"Clarabelle Dopenik." That's what one wit on the popular conservative Web site freerepublic.com called Clarence Dupnik, the Pima County, Arizona sheriff who turns 75 this week. Elected continuously since 1980, he is the public face of the investigation into the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 19 others. He is also, according to bloggers on that site, "an incompetent unhinged sonofabitch" and "a jerk" "using this tragedy for baseless, cheap political shots."
Sheriff Dupnik's crime was decrying
"the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.... When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government -- the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous, and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital.... People tend to pooh-pooh this business about all the vitriol we hear inflaming the American public by people who make a living off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it's not without consequences."
The problem with Sheriff Dupnik's calling out vitriol, blogged one conservative, was that it was actually "calling out Rush, Glen[n], Sean and Fox!!!!!" Dupnik was, wrote another, "inciting violence accusing Rush, tea parties, Palin, and Republicans of bigotry and murder."
What threatened the right the most was losing control of the national political narrative. Until the slayings in the Safeway parking lot, the master story had been the triumphant G.O.P. sweeping into Congress to repeal "the job-killing health care bill." But as of Saturday, the new story connected the dots between the inflammatory rhetoric of McCain/Palin events in 2008, the ugly confrontations at congressional town halls in the summer of 2009, the "lock and load" cackling of the 2010 campaign - and the cultural climate of the Tucson murders. Within the space of a few hours, the story had been transformed from a revenge narrative (Obama brought low) to a soul-searching meta-narrative: How has our society come to this season in hell, and what must be done to heal us?
The right's panic about this shift was palpable. Wrote one Free Republic commenter on the day of the shooting, "Right now, I would be interested to see the smart response from Republicans. If I was John Boehner, I would be in Arizona. As a speaker of the house, he needs to be there and meet the family before Obama goes to Arizona and gives a big speech to change the topic of the nations [sic]. Next 24 hrs is crucial till Glenn Beck and Rush come to air on Monday."
But there was no need to wait for Glenn and Rush to come to their narrative's rescue. Politico.com, a site widely read by journalists and politicians, soon reported that Sheriff Dupnik had "established himself as one of the leading liberal voices in a state that boasts only a handful... Local conservatives are quickly spinning his comments as those of a partisan." The headline of the Politico piece -- "Liberal Ariz. sheriff Clarence Dupnik sees cause of violence" -- eliminated any daylight between those local Republican spinners and the Beltway media channeling them. With Dupnik branded a liberal, the troubling thought that American public discourse had taken a wrong turn had been reduced to garden-variety lefty partisanship.
A New York Times columnist found another way to denature Sheriff Dupnik's condemnation of vitriol. He wrote that political leaders who cry "tyranny" and "socialism" aren't trying to incite hysteria; rather, they're "so amused with their own verbal flourishes and the ensuing applause, that -- like the bloggers and TV hosts to which they cater -- they seem to lose their hold on the power of words." Vitriol is theater, a reality show with a studio audience. Rush is just an entertainer, Glenn is just a rodeo clown and the pols are just playing to the peanut gallery. Cut these guys some slack. Hyperbole's great for everyone's ratings. Who can blame them for getting carried away?
If this tragedy is going to be a teachable moment, the lesson won't be found by determining whose vitriol is warranted. It will be found instead in what the vitriol is actually about. And that, as Sheriff Dupnik nailed it, is "tearing down the government."
In the 1970s, the "sovereign citizen movement" was still a paranoid fringe. "Its adherents," explains the Anti-Defamation League, believed that "virtually all existing government in the United States is illegitimate and they seek to 'restore' an idealized, minimalist government that never actually existed." In the decades since, this right-wing anarchism was domesticated and became mainstream. Today it demonizes the federal government, federal programs, public employees, taxes and regulation. It accords scriptural authority to the Constitution, but it is in denial about the powers that charter assigns to the central government. It is blind to the "common welfare" that "we the people" task the government to promote, maintaining instead that the patriots who won our revolution wrote a document whose sole purpose was to protect freedom from the encroachments of the loathed central state.
