Following a valiant but ultimately futile fight for life following the tragic shootings in Tucson, journalism was officially declared dead yesterday.
For four days, the biggest story in the news was a story that the press and politicians made up; that Jared Lee Loughner was influenced by a "climate of hate" created by conservatives who called for fiscal responsibility, transparency in government, and return to the principles of our Constitution.
And it wasn't easy for the press; in order to keep the story going, they not only had to manufacture their talking points, they had to ignore all of the real facts.
But yesterday, in the biggest unauthorized disclosure of "top secret" information since Wikileaks, a friend of Loughner's confirmed that he never watched the news and wasn't interested in politics. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal (a newspaper which archaically still relies on facts) published Loughner's online rants in which he lambasted teachers and cops, claimed that college girls enjoy rape, and said that he was disturbed by his inability to find a job.
Sarah Palin has labeled the press's actions "blood libel," and she's exactly right. And while Hope n' Change is strongly against curtailing free speech, we believe that libel should still be punishable in a court of law...and that every politician and member of the press who has babbled about the rightwing "climate of hate" in the past week should find themselves in the dock.
Although ironically, their actions have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a poisonous "climate of hate" being aggressively pushed in America.
And they're the pushers.
Lesson Two: This is not an elbow.
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