[stylist] The Tragic Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords

[Chris Kuell]

Judith,

As an opinion piece, this reads okay. As a persuasive essay, I think it 
falls short. Your theme appears to be 'don't blame the tea partiers', which 
is your opinion. You say that the killer (and I greatly prefer President 
Obama's position of never mentioning his name) was deranged, mentally ill, a 
hater, etcetera. I would say these things are likely true, but I (and you) 
don't know that for a fact. Although I find murder reprehensible, not every 
murderer is insane or full of hate. Similarly, you write 'Reading Loughner's 
sketchy biography the hatred that possessed him to pull that trigger didn't 
come from Tea Parties, Conservatives or Republicans, but from an inner demon 
that could control the mind of a person, lead him to a place where he could 
buy a weapon, accompany him on his trip to the mall where Ms. Giffords was 
meeting constituents and the same inner voice compelling him to pull the 
trigger that severely wounded Ms. Giffords and countless others while 
murdering others gathered for the meeting with their Congresswoman.' This 
sentence is rather long and clunky, but more importantly, you have no idea 
whether tea party and right wing rhetoric contributed to his actions or not. 
You say that he read hate filled texts like Mein Kompf and Communist 
Manifesto, but is Sarah Palin putting cross-hairs on democratic districts 
not another, less subtle form of hate? Have you ever listened to Sean 
Hannity or Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly or Rush Lintball? I would say their 
daily vitriol is laced with hate. In a Newsweek poll, greater than 30% of 
tea partiers still believe Obama is a Muslim. People like Palin have 
propagated this idea, using the same tactic Hitler did (ignorance) to turn 
Germans against the Jews.

Judith, I'm sorry to sound harsh, but you are the one pointing fingers when 
you write, 'While in the process of blaming the Tea Party movement ask 
yourself these questions.' And I apologize again, but your 
questions/analogies don't work for me. Did anyone really blame dishonorably 
discharged veterans in Kennedy's death? Did people blame all whites for MLK's 
assassination? Or all Arabs in Robert Kennedy's death? Of course not-these 
questions are ridiculous. But as a nation we did consider how whites 
interacted with blacks, and notice the inequities. We did question the 
wisdom of our gun laws, of the political polarization of the times, and took 
a step back to question where do we go from here.

Obviously, the tea partiers and right wingers didn't pull the trigger last 
Saturday, and I am praying that all Americans reflect on their hate-speech 
and tactics. But when I read opinion pieces like yours, I don't feel 
hopeful.

Chris