Political rhetoric blamed for Arizona shooting

The news spread quickly. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was fighting for her life after a deranged gunman went on a rampage in a scene that is becoming all too familiar in this age of mass shootings and homegrown terrorists. The shooting in Arizona left six people dead, including a federal judge and a nine-year-old girl.

The Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 sparked intense debate about gun violence, gun laws, the system of treating mental illness, and the media's coverage of these types of tragedies. Since the shootings by a Virginia Tech English major, hundreds of people have been injured or killed in similar events. The media has been blamed for inciting copy-cat incidents, played out by people with mental problems and a paranoid hatred of government policies.

Not long after the Arizona massacre, news stations were playing an interview with Giffords from last march urging Republicans, especially Tea Party members, and specifically Sarah Palin, to cool the rhetoric. Palin had posted on her Facebook page showing her congressional district in the crosshairs of a gun.

The gunman's motive is not yet known, but in Arizona's Pima County, Sheriff Clarence Dupnik suggested "all this vitriol" in recent politics might be connected to the shootings. "This may be free speech," he said at a news conference, "but it's not without consequences."

The debate has spread at a speed unprecedented even in the age of the Internet, with liberal bloggers and social media commentators blaming the attack on Palin and the violent imagery evoked by some Tea Party candidates and other conservatives during the recent midterm elections.

In a Facebook posting, Palin did not address the past language she has used but offered her condolences to the shooting victims. It was widely reported in blogs and in the media that Palin has taken down the crosshairs map from her web page.

The attack on Giffords comes after what has been a particularly ugly season in American politics, especially when it comes to last year's passage of the health care reform bill. Last March, the glass door of Giffords' Congressional office in Tucson was smashed in the middle of the night.

"Community leaders, figures in our community need to say 'look, we can’t stand for this'", she told Chuck Todd on MSNBC a few days later. "This is a situation where the rhetoric is firing people up and, you know, for example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list. But the thing is that the way that she has it depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. And when people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that action."

"But in fairness, campaign rhetoric and war rhetoric have been interchangeable for years," Todd said, and then asked, "And so, is there a line here? I understand that in the moment it may look bad, but do you really think that’s what she intended?"

Giffords' response: "You know, I can’t say, I’m not Sarah Palin. But I can say that in the years that some of my colleagues have served - 20, 30 years - they’ve never seen it like this."

Giffords brushed off Todd’s idiotic comments that campaign rhetoric has borrowed from war rhetoric over the years, noting that it’s much worse now than it ever has been.

Thomas Hollihan, a USC professor of political rhetoric, said people like the Arizona shooter "get affected by a kind of toxic political culture that makes them angry and paranoid that their government is being taken away." But he warned against coming to any conclusions. "People who commit crimes like this are often just unhinged," he said.

The information slowly coming out about the alleged shooter, 22-year-old high school dropout Jared L. Loughner, did not suggest he had any clear political motivation. Although he complained in online diatribes about terrorism and "mind control", what drove him to violence has not been established.

"We don't yet know what provoked this unspeakable act," President Obama said from the White House. "But we're going to get to the bottom of this."

While we still have no clear explanation of the shooter's motive, and we may never know (so far he's invoked his right to counsel), Saturday's shooting set off an eruption of anger, much of it by bloggers, but also on Web sites like Twitter and Facebook. If you spend any time online, the Tea Party seems to be the number one instigator, getting most of the blame, followed closely by Arizona's permissive gun laws and conservative media pundits such as Glenn Beck.

When asked by The New York Post if his daughter had any enemies, Giffords' father responded: "Yeah, the whole Tea Party."

In this age of the Internet, when figuring out who is responsible for the political rhetoric that set this tragedy into motion, it doesn't take long to see who the clear winner is. It's Sarah Palin.

Paul Solomon Changes Format

If you have been paying attention the last few days, you may have noticed a change in the format of this blog. Originally started as way of communicating a short paragraph of my daily thoughts, the commentary got longer and longer as the days went by. Because of this, and because of reader feedback, I am adding paragraph breaks.

On Friday, I was writing about the over-the-top media frenzy surrounding disgraced South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, who a day earlier had given a long and rambling news conference explaining his disappearance from the state for six days while he was having an extra-marital affair in Argentina. In mid-sentence, Michael Jackson died. I had to switch gears and change the subject. Hence: paragraph breaks.

My wife was on her computer and she yelled over to me that Michael Jackson was hospitalized. I walked over to her computer and on her Twitter feed, the words came up that stunned the nation and the world: "Michael Jackson died." The news came that fast. One second he's hospitalized, the next second he's dead. A day earlier he was rehearsing for a comeback tour which was to start in London.

The world is a different place than when I was a kid - when Walter Cronkite wiped tears from his eyes after telling the nation the John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. The news filtered slowly through a cumbersome method of news gathering such as the Associated Press news wire, the land line telephone, and fact-checkers who had to wait in line for verification before confirming events. There was no cable news and no Internet, so hours went by before we got official confirmation on the evening news. Walter Cronkite was the bearer of bad news. But there was a certain comfort hearing it from "Uncle Walt".

When Michael Jackson died, the news spread throughout the world instantaneously. Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites helped spread the news. Rumor turned into facts in a matter of minutes, and within a half-hour of his death, Michael Jackson was the story on every channel, and not just the news channels.

As news of Jackson's death came in, nearly every broadcast station cut away from regular programming to report on the sudden events. The cable channels stayed with the story almost exclusively for the next few days. Other news topics were ignored, although there wasn't much to report about Jackson, other than he most likely died of cardiac arrest. The rumor that drugs played a part in his death came in slowly, but we had heard drug rumors when he was alive. Once this issue was explored, the media spent hours looking for news that wasn't there.

To say the media was unprepared is an understatement. The biggest news that came out was that people were originally putting flowers on the wrong star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The pop icon's star was covered up by a red carpet for a premier of Sasha Baron Cohen's movie "Bruno". 73-year-old English-born radio personality Michael Jackson's star covered by flowers and surrounded by fans of the other, more famous Michael Jackson. Of course, the dead Michael Jackson happened to be more famous than anyone.

No matter what you may think of his private life, the eccentric oddball with the common name was anything but common. The lawsuits and legal settlements, which caused embarrassment but never a conviction for anything, are a thing of the past. His fans are numerous, and he is even bigger in other parts of the world. There are those who haven't forgotten the scandals that plagued Jackson over the latter part of his life, and many people believe he is guilty of something. But there's no denying his popularity, and in death, Michael Jackson is being remembered for his groundbreaking musical career.

The best-selling album of all time: "Thriller". Now, thanks to his death, Michael Jackson is again outselling everybody else. A day after his death, Amazon.com announced that sales of Michael Jackson's music were up 721 times what they were before he died. That's 72,100%. Correct me if I'm wrong.

For the record: Because news events happen so quickly, and I type over 75 words a minute, I am no more immune to mistakes than other news outlets. I said in Friday's column that toxicology reports would be released in a little over a week. The actual time is four to six weeks. So, now, even though we are getting other news mixed in with news of the death of "The King of Pop," expect the story to continue.

We've heard from Quincy Jones, Liza Minelli, Elizabeth Taylor and even Corey Feldman. Larry King has turned up little-known friends to interview. Michael Jackson will remain in the news for awhile. And thanks to him, I'm now using paragraph breaks.

Father's Day News

The protests in Iran over the recent election results are taking over the airwaves on cable news. Although no foreign reporters are allowed in the Iran, social networking sites are allowing citizens to send information via Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Images are being shown on the TV news from the cell phone cameras of ordinary citizens. It's disturbing and hard to watch, as Iranian anti-riot police use clubs, tear gas, water cannons and in some reports, guns, to combat protesters. In America, in order to balance the violent images coming out of Iran, we look for the lighter news that can give us something to laugh about as we celebrate Father's Day. The "cocaine-in-the-frozen-shark" story became old news when a man in Oklahoma was mugged for his bologna sandwich, with a street value of 76 cents. Now we find out that a city in Florida has a new dress code that requires city workers to wear underwear and use deodorant. The city council in Brooksville north of Tampa recently approved the "personal hygiene" code. Last week's report about a man who set off fireworks in a bathroom in an Arby's restaurant, blowing up a toilet, was upstaged by a story on Friday about two wayward cows in Massachusetts who went AWOL from their farm and walked over five miles into New Hampshire. Nashua authorities tracked down the cows with the help of concerned citizens, who called 911 with reports of the stray cows. Thursday's story about a Washington man who drove over three miles on I-5 in reverse is still being talked about around the water cooler. But the story last week about an Indiana lawyer who was found asleep headfirst in a neighbor's trash can after a night of drinking has been largely forgotten. Then there's the story of the New York woman who has been dead for six years who showed up at the DMV to get her driver's license. Actually, it was her son, Thomas Parkin, who dressed up in drag, reminiscent of the movie "Psycho". The incident happened in April, but the Associated Press has picked up the story and is running with it. It's spreading through all the major Internet news sites. As new information comes in, we're finding out that Parkin impersonated his mother for over six years and has collected over $100,000 in Social Security and housing benefits using her identity. Although he's been caught on the DMV security cameras dressed in drag, Parkin still professes his innocence. He is awaiting trial at Riker's Island on larceny and fraud charges, and he is giving interviews from prison. Parkin has reportedly hired a publicist, and this is one story that won't go away. That's OK. We need a little levity on Father's Day.

Twitter Takes On Facebook

According to the cover story in this week's issue of Time magazine by Steven Johnson, Twitter is "changing the way we live, and showing us the future of American innovation". In this age of short attention spans, Twitter is the one social networking site that adapts perfectly to our fast-paced lifestyle, and is adaptable to most mobile devices. Twitter is gaining on social networking sites like Facebook because it is quicker and more efficient. The 140-character limit allows users to publish "tweets" from anywhere using their laptops or Blackberrys. Although Twitter still trails Facebook, the Nielsen ratings service shows that it's usage has grown by 1,298% since last year. Indeed, Facebook has grown by 217% in the same one-year period, and Twitter is still way behind, with 17.10 million visitors in April of 2009 compared to 71.29 million for Facebook. Because there are so many demands on our time, and many different ways we can spend it on our computers, hooked up to the Internet, Twitter is growing precisely because of it's limitations. Originally, people scoffed at the 140-character updates that limited people to just a few short sentences. But, according to Johnson in his Time article, "hearing about what your friends had for breakfast is actually more interesting than it sounds." Instead of one "tweet," we end up with an endless stream of small messages that can add up to a media event. For instance, Britain's oddball talent show sensation Susan Boyle gained Internet acclaim largely through Twitter chatter, with links to her YouTube site, where views reached record numbers. As it turns out, with millions of people using Twitter, the way it is being used is changing constantly, and it's the users themselves who have been redesigning the site. For example, the grouping of a topic or event called a "hashtag" (#inauguration, for example), the use of the @ symbol for replying to one another, and the ability to search a live stream of "tweets" were all developed by users, not Twitter itself. Thanks to these innovations, following political debates or discussions about our favorite TV shows have become commonplace. "It's like inventing a toaster oven and then looking around a year later and seeing that your customers have turned it into a microwave," wrote Johnson. Twitter is still evolving, and whether it continues to grow at the current astounding rate is not what's important. The fact that such a simple idea can create such a powerful form of communication shows us that anything's possible. In this economic climate, when banks and car companies are going bankrupt, an idea as simple as Twitter is an example of thinking small and making it big. The founders of Twitter reportedly turned down a $500 million offer from Facebook to purchase the site and they may be waiting for a more lucrative offer. Who knows, it might be worth a lot more. I'm just trying to figure out how to put all my ideas down in 140 characters or less.

Baby Boomers Flee Facebook

The most popular social networking site, Facebook, recently passed the 200 million mark. However, over 650,000 baby boomers, those in the 55-to-65 year-old age group, have quit Facebook in the last couple of months, according to news reports coming out this week. While their parents are fleeing the site, though, 18-to-25-year-olds are more than making up for the unexplained flight of the older folks. In the same period, over 2 million of the 18-to-25-year-olds have signed up, and they're spending more time on Facebook. There is speculation that as young people, faced with the current economic downturn, find themselves out of school and unemployed, they are trying to find ways to waste time and distract themselves. Meanwhile, their parents are finding other, more productive ways to live their lives. One reason might be that the over-55 crowd hasn't figured out how to use all the nifty new updates that have recently been added to the site. Young people are more adaptable when it comes to maneuvering around difficult Internet applications. Also, in light of the economic crisis, baby boomers are laying off the extra-curricular Internet use during office hours, just hoping to keep their jobs. It seems that the news of massive layoffs has made the workforce more productive. And as older people put retirement on hold, it's the younger people who have time on their hands. The time-consuming social-networking site lures people in with chain-letter tactics such as the "25 things about me" letter that went around last month. And Facebook remains the gamer's destination of choice, with distractions such as "Texas HoldEm" and "Who Has the Biggest Brain." Games like "Mafia Wars," which started out on Internet sites such as MySpace, have gained massive popularity on Facebook, especially with younger users, who are jumping ship from MySpace to Facebook - and it's not just recent college grads with no job and time on their hands. MySpace has catered to teenagers, and adults never caught on. As teenagers grow up, they are turning to Facebook in record numbers. Their parents, though, are putting more energy into productive things like keeping their jobs, baby-sitting the grand kids, renting movies, visiting friends, and taking walks. And they're actually talking to people in person and using the land-line telephone (remember, they grew up without cell phones). Maybe they're on to something.