In truth, American government is a miraculous equilibrium between individual freedom and mutual responsibility, the one and the many, the local and the national, the personal and the public. The Constitution isn't holy writ; it's a living document whose text and meaning have evolved through the centuries. "Government is the problem," said Ronald Reagan. He was wrong. The problem is bad government, and the job of every generation is to make it work better, not to drive a stake through its heart.
Killing government is the mission of an assassin. The vitriol in our national bloodstream is the crackpot notion that killing government is the mission of the rest of us.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater: Needed: Dr. King in Tucson
Priscilla Warner: How to Sit Still When Tragedy Strikes
Roll back -- Tide? Hate? Enemy? Entrench?
How come these words used by Liberals are OK and when used by Conservatives they are inciting and wrong?
Regardless of his personal ideological or political opinions these shootings were done by a totally delusional and mentally unstable crazy person.
For the sheriff or anyone else to use this horrible event as an opportunity to blame politicians, political pundits or radio talk show commentators on either side is inappropriate.
Yes, there is an ongoing vicious, often hateful political dialogue between those on the left and those on the right. However, we should ALL be in total agreement that this event was an awful, tragic, terrible, result of a serious ill and crazy individual. Our thoughts, prayers, and comments should be supportive of those killed and injured, and to their families and friends.
The guilty man runneth where nobody chases.
There has been extreme rhetoric from both sides in years past, but in recent years republicans cornered the market, went a step further into hate speech, and ignored all warnings about the effect it could have on troubled minds. And now, even with all those good people, dead some still don't want to stop.
The problem is that there are some people who just don't care. they're so sore about losing in 2008, that they value their pleasure at winning above other people's lives, and they're desperate to avoid facing that fact, lest their better nature prevail and make them stop.
And if any of them are reading this, I'm not too proud to say it.
Please. Please, Stop. before anyone else gets hurt.
If it's good enough for the goose...
If visual depictions of crosshairs on a political opponents are wrong for one side they are wrong for bothsides.
Chcikens have once again come home to roost.
This tragedy is evidently not that connected to the Tea Party rhetoric...Jared Loughner doesn't have the shrine to Glenn Beck that Knoxville shooter David Adkisson did.
However, the double standard is very evident. In 2008, John McCain tried to connect Barack Obama to Bill Ayers, who had become a law-abiding citizen by the time Obama met him. McCain himself was closely connected to a nonrepentent G. Gordon Liddy, who was busted before he could carry out those plots of a terroristic nature.
If it's wrong for us to use this incident, the Republicans should apoligize for all the more tenuously connected plots they alarmed us about.
So what's the solution? I say make Congress as comfortable as possible: Don't send e-mails; don't go to public events; don't do any volunteer work; don't make campaign contributions; and most importantly, don't vote any more. Election time will come and Americans will stay away from the polls, 0 votes cast or a de facto vote of no confidence. Congress will be confused, but they won't be able to say they are living in fear of losing their lives. Lots of kids on the streets of the South Philly are, though.
Will we ever learn, will we ever tone down the rhetoric and try to discuss the issues rationally?
Limbaugh and Beck, on the other hand, have accused democrats of playing politics and refused to take any responsibility, therefore they continue to be part of the problem, and are leading the way back to the toxic debate that caused this.
I have never called anyone a tea-bagger, but I apologise on behalf of those who have called you one, but you must see that Limbaugh saying he want this president to fail, and Beck attacking the presidents 11 year old child were unacceptable and offensive things to do.
I heard Beck's apology. Where's Limbaugh's?
In my opinion Democrats have 'played politics' regarding this tragedy, and it sickens and saddens me that they would do this. If anything, we should set politics aside, and come together as Americans and as human beings to pray for those who were killed or injured, and for their families and friends.
She described him as "left wing" and "quite liberal" and "oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy." Parker described him as a "pot head" who was into rock music, though she hadn't seen him since 2007.
Nothing. Nothing at all.