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COMMENTARY
January 12, 2011
Words & deeds
While it did not quite rise to a blood libel, the headline in Monday's Guardian (U. K.) did not fail for want of trying: "Gabrielle Giffords shooting reignites row over right-wing rhetoric in U.S."Elsewhere in the Guardian, the distance was bridged. Consider this heading (over a piece by Michael Tomasky): "In the U.S., where hate rules at the ballot box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time: The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords may lead to the temporary hibernation of right-wing rage, but it is encoded in conservative DNA." The New York Times approach was a bit smoother: "Bloodshed puts new focus on vitriol in politics." But throughout what conservatives call the Main Stream Media, the insinuation that "the Tea Party," talk radio, and Sarah Palin, were behind the shoot-up in Arizona was dripping from every wall. Indeed, it has been a good example of vitriol in journalism, gone over the edge to batty. The advantage of insinuations over hard arguments is that they bypass critical thought. No one can respond precisely to a charge that is utterly vague or to accusers who will envelope any reply in a poisonous fog of further insinuations. The best that can be said is that the accusations in question here were fatuous. Yet they were also entirely predictable, given the extraordinarily low standards in contemporary political debate. Alas, the confusion between words and deeds is at the heart of much contemporary journalism of all political persuasions. The editors at Fox News, for instance -- hardly left-wing trolls -- immediately posted and continued updating a "profile" of the gunman, in which instant analysis was provided of the various rants he had deposited on the Internet. "Rants verging on the paranoid," they glossed. (As a sometime editor, I thought they could delete "verging," and shorten that to "paranoid rants.") Glancing through the excerpts that were offered, I myself noticed: 1) ambiguous and essentially incoherent views on the U.S. Constitution; 2) unambiguous atheism; 3) the interesting position that "grammar is a form of mind control." (On this last, I've often wished it were more effective.) To my own intimate correspondents, I immediately observed that, "the MSM will have Jared Loughner packaged as 'the brains behind Sarah Palin' in no time." This, in turn, was quite predictably "balanced" by the Drudge Report, which soon found a blog link to an old schoolmate of Loughner tweeting that he was, in her recollection, a "left-wing pothead." Another instant memoir said (and I condense) that the kid was OK until he went down with alcohol poisoning, dropped out of school, and became "quiet and philosophical." A friend in Texas flagged this, with the facetious comment, "Must have been the philosophy." To which one may only facetiously reply, "Yes, Socrates would have shot up political rallies in ancient Athens had they not had good gun control in those days." It is strange, in a world where (thanks to omnipresent media) we are aware of the behaviour of so many psychopaths, that we have so little understanding of the distinction between rational and irrational psychopathic behaviour. For psychopaths come in both kinds. The one who assassinated Salmaan Taseer last week -- the governor of Pakistan's Punjab province -- had a coherent reason for doing so. Taseer had come to the defence of a Christian woman, monstrously convicted of "blasphemy" under Pakistan's Shariah code and scheduled for execution, after a minor altercation with her Muslim neighbours. He was murdered by an Islamist fully intending to intimidate other Pakistani politicians. When the accused, Malik Mumtaz Qadri, was arraigned, supporters showered him with rose petals. Demonstrations in his favour were held here and there. Now compare. I have yet to learn of a single Tea Partier who has tried to justify the alleged behaviour of Jared Loughner, let alone celebrate him as a hero. On the contrary, the condemnation of him from Republicans of all shades was spontaneous, and comprehensive. No other response was conceivable. So what is this hand-wringing about? The motive behind it is obvious: to tar political opponents. And there is no excuse for this. For every "incendiary" or "vitriolic" remark made on the right of the U.S. political spectrum, a matching remark may be found on the left. The tarring is hypocritically selective. And it is consequential. The further intention behind these smears is to advance "hate speech" legislation for the very purpose of silencing opponents in debate. Words are not deeds. The distinction between them is written deeply into the history of our common law. It is a distinction that is crucial to a free society. If words can be prosecuted as if they were deeds (except in the most extreme situations), we cannot discuss anything openly. The paradox is that the kind of words that have, historically, risen towards deeds, were blood libels. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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