Sound and Fury

I know how everyone hates it when I use a news item -- especially a big and depressing news item -- to illustrate the validity of one of the opinions I'm regularly espousing around here. It's admittedly a pretty exploitative tack to take, but I never claimed to be above that sort of thing.

Which brings me, once again, to James Von Brunn and yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.

There's a decent piece in Salon.com this morning, written by Joan Walsh, that asks the same question you've heard here and a lot of other places recently: Does crazed right-wing rhetoric bear any kind of responsibility for the rash of far-right extremist attacks that have left more than a half-dozen innocent people dead since the inauguration of Barack Obama? Walsh succinctly expresses the implications of the paranoid fantasy-world nonsense that the right-wing echo chamber has been amping up lately:

"There's clearly been an uptick in rhetoric suggesting that white men are having their rights abridged by the Obama administration, especially since his pick of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. In a debate with (Pat) Buchanan a couple of weeks ago, he told me that what was happening to white men was exactly what happened to black men -- he didn't give me any examples of lynching -- and that it was open season on white men. Wealthy Sen. Lindsay Graham suggested an average white guy like himself wouldn't get a fair shake from Sotomayor, and now even the new face of the GOP, Michael Steele, has said the same thing. If I were a marginal, unemployed, angry, racist white man right now, I'd be hearing a lot of mainstream conservative support for my point of view. Can that help create a climate for more violence?"

That last question is, of course, one worth asking -- and I'm not going out on a limb of logic by saying that the answer is inarguably "yes." But the setup for Walsh's column wonders aloud whether right-wing media bullhorns like Fox News and talk radio, being ostensibly responsible broadcasters and taking into account the potential dangers of riling up the conspiracy-minded loonies, might finally ease back on the crazy talk in the wake of the violence. The answer to that question, of course, is "no." They won't change a goddamned thing because as far as they're concerned they're not responsible for any of this -- the murder of an abortion doctor, five cops and a security guard (so far) -- in any way. You can't make someone tone down their dangerous and incendiary rhetoric when they refuse to acknowledge that what they're saying is dangerous or incendiary. If anything, I'd be shocked if blowhards like Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity and so on didn't respond to this latest attack by shouting even louder (if such a thing is possible), their increased volume a natural reaction to having been persecuted by their political enemies for something they obviously had nothing to do with.

The real question though is: if they won't cut this kind of malignant shit out, what can anybody do?

We've come to a truly unprecedented moment in the evolution of the American media. Throughout history, the writers and broadcasters who practiced journalism and offered commentary in this country were, for the most part, responsible adults who understood the awesome sway they held over the public's imagination. They adhered to a gentleman's agreement that was largely unspoken because it didn't have to be spoken: You don't just go on the air or off to press spouting completely ridiculous, inflammatory crap without the slightest concern for the facts or for the potential consequences of your claims. You weren't running Fisher-Price's "My First Television Network"; the airwaves and print outlets weren't your own personal goddamned sandbox where you were king and could say whatever you pleased. Yes, you had the Constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech, but you knew full well that with that came responsibility -- and since you were a grown-up and not some asshole schoolyard bully obsessed with the sound of his own voice and drunk on his own power, you behaved accordingly.

Not anymore, though. The Limbaughs and Fox News Channels of the world don't behave responsibly. Very much the opposite, in fact. But what can be done about it? What do you do when someone stands there in front of you, like a bully does so well, a smug look on his face and his chin raised high, taunting you with the fact that there's nothing you can do to make him behave like an adult? The entire Republican platform these days seems to be based around the notion that you can't force somebody to do the right thing. So what can you do?

I honestly wish I had the answer, because if somebody doesn't come up with something quickly -- if average people don't stand up and tell these clowns to knock it off -- things are going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get better.

It's one thing to have a dissenting, even controversial, opinion and to express it. But if you can't do it responsibly, you don't deserve the forum that allows you to shout it to the masses.