Soothing Fantasies

The tales do seem to soothe the tellers.

Though it just may be the size of their paychecks that has a sedating effect; that would explain how they never hear the drivel emerging from their own mouths.

It must have been frustrating for the media—

One minute: loving up the manly new House of Representatives of Real America.

Suddenly: Congress interruptus.

On the other hand, they were presented with a gory atrocity that's served as their broadcast lead, for the last five days.

And—best of all media worlds—they've had the chance to exploit a gruesome story, while beating up on Democrats. Because, "both sides are as bad."

As if more than one side was guilty of anything remotely comparable to Fox's encouraging their brownshirts to intimidate Democrats. Or making outright calls to to armed violence.

Pre-health care vote threats against Dems were "isolated local incidents"; it's hard to even find a comprehensive list. And searching brings up mainly right-wing sites, offering the predictable combination of Democrats made The People furious with their socialist death panels, and, the violence was by Democrats.

From last March, there's TPM's map of incidents prior to the vote, and this rundown of some stories.

The count here, 42 reported incidents, comes inside the AP's current spin—

... Many lawmakers, especially Democrats, felt the 2009-2010 debate over health care sometimes got out of hand. It began with emotional town hall meetings in the summer of 2009, when some critics warned of government "death panels."

Giffords, 40, was among lawmakers who reported 42 threats or acts or vandalism in the first three months of 2010, a big increase over the previous year, law enforcement officers said. Nearly all the threats dealt with the massive health care bill that Giffords and other Democrats enacted over fierce Republican opposition.

And of right-wing terrorist attacks on targets other than Democratic politicians, over the last two years: a list of eighteen. Some thwarted; too many, with body counts.

With our non-stop hate media fueling this: we are superior to 1990s Rwanda in what way?

Gun control is Not On The Table.

In the aftermath of Saturday's massacre, Glock sales are booming—

... a deadly demonstration of the weapon's effectiveness has also fired up sales of handguns in Arizona and other states, according to federal law enforcement data.

"When something like this happens people get worried that the government is going to ban stuff," [gun dealer] Wolff said.

Some measures of just how debased a "national dialogue" is created by the media?

Conventional wisdom of the last thirty years: "... government is the problem."

An idealistic nine-year old girl interested in government, recently elected to her student council and eager to meet her elected congresswoman, is murdered.

A straight-talking public servant and law enforcement veteran—someone who once would have been the archetype of everything admirable—can be smeared by the noise machine, only to have the lies dutifully repeated by the mainstream.

The Right got away with their Wellstone funeral behavior; they know the media will always fall for their "Democrats are politicizing a tragedy" shrieks.

The expected bloggers and independent journalists are talking sense, as usual. But they have liberally-biased facts on their side.

Driftglass says it, in three pictures and a few precise words:

Responsible people leave neither loaded guns nor paranoid, eliminationist ideologies laying around for the mentally ill to play with.

The librul media has a story line, and mere facts will not interfere with sticking to it.

I can think of someone in the target audience: Clever Sister's co-worker, Ms. "I'm a liberal! I listen to NPR!"

Who, tomorrow morning, will no doubt be burbling about how terrible the Democrats are, to politicize this tragedy.