There's been so much focus on Sarah Palin's crosshairs map. It reminds me of the kerfuffle during the 2008 election over the number of heads of states that she had met. The McCain campaign hurriedly rushed good old Sarah from country to country meeting rulers who gained legitimacy from meeting with a sitting US Senator and presidential candidate. After she had been to five or six countries the McCain campaign seemed to say “see, now she's met heads of state”. The entire point was that her lack of relations with foreign leaders was indicative of her foreign policy inexperience. Likewise, this crosshairs map is indicative of the type of tone she was striking. There seem to be a lot of people who don't get that.
But beyond the outsize place in the debate this simple map has been given I'd like to point out that it's probably not even the best example of the national debate having become so corrosive. War and sports metaphors have always been a big part of our political discourse. Sarah's “don't retreat, reload” statement may be 'neck and in poor taste, but it's certainly not what would drive a madman over the edge. In the end one can tell that Sarah's gun references are slightly playful and primarily meant to remind voters of her supposed huntress roots. (Sarah missing a caribou five times and not seeming to know one end of the gun from the other on her own show). If Sarah's words are to be “targeted” so to speak, the real issue lay in statements like her death panels assertion. Or when she led voters to believe that Barack Obama was essentially a terrorist. The real issue isn't martial word choice, it's when national figures fabricate a story so dire that it leads some to think that voting just isn't sufficient.
Let's venture into the mind of someone who owns one or more books by Glenn Beck. Say for instance, that the president was a radical Muslim with ties to terrorists who wasn't even born in the United States. And now let's say he wants to turn the country into a statist system similar to North Korea. He wants to take away your means to defend yourself from that, hike taxes up to ridiculous proportions and then throw you in a concentration camp if you don't pay up. The opposition doesn't have the gumption to stop him and most of the country doesn't seem to care. That's a problem. That's like, a BIG problem. At the same time people one a national news network regularly tell you that an armed revolution might be the only way out. There must be something to what they say for them to reach millions of viewers. I mean, there are politicians even who speak of “second amendment remedies”! For somebody that doesn't quite have their head screwed on straight sacrificing their freedom to take a few shots at a congresswoman might seem like a noble thing.
Conservative media doesn't need to spew all of this. There was a real debate within the healthcare bill. It didn't have to be about fake death panels. There is a real debate about government spending without purposefully confusing European socialism and Soviet socialism. In fact, within just about any issue on the political docket of this country there exists a real debate. Glenn Beck pouring gasoline on one of his aides isn't necessary. It is my opinion that if everybody in the country read the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and the CSMonitor, and the NYTimes instead of watching Andersen Cooper and Hannity this wouldn't have happened. The conservative media's M.O. is to scream that the sky is falling. To get ratings their liberal counterparts have to be just as shrill or even more so. And who hears this on a nightly basis? One of the most heavily armed populations in the world. “The sky is falling” is the problem, not idiot Sarah Palin's stupid map.
But beyond the outsize place in the debate this simple map has been given I'd like to point out that it's probably not even the best example of the national debate having become so corrosive. War and sports metaphors have always been a big part of our political discourse. Sarah's “don't retreat, reload” statement may be 'neck and in poor taste, but it's certainly not what would drive a madman over the edge. In the end one can tell that Sarah's gun references are slightly playful and primarily meant to remind voters of her supposed huntress roots. (Sarah missing a caribou five times and not seeming to know one end of the gun from the other on her own show). If Sarah's words are to be “targeted” so to speak, the real issue lay in statements like her death panels assertion. Or when she led voters to believe that Barack Obama was essentially a terrorist. The real issue isn't martial word choice, it's when national figures fabricate a story so dire that it leads some to think that voting just isn't sufficient.
Let's venture into the mind of someone who owns one or more books by Glenn Beck. Say for instance, that the president was a radical Muslim with ties to terrorists who wasn't even born in the United States. And now let's say he wants to turn the country into a statist system similar to North Korea. He wants to take away your means to defend yourself from that, hike taxes up to ridiculous proportions and then throw you in a concentration camp if you don't pay up. The opposition doesn't have the gumption to stop him and most of the country doesn't seem to care. That's a problem. That's like, a BIG problem. At the same time people one a national news network regularly tell you that an armed revolution might be the only way out. There must be something to what they say for them to reach millions of viewers. I mean, there are politicians even who speak of “second amendment remedies”! For somebody that doesn't quite have their head screwed on straight sacrificing their freedom to take a few shots at a congresswoman might seem like a noble thing.
Conservative media doesn't need to spew all of this. There was a real debate within the healthcare bill. It didn't have to be about fake death panels. There is a real debate about government spending without purposefully confusing European socialism and Soviet socialism. In fact, within just about any issue on the political docket of this country there exists a real debate. Glenn Beck pouring gasoline on one of his aides isn't necessary. It is my opinion that if everybody in the country read the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and the CSMonitor, and the NYTimes instead of watching Andersen Cooper and Hannity this wouldn't have happened. The conservative media's M.O. is to scream that the sky is falling. To get ratings their liberal counterparts have to be just as shrill or even more so. And who hears this on a nightly basis? One of the most heavily armed populations in the world. “The sky is falling” is the problem, not idiot Sarah Palin's stupid map.
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