:43 AM
OK, anybody who calls this Totenberg quote "hate speech" is officially an idiot.
Posted by: bullfighter | July 30, 2008 10:43 AM
Same for anyone who calls it a "death wish" or "angry" something.
Posted by: bullfighter | July 30, 2008 10:44 AM
And "same for anyone who" quotes out of context from random sources.
Eg, most of the quotes in pensy's cite were either dead links, by people of limited fame or interest making often tasteless but nonetheless off-the-cuff asides, or comedians who rather by definition are assumed not to be taken seriously. But Andrew Cockburn stood out like a sore thumb.
And sure enough, the quote is from the leadin paragraph of a quite serious article. One might quibble over whether Cockburn exceeded the bounds of literary license in that paragraph, but it's a Marceau-quality stretch to offer it in context as an example of "leftish hate speech".
- Charles
Posted by: ctw | July 30, 2008 12:39 PM
for the record, it was Alexander Cockburn (i still giggle every time i read/hear that surname). he does have a brother named Andrew though.
Posted by: sdg | July 30, 2008 1:16 PM
http://patterico.com/2007/03/05/leftist-hate-speech/#comment-205919
good post talking about the dates of the "leftist hate quotes". i hadn't even thought about that part of the "equation".
Posted by: sdg | July 30, 2008 1:22 PM
"was the lawnmower Unitarian?! Enquiring minds want to know"
I don't know, but now that it's dead it will probably be baptised LDS. :)
Posted by: jba | July 30, 2008 1:36 PM