Shooting from the lip

Opinion: January 11, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times: The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is, of course, both heartbreaking and depressing. It’s been years since our country has been through the trauma of a political assassination attempt, and even the suggestion of one puts us on edge and stokes our fears. Nevertheless, the sane and rational approach to such an event is to stop, take a deep breath, listen to the facts — and above all, to condemn violence in the harshest possible terms.

That, however, was not the immediate reaction of many Americans, as anyone who was surfing the news Saturday morning is aware. Within minutes, hundreds of commenters were at work across the Web loudly seeking to appropriate the story for their own purposes, in many cases fanning it for maximum fear, and injecting it into the roiling narrative of anger, partisanship and paranoia that has taken over so much of the national political conversation.

Free speech is one of this page’s most fundamental values; we wouldn’t suggest for a minute that it should be curtailed for fear of its consequences. But we agree with President Clinton that people should assume responsibility for what they say, and we are both ashamed and embarrassed at the unreasoned and intemperate commentary we read Saturday.

Politics and Vitriol

Chicago Tribune “I have never stooped, my friends, nor will I now stoop, to the kind of vicious falsehoods, mud-slinging, and personal vilification indulged in by my opponent and his Commie pals.” — Cartoon caption, The New Yorker, 1956

On Saturday and Sunday, the shootings in Tucson, Ariz., demanded two urgent responses: Doctors needed to repair the injured. And law officers needed to learn whether the shooter had accomplices.

But as fresh news reports continued to erupt on the Internet, whole armies of commenters responded to a different imperative — a bipartisan yearning to lay blame and score points. Examples: Some commenters seized on accounts by longtime acquaintances of the suspect that he was a political “liberal”; other commenters blamed conservative talk radio for inciting him to violence.

This is, though, a moment to remind ourselves that living in a free society burdens us with a constant duty to calibrate our political attacks.

The point isn’t to quash free speech. It’s to ceaselessly attempt to balance robustness with civility, passion with restraint.

That mission, by the way, falls to every one of us — not just to those other people, over there, blinded by their foolish ideology to what’s obviously true.

Reject poisonous rhetoric

Seattle Times: Repudiating violent assault as a metaphor for political change is a fundamental response to the mayhem in Arizona.

Exploiting anger and frustration with images of firearms and violence as a credible political alternative is despicable.

This terrible tragedy calls for a loud, broad rejection by ordinary voters of these poisonous tactics. Our collective silence risks severe damage to our democracy.

Words matter. If not, the language, expressions and verbal cues would not be employed by those who use them so purposefully. Code words with a hostile intent.

Innocent bystanders become targets as the shooting outside a Tucson grocery story so lethally demonstrated. One cannot anticipate how high-caliber heinous vitriol will be translated by extreme and disturbed elements, but that is no excuse to dismiss such talk as colorful rhetoric.

Shootings’ troubling signs

Dallas Morning News: The motives behind Saturday’s shootings in Arizona remain sketchy, and signs abound that the main suspect is mentally unstable. Even so, the attack, which critically wounded Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed U.S. District Court Chief Judge John Roll and five others, adds a horrific new dimension to the political climate in our country.

Members of Congress are on alert and probably will remain so indefinitely. Politicians likely will think twice about public appearances and interaction with constituents. This is a tragedy in its own right.

This is a time to pause and contemplate the tone of our nation’s political conversation, which has grown increasingly confrontational since President Barack Obama’s election in 2008. Both sides have failed to rein in their extremists, who are pushing harder to portray moderation as a vice, not a virtue.

From the left, we saw full-page ads with screaming headlines like “General Betray Us” as the nation is engaged in very serious wars abroad. From the right, activists were encouraged to openly carry firearms at political rallies.

American democracy inevitably suffers when political differences morph from healthy, vigorous debate to open acts of intimidation.