I think we are losing sight of what needs to be talked about in the wake of the assassination attempt on Ms. Giffords on Saturday:
Tone and taking responsibility for how we use language and symbols, particularly at a national level and particularly in politics.
I should add: are Democrats blameless puritans in all of this? Of course not. Does that reduce the culpability of Ms. Palin? Of the Tea Party? Nope. She’s still responsible for her words and actions. No one has taken that away from her.
Are conservatives afraid to be contrite after one of their own continually uses threats of violence and imagery as well as campaign events where guns are shot at photos of a U.S. Representative who was shot? To me, it appears that conservatives are very afraid to talk in these terms. It’s all about “they do it, too!”
That’s not intellectually honest and doesn’t move the conversation beyond yelling at each other. I could make a snide, snarky remark here, but that won’t help, either.
I’ve got a much longer post coming detailing why I feel the issue of campaign rhetoric is so important, particularly in a larger, historical context.
In the meantime, this is a great post talking about one of the key issues that people are bringing up around the use of bulls-eyes and crosshairs. Dems use bulls-eyes(scroll down a bit), GOP/Tea Party uses crosshairs. If we’re assigning levels of severity, targets are less vicious than crosshairs, particularly when paired with language like “Reload!”.