Let's Take a Deep Breath

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 10:33 AM

We need to be really, really careful about blaming people for murder.

The reprehensible slaying of George Tiller, because he performed abortions, shocks the conscience. The man who pulled the trigger -- a suspect is already in custody -- is responsible.

But within hours, the liberal blogosphere was aflame with posts declaring that Bill O'Reilly bears some responsibility for the killing.

I'm not going to join the attack. It is perfectly fair to hold the Fox News host accountable for his words and to question whether he has gone too far in personally assailing Tiller time and time again.

But is it his fault if some abortion-hating fanatic decides to kill another human being?

If you believe in a woman's right to choose, you have a duty, it seems to me, to speak out against those who would have the government take that right away. But if you believe abortion is murder, you also have the right to speak out against the practice. That is part of a noisy democracy that places a premium on free speech.

Tiller was shot and wounded in 1993, before there was an "O'Reilly Factor" or a Fox News Channel.

After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, President Clinton denounced the "loud and angry voices" who, he said, too often "keep some people as paranoid as possible and the rest of us all torn up and upset with each other. They spread hate, they leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable . . . It is time we all stood up and spoke against that kind of reckless speech and behavior."

That came too close to blaming talk show hosts for the actions of Timothy McVeigh. Liberal commentator Carl Rowan declared that the harsh rhetoric of Newt Gingirch and Bob Dole "creates a climate of violence in America."

Rush Limbaugh responded to Clinton, and blamed "many in the mainstream media" for "irresponsible attempts to categorize and demonize those who had nothing to do with this. . . . There is absolutely no connection between these nuts and mainstream conservatism in America today."

I heard the echoes last night, when O'Reilly said that "pro-abortion zealots and Fox News-haters" were trying "to blame us for the crime," to "demonize" him, and in the process "exploiting the death of the doctor." He defended his past attacks, saying, "No backpedaling here. . . . Every single thing we said about Tiller was true." O'Reilly went on to note that Tiller had performed an estimated 60,000 abortions, and questioned why his critics in the media had said nothing "about the 60,000 fetuses who'll never become American citizens."

No one particularly likes abortion, especially late-term abortion, but those 60,000 procedures were legal. The doctor was providing a legal service.

O'Reilly is entitled to defend himself, and he in no way condoned what happened. But the man was murdered in church. I was surprised that, along with his reminder that Tiller had been called a baby killer, O'Reilly didn't issue a ringing denunciation of the shooting and anyone who thought it was justified. The occasion, in my view, called for it; he chose a different approach.

On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann did blame Fox News, showing clips of O'Reilly denouncing Tiller for having "blood on his hands" and saying there should be "a special place in hell for this guy." Olbermann said consumers should walk out on businesses that show Fox, and said his goal is to get O'Reilly off the air. Would that mean no more right-wing violence?

In Salon, Gabriel Winant mounted a similar argument:

"There's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists. Tiller's name first appeared on 'The Factor' on Feb. 25, 2005. Since then, O'Reilly and his guest hosts have brought up the doctor on 28 more episodes, including as recently as April 27 of this year. Almost invariably, Tiller is described as 'Tiller the Baby Killer.'

"Tiller, O'Reilly likes to say, 'destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000.' He's guilty of 'Nazi stuff,' said O'Reilly on June 8, 2005; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida, he suggested on March 15, 2006. 'This is the kind of stuff happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union,' said O'Reilly on Nov. 9, 2006."

Ann Althouse wonders: "Is there now to be an argument that decent people who are anti-abortion cannot make strongly passionate statements in support of their cause -- that they are linked to murder if they do? I don't think that's fair.

"But very strongly stated arguments often backfire. You might want to refrain from making them."

At the Moderate Voice, Joe Gandelman also takes a middle ground: "This does not mean there is a cause and effect between O'Reilly's rhetoric and Tiller's murder -- which is being rationalized now by some who opposed what Tiller did in his medical practice.

"But it is worth repeating what we have stated and suggested here and what other pundits have said over the past few years: the over the top, demonizing rhetoric that has become the rage in 21st century America could have serious consequences."

Michelle Malkin condemns both the killing and the finger-pointers:

"Late-term abortion doctor George Tiller was gunned down at his church in Kansas Sunday morning in a thoroughly evil, cold-blooded act of domestic terrorism. Yes, terrorism. Not 'extremism.' Interesting how the t-word has been rediscovered . . .

"Unfortunately, it's too much to ask the cable news networks and hyper-partisan snipers on the Internet to have the decency to restrain themselves. Prepare for a wall-to-wall onslaught of gleeful finger-pointing on the Left and heated responses on the Right. Prepare for whitewashed hagiographies of Tiller's career as an abortionist. Prepare for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's defenders to gloat about vindication. Prepare for collective demonization of pro-lifers and Christians -- and more gratuitous attempts to tar talk radio, Fox News, and the Tea Party movement as responsible for the heinous crime."

On BeliefNