[stylist] The Tragic Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords

[Judith Bron]

Chris, You seem willing and able to point a finger at people you don't agree 
with to a mentally ill  person who left his house with a weapon of mass 
destruction and headed for a place where a politician was meeting 
constituents.  He pulled the trigger, some people were injured and others 
died.  The teachers and students at his college reported his strange 
behavior and the school kicked him out until he got help with his emotional 
and mental disorders.  Since the atrocity it has been concluded by some 
mental health experts that he is a Schizophrenic, but I'm not sure which 
category of this illness he fits.  Obama has come out with hate speech 
against Republicans and those on the right.  What do you call making anyone 
who disagree with him sit at the back of the bus?  You're so willing to 
believe anything negative about those you disagree with that you can't 
fathom anyone on your side of the fence doing anything wrong.  As for the 
day after MLK was assassinated you weren't in a very integrated school 
watching the nicest guys in the world come through the door with guns in 
their pockets.  You weren't scared out of your mind witnessing fires started 
in hallways.  Blacks were outraged at the death of MLK.  I can't blame them. 
It was despicable.  However, not every white in the country had the desire 
to kill black people.  As for the hate that perpetrated the holocaust we can 
probably go through a year of emails and you probably will never understand 
the hate and derangement that perpetrated such an abomination.  You didn't 
go to school with the children of holocaust survivors.  I doubt you met a 
person with a number tattooed into their wrist.  I doubt you ever met 
someone who lost an entire family in the gas chambers and wondered why he or 
she survived the atrocity.  I doubt you ever met someone who, after going 
through such horror, decided to start their life over with another person 
and live as a productive member of society.  Chris, hate speech is heard on 
both sides of the aisle.  As for the perpetrator of this crime his friends 
say that he was apolitical.  He didn't like an answer Congresswoman Giffords 
gave him at another event.  You are so fixated on the hate speech of the 
right that you won't even acknowledge the hate on the left.  You are so 
ready to blame that you won't look at the murderer's past, the influences in 
his life and the lack of the presence of other influences.  Judith
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Kuell" <ckuell at comcast.net>
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 4:15 PM
Subject: Re: [stylist] The Tragic Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords


> 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
>
>
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