Times' Mark Halperin: Conservatives should turn the other cheek when scapegoated for murder :: Political News and commentaries

« CBS Poll: 57% of Americans Don''t Blame Political Tone for Tucson Shooting | Main | The Arizona Republic Chastises Sheriff Dupnik For His Partisan, Vitriolic, Comments »

January 11, 2011

Times' Mark Halperin: Conservatives should turn the other cheek when scapegoated for murder

Topics: Political News and commentaries

The "normally sensible" Mark Halperin from Time completely jumps the shark in this segment from today's Morning Joe, in which Halperin praised the media and politicians for their reaction to the shooting ... while blaming the "anger of the right-wing commentariat," condemning Fox News and conservative pundits for treating the tragedy like "war and fodder for content" ... ignoring the fact that the controversy started when CNN, other media outlets. and left-wing bloggers began tying the shooting in Arizona to Sarah Palin and Tea Party activism. And Halperin even has the gall to say that conservatives should have just "turned the other cheek" and stopped defending themselves.

The overall audacity is nothing short of jaw-dropping, beginning with his statement that he thinks the media and the politicians have "behaved pretty well so far":

Mary Katharine Ham describes the conversation and addresses Halperin's outlandish remarks:

"Obviously, the initial reaction was so offensive to conservatives it has united everybody from Rush Limbaugh to David Brooks this morning, who wrote a very, very compelling piece that the scapegoating was an offensive act," Joe Scarborough said during a discussion about the politicization of the tragedy.

Despite claiming the media had behaved "pretty well so far," Halperin seemed to agree with Scarborough's assertion that "a shooting was turned into fodder to attack conservatives." But he seemed to find more fault with how conservatives reacted to unfair attacks than with the original accusations.

"I just want to single out one thing. I think the media and the politicians have behaved pretty well so far.I'm worried about the anger of the right-wing commentariat," Halperin said. "Fox and George Will and other conservatives are in some cases justifiably upset at liberals, but they're turning this back into the standard operating procedure of "all this is war and fodder for content" rather than trying to bring the country together."

"Wait a second," Scarborough responded. "I think they would say that you have that backwards, that a shooting was turned into fodder to attack conservatives."

Halperin: "And, I already made that criticism, as well. they're right, but rather than seizing on it and turning the other cheek, they're back at their war stations. that's not going to help us."

The conversation then pivoted from a discussion of the actual facts to yet another lecture on rhetoric, with Scarborough hoping conservatives see it as a "wake-up call" on rhetoric even though he had just established that there was no connection between rhetoric and the shooting.

For Mr.Halperin's edification, as Ed Morrissey points out, conservatives feel the need to defend themselves because of the extreme, heated, and ignorant rhetoric coming from many on the Left as they've acted to exploited the tragedy ... with no facts or evidence to support their claims, and the silence and/or complicity of the media, including people like Mark Halperin.