Washington Post Hypes Anti-Giffords Vitriol at Home, Blurs Over Eric Fuller Death Threat
Nine days after the Tucson shooting, the front page of The Washington Post kept relentlessly recycling the debunked view that “vitriol” was the real cause of Jared Loughner’s Safeway shooting spree. In a story headlined “A place where passions run high,” reporters Kimberly Kindy and Philip Rucker explained Giffords couldn’t even shoot a campaign commercial without some foam-flecked conservative attacking her: A moderate Democrat in a classic swing district, she walked a main street where American flags hang outside shoe stores and barber shops. A voice-over emphasized her strengths: independence…courage…integrity. The camera rolling, a man stormed out of the Gadsden Hotel, a historic landmark. He screamed that Giffords was about to get “thrown out” of office, creating such a scene that police intervened. “He began viciously, verbally attacking Gabby,” said Jason Ralston, Giffords's Washington-based consultant directing the action. “I've never seen anything like it.” The man channeled his anger toward Giffords, but this was about much more than a lone congresswoman. He seemed to give voice to the long-simmering frustrations and passions in southern Arizona that boiled over during Giffords's hard-fought 2010 campaign. Pitched emotions – centered on the issues of immigration, health care and the economy – have fueled an atmosphere here that encourages vitriol, according to interviews with more than two dozen state political leaders and residents. Defenders of The Post could suggest that Kindy and Rucker did eventually turn to left-wing vitriol blaming the Tea Party for the killing (just as the Post had implied), but that’s low enough in the story (paragraph seven) to be placed neatly just inside the paper, on page A12. But their language is far too vague: Since the shootings, the co-founder of the Tucson Tea Party has endured death threats and hate mail that required law enforcement assistance, including a verbal threat made Saturday at a community gathering that included one of the shooting survivors. How does a “gathering” make a verbal threat? How can the Post beat around the very newsworthy bush that a shooting survivor is making death threats? The Los Angeles Times isn’t dodging the issue: James Eric Fuller, a 63-year-old Democratic activist, was arrested after shouting “You’re dead!” at Tucson Tea Party spokesman Trent Humphries, said Pima County Sheriff’s Department spokesman Jason Ogan.Fuller was shot in the knee and back Jan. 8 when a gunman opened fire, killing six and injuring 13, including Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Fuller, a disabled veteran and former campaign volunteer for Giffords, was charged with making threats, intimidation and disorderly conduct and was involuntarily committed for a psychiatric evaluation, Ogan said. Kindy and Rucker did elaborate further on the left-wing screeds: A new Facebook page – Tea Party Tucson Massacre – has cropped up, blaming the tea party for the deaths of the six people, including a 9-year-old girl. On Friday, a new image appeared on the site mocking the tactics of Republican Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate who targeted Giffords's district during the election on a map marked with cross hairs. (A Palin aide said the image was intended to represent surveyors' marks.) The image of a T-shirt on the site shows the marks plastered atop Palin's face. Trent Humphries, the tea party leader, said that because of the rancor, he was urged to stay away from memorial services and funerals honoring the shooting victims. “The police have told me that I had better not go to any large events right now,” he said. “It wouldn't be safe.” The Post reporters then performed the usual tiresome song-and-dance routine, that there’s no proof of our pet thesis of “vitriol,”
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on January 17, 2011. Filed under