Heed the Prophetic Words of Whoopi Goldberg

The View's Whoopi Goldberg Compares Today's Politics to Talk That Got People 'Lynched' in the '60s
The View's Whoopi Goldberg on Tuesday compared today's political environment to that of when she was a child, talk that led to people get "lynched." Discussing Last week's Arizona shooting, she warned, "When I was growing up, people talking and saying things, whipping folks up, caused a lot of people to get lynched." Continuing this theme, she added, "Now, had those people not done all that, would it have happened any way? It may have. I don't know. But I...

Blood will be on your hands, Whoopie Goldberg warned talking heads in March
Stumble This! Whoopi Goldberg may not be the best of talents when it comes to picking scripts that will become breakout hits as films, but she certainly seems to have absolutely nailed a prediction of what America's political discourse would become in an era of ubiquitous violent Rhetoric. During a March 2010 broadcast of ABC's daytime Talk Show "The View," co-host Joy Behar called out "an Al Qaeda Christmas Card" circulated by Fox News employee Sarah Palin, showing a map of the US with gun sig...

Zev Yaroslavsky: A Time to Cool the Rhetoric
On Saturday morning, before she was shot, Gabrielle Giffords was performing one of her most vital duties as a public servant. She was meeting with the public. The Arizona congresswoman knew there were risks; last March, the windows of her office were shattered after her vote for Health Care reform. During her hotly contested campaign for Reelection, gun gimmicks and imagery abounded. On a map on Sarah Palin's political action committee's website, Giffords' district was among a number that had ...

Supporters urge Palin to hit back at liberal critics on Giffords shooting
Sarah Palin has stayed mostly silent on the Arizona massacre. This may be smart for her in the long-term - and if so, she is right to take the long-term view. After all, at this point no one should second-guess Palin’s political instincts . You do not rise from PTA mom to the head of the conservative political stratosphere by making dumb moves. Facing a firestorm of unwarranted criticism over gun metaphors that her enemies claim fed the heated political climate surrounding the Tucso...

Rick Santorum Opposes Bullseye Ban
By Grant Bosse (MANCHESTER, NH) Rick Santorum doesn’t want to restrict Political Speech in the wake of this weekend’s shooting in Tuscon, Arizona. The former Republican Senator discussed calls for toning down fiery political Rhetoric following the attempted Assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on Saturday, which left six people dead. Congressman Robert Brady (D-PA) has proposed banning cross-hairs and bullseyes in political ads, as liberal commentators have tried to tie accu...

Congressional leaders lay blame for Tucson killing
Partisan representatives and their aides have slung Rhetoric over the circumstances that led to the Murder of 6, and the wounding of 14 more, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, last weekend.  While Obama assured the country that “the perpetrator of a heinous crime” would be brought to justice, Democrats and Republicans slumped into their comfort zone.  Most media outlets have concluded that Jared Loughner, the man who held the gun, is mentally unstable, yet politi...

Barbara Walters Feels Sorry For Palin
During a View discussion on the Giffords shooting, Barbara Walters said that she feels sorry for Sarah Palin, who she feels is being unfairly singled-out in the wake of the Arizona shooting. All four members of the panel had strongly denounced Palin's crosshairs map when it was first published. Labels: Barbara Walters, Elizabeth Hasselbeck, Gabrielle Giffords, The View, Whoopi Goldberg New! Share this on Facebook: Share ...

Citing Shooting, Congressmen Eye New Curbs on Political Speech
Shortly after the shooting of Rep. Giffords (D - AZ) in Tucson on Saturday, officials and pundits from across the political spectrum were looking to make political hay out of it, struggling to tie the shooter to some rival political faction or other. Now, however, a number of Congressmen are looking to turn that endeavor into a more concerted effort to introduce a series of new curbs on Political Speech, particularly political dissent, insisting that certain criticism of seated officials...

The costs of protecting our elected officials against an assassins bullet
In light of last Saturday’s tragedy, the U.S. Congress is working an abbreviated schedule this week. Legislative action has been suspended through Wednesday of next week so that our elected leaders can join the rest of the nation in mourning a senseless tragedy. Once work resumes, the House is expected to entertain a proposal to extend armed security protection to all 535 members of Congress at all times. The idea, which is understandable in the light of recent events, has its roots in the...

The Extreme Rhetoric about Extreme Rhetoric (With Bonus Fake Sinclair Lewis Fascism Quote!)
I’ve yet to see any of those pundits and Bloggers that wished, hoped, prayed that they could wring political points out of the awful crime in Tucson concede that their immediate suggestions (because the smart ones always include a smattering of weasel words and phrases; “probably,” “could be”) that the gunman was a disgruntled Tea Partier were spectacularly wrong. Alas, no one has admitted that they jumped the gun, that political considerations dictated their response to the M

Demagogues And The Right
A reader writes: The question that remains is clear enough at this point:  Even though we can’t with any degree of confidence draw a connection between political demagoguery (as Mac Donald rightly terms it) and the violence, why should we accept and tolerate, even encourage, the demagoguery? It’s telling that, with the exception of MacDonald and one or two others, no one on the right, and certainly not the usual suspects (Limbaugh, Levin, Palin, Beck, etc.) are willing to acknowledge...

GOP Rep: Loughner's Beliefs 'The Liberal Of Liberals'
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) says political Rhetoric doesn't really incite violent behavior at all -- but not before describing Arizona shooting suspect Jared Loughner as a "Communist" and "the liberal of liberals." "This guy appears to be a communist," Foxx told the Winston-Salem Journal. "His beliefs are the liberal of the liberals [sic]. There is no evidence whatsoever that this man was influenced by Sarah Palin or anybody in the Republican Party. This man is not a conservative; he's a fan of ...

Extremist Rhetoric, Violence and American History
The massacre in Tucson has generated a major and intense debate across the country about whether the overheated political climate—the Rhetoric, the “vitriol, “Extremist Speech”—has influenced or motivated the Tucson shooter to commit his dastardly crime. Just as reflected in the commentary on this site, the national opinion runs the gamut, from holding the shooter solely and 100 percent responsible, to holding personalities such as Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh solely and 100

Both Sides Arent The Same
The big difference between right and left, as I and others have noted repeatedly, isn’t just in the amount of violent Rhetoric, but its source. On the liberal side, it only occasionally comes from movement leaders. On the right, it regularly does. It comes from opinion leaders, political leaders, and media leaders, and the more heated they get, the more popular they get. In the past 2½ years, prominent Republicans have stoked the fires of Extremism. During the 2008 campaign, Palin acc...

Video: Winning BCS National Champion Quarterback Cam Newton gives credit to God in a post game interview
When you've been given a gift, you give credit where credit is due: A perfect example of the First Amendment in action. Exit question: will liberals also get their panties in a wad over Cam's use of the word "execute" several times in the interview as somehow inciting the next Arizona deranged lunatic shooter with hateful Rhetoric? ...

Freedom for Speech We Fear and Freedom to Fear It
sjgibbs80/flickr In the past few days, I've been asked repeatedly how a liberal free Speech advocate reacts to the debate about violent, Extremist far-right Rhetoric. At first, I instinctively engage in self-censorship, having learned over the years that you cannot criticize inflammatory speech, or worry publicly about its possible consequences, without unintentionally Lending support to Censorship campaigns. You can't speculate about the possible anti-social effects of anti-social Speech with...

Sheriff Clarence Dupnik Isn't Who You Think He Is
Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has become something of a liberal hero in the last few days, speaking out against the "vitriol" of today's political climate and dubbing Arizona "the Mecca for prejudice and Bigotry." As the left accuses the right of inflaming the political debate, Dupnik has been a prominent voice blaming heated Rhetoric for Jared Lee Loughner's attack, which left six dead. But, as Slate's Christopher Beam finds, the sheriff is a bit more complicated: But a look through Dupn...

Daily scoreboard
1. From the Baltimore Sun: If the cold keeps up, the Chesapeake Bay may freeze over. First time in 7 years. Which was 2004. Which was one of those Hottest Years Ever. Under tough luck, you stole the Browns rule… GOOD. 2. From the Associated Press: “The Food and Drug Administration, which has long maintained that the Supreme Court freed it from any authority to regulate drugs used in executions, has quietly helped Arizona and California obtain a quick overseas source of lethal sodiu...

Citing shootings, Sen. Sanders solicits campaign donations
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) issued a Fundraising plea Tuesday in which he cited the Tucson shooting and accused "right-wing reactionaries" of contributing to a threatening political climate. "Given the recent tragedy in Arizona, as well as the start of the new Congress, I wanted to take this opportunity to share a few words with political friends in Vermont and throughout the country," he wrote at the opening of the lengthy plea for campaign donations. Sanders, who is up for Reelection i...

What Did Sheriff Dupnik Know and When Did He Know It?
The Arizona shootings have made Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, the man in charge of investigating the tragedy, a liberal hero for his comments targeting what he calls the "irresponsible" political Rhetoric of Conservatives. But he also has critics who say his department was well aware of Jared Loughner's mental instability and may have been slow to respond to death threats the suspect made in the months leading up to Saturday's rampage. You must login to comment. The Fox Nation is for thos...

NYC Tea Partier Thinks the Rhetoric is Coming from the Left
Manhattan Tea Party Leader David Webb said that left-leaning media organizations and polticians have been "irresponsible and despicable" in attempting to connect the Arizona shooter to the Tea Party even (Read more...) ...

Bill Clinton: Politics must change after Arizona attack
Source: BBC 11 January 2011 Last updated at 14:13 ET Former President Bill Clinton has told the BBC the US political climate must change after the shooting of a US Congresswoman and others in Arizona. "No one intends to do anything that encourages this sort of behaviour," he said. But political Rhetoric "falls on the unhinged and the hinged alike". He said political differences should not "degenerate into demonisation". Some commentators suggest the vitriolic political Rhetoric in the US may hav...

Whoopi: 'People Talking Caused a Lot of People to Get Lynched'
On "The View" on Tuesday, Whoopi discussed whether the Giffords shooting could be attributed to political Rhetoric: "When I was growing up – people talking – and saying things – whipping folks up – caused a lot of people to get lynched." You must login to comment. The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship. Read more... We invite a...

Facebook v. MySpace: Less is more when it comes to freedom in social networking
The past six months have marked a high-water mark for Facebook. The Social Networking platform is up to 500 million users and has been valued at as much as $50 billion. Further, one of the year’s breakout cinematic hits was the Social Network, about Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg. Compare all that to MySpace, the Social Networking site that will be forever tethered to Facebook in much the same way that Lou Gherig and Wally Pipp will forever be linked. Today, in a largely unnotice...

Maybe people just aren't buying it
Has the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson Saturday made Americans more worried that opponents of Barack Obama’s policies will turn to violence? Actually, a little less so, according to pollster Scott Rasmussen. When he asked the question last March, 53% of respondents said they were very or somewhat worried. When he asked the question again on Sunday and Monday, after the Tucson shooting, 45% said they were very or somewhat worried. Not the response I would have expect...