Soapbox

    The reactions of Sarah Palin and the extreme-right media to last week’s horrible events have been predictable and instructive. They both came out swinging against the true enemy- progressives- and spoke up in brave defense of the real victim, which was not those who were attacked in Tucson, but was, of course, Sarah Palin.
 

   It seems clear from their reactions that Palin and her camp genuinely do not understand the criticism they are getting over this and can only explain it as the left-wing "lame-stream" media being out to get them. That's because for them, the eye of every storm and the subject of every event is Sarah Palin. They live in a  Palin-centric world and can't understand that the rest of us do not. And so, from the land where other things still matter, I offer this explanation for at least my outrage.

 

     Whatever your opinion on whether she should or should not have posted rifle-scope bulls-eyes over the districts she wanted defeated (many of whom subsequently had office windows and doors smashed) what Sarah Palin clearly should not have done was to grab for the spotlight on the very day when America’s hearts and minds should have been turned to those who were hurting in Arizona.  Instead of simply expressing grief and her prayers for healing  the nation, she called for the cameras to express her outrage over her own suffering in the most venal and self-absorbed way imaginable.

 

    “But Sarah was being attacked unfairly” her defenders cry. “People were saying she was responsible for this tragedy!”
     Indeed. While "free speech" does not mean speech that is free of consequences, she was certainly not directly responsible for that shooting, and such a charge, where it was made, was unfair. (Most were not saying that, only that she employs violent rhetoric far too casually) 
 

    Still, it was probably an uncomfortable position she found herself in. Gee, I wonder if maybe President Obama doesn’t feel the same when he gets accused- by Palin herself!-  of planning to let handicapped babies die and setting up “death panels” to kill off old people?  Oh he has walked in Sarah’s victim shoes and then some.  
    He also knows just how it feels to have one of those “cross-hairs” on his back, after Sarah whipped up campaign crowds to such a frenzy of hatred against him that some were shouting “kill him!”… and then winked at the cameras.

 
    But did he step up to the podium in Tucson and talk about his suffering? Did he try to make sure we all felt sorry for him that day,  for having to appear in public with your loved ones, knowing that national figures are getting obscenely rich from calling you Hitler? Or did he do what a true leader does: put aside his own personal situation, focus on the humanity that unites us, rise above differences and try to lead us all- progressives and conservatives and all the folks in between- to a place of healing?
 

    Palin should have at least tried to do the same. If nothing else, she could have kept her mouth shut. It often shows a fine command of the language to know when to say nothing. She could have tried to keep the focus where it belonged- on the families and the community that had been wounded. (Reality check Sarah: a woman whose district you "targeted" has a hole in her head, and grieving parents are about to bury their child.Your own personal angst, while real to you, should have been secondary.)
    Doing that would have demonstrated leadership, which something Sarah can't even fake, because she fundamentally does not understand it. So she went on the attack and whined for national attention over her own small pain, because she thinks a leader is whoever has the biggest mouth and grabs the most attention.
 

    In her defense, being told that you should have toned down your rhetoric IS exactly like being accused of drinking baby’s blood as part of a dark religious ritual… isn’t it? Apparently it is to the extreme right, who defended her mis-appropriation of the term “blood libel” by trying to co-opt yet another huge genocidal horror and shrink it down to fit in their own pathetic little victimized pocket, calling media criticism a “pogrom”.

 

    Perhaps next we’ll hear that white Christian conservatives are being “lynched” and forced to “walk a Trail of Tears” because sorry slaves and Indians, no one can be allowed to have suffered more than they do. They do not count their blessings; rather they magnify their paper-cuts into the wounds of martyrs. See how they bleed, and how their suffering makes them superior!
 

     Hyperbole is all too common in America.  It happens every day through use of simple expressions, like the hungry businessman who says he is “starving” when he has no concept of what actual starvation is like. Certainly by saying it he intends no disrespect to famine victims!
     But I expect that if that same businessman who missed lunch had occasion to visit Africa and to witness true victims of starvation: match-stick thin parents and their listless, bloated babies, he would never use that term casually again.

    And isn’t this all we ask of each one of us in the wake of the Tucson shooting: that we think more before we speak, and consider that our words have meaning? For if they do not, why do we  bother to speak them?
    Either your calls for an “armed and dangerous” citizenry and “second amendment remedies” mean you are actually prepared to see the blood of children in the street… or you know that your words are only hot air!

    In which case, please, just exercise your right to remain silent.