The Politics of a Tragedy - Tea Party Must Be Guilty

Gabrielle Giffords, a congresswoman from Arizona, was shot today while having a townhall of sorts at a local Safeway.  Luckily it seems that the congresswoman will survive the shooting even though she was shot through the head.  According to reports she was even talking before being sedated to reduce the pressure on her brain.  Sadly, many others were not so fortunate and at least five have died, including a federal judge and a nine year old child. My deepest sympathies to the families of all the victims for this senseless loss of life.

Before anything was known about the shooter many automatically decided that somehow the Tea Party is to blame for this tragedy.  Both Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck's name came up on some comments I saw when I was looking up to see if the congresswoman was still alive.  The reports about this shooting have been fuzzy at best and conflicting reports about if Ms. Giffords survived were all over the internet and television news. 

Jane Fonda and Paul Krugman couldn't even bothered to wait until more information was known before they decided to weigh in and blame the right for this horrifying act of violence.  Krugman came out with his statement before the name of the shooter was known and what the press was reporting was that he was a war vet.  There is enough information about the shooter now for Krugman to realize that this is a matter of a very delusional young man who didn't seem to have grip on reality.  In one you tube video he is burning the American flag, in other he has a diatribe about the constitution and mind control. 

His favorite books according to his you tube page are as follows:

I had favorite books: Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno

Not exactly the books you would find in the library of any tea party member.  But so far Krugman has yet to make a retraction of his statement.  After all, why let facts get in the way of the narrative that he has been creating since the beginning of the tea party movement. 

Politicizing the murder of five people and the injury of at least 10 others before the facts are known is irresponsible as well as being intellectually lazy.  This young man seems to have many problems and may very well be delusional.  There are reports that he had met the congresswoman before.  But this seems to be a statement from a woman who says she knew him in high school.  So, we have to wait and see if that actually pans out.  

While it is understandable for some of the reporting to be incorrect during the fog of the incident, this is not about the fog.  This is about wanting to blame your political enemies for a horrid act simply because you are trying to prove that your belief system is superior.  But, all these two have proven is that they are lazy and wrong.  This woman wasn't gunned down by some crazed right winger because Glenn Beck told him to, or by some graphic that Sarah Palin released about a year ago.  This was a sad and sick man who had no real core or any sense of compassion to fellow human beings.  Comment on that Paul and Jane, maybe then you can get back some of your creditability.