Misinformation fuels climate of hate

A toxic level of misinformation has caused rising tide of frustration, leading to heated rhetoric, and creating a "Climate of Hate."

The shooting on Jan. 8 in Tucson, by Jared Lee Loughner, which left six dead and 13 injured was a tragedy. The twisted opportunistic media coverage of the events and dismal lack of factual reporting since has left me sad, sickened and feeling truly dirty.

Mixed reports whether Gabrielle Giffords was dead or alive were still streaming through the media when professional left and liberal hacks began the blame game. Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik kicked everything off speculating, "I think it's time as a country that we do a little soul-searching. Because I think it's the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out, from people in the radio business, and some people in the TV business that this has not become the nice United States of America that most of us grew up in."

Paul Krugman, New York Times pundit crowed, "it's the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence … Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right."

John Nichols at The Nation helped lead the Palin charge noting, "Giffords was one of 20 House members whose district was marked with a gun sight target in a SarahPAC message that had Palin telling her ardent backers: ‘It's Time to Take a Stand.'"

Another familiar New York Times columnist, Bob Hebert gave us this gem of wisdom, "By all means, condemn the hateful rhetoric that has poured so much poison into our political discourse … If we want to reverse the flood tide of killing in this country, we'll have to do a hell of a lot more than bad-mouth a few sorry politicians and lame-brained talking heads." It has been 30 years since the last assassination attempt on a U.S. lawmaker or as Hebert sees, a flood tide of killing. It is apparently also going to take a lot more than "bad-mouth" politicians and talking heads to stop the "hateful rhetoric that has poured so much poison into our political discourse." You know, fight fire with fire.

The right immediately went on the defensive. Loughner's favorite books include Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto, and he flagged a favorite YouTube video of a person dressed as a terrorist burning the American flag. A friend of the shooter described him as "left wing" and a "pothead" as recently as 2007.  In Loughner's YouTube videos he mentions leaving the religion section blank on his military application and laments receiving a mini Bible.  

As more and more information was revealed about Loughner the left tweaked the argument. Palin, Limbaugh and the Tea Party were responsible for creating what Krugman called a "climate of hate."

Then came the war of the words. Palin said: "Don't retreat, RELOAD!" Sharon Angle, a Tea Party favorite who ran against Harry Reid, used the unfortunate term, "Second Amendment remedies." Obama said: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," and "If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends.'" Chris Mathews of MSNBC said about Rush Limbaugh: "at some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp."

The "climate of hate" is far from one sided and misses the point. The blame for this tragedy rests neither with the right or left, conservative or liberal but with Jerrod Lee Loughner. He committed this atrocity, and it is despicable to turn this tragedy into a political food fight.

If we want to end the so-called "climate of hate," first we must end the climate of opportunistic deception where politicians and the media so easily turn every event into and excuse to perjure their opposition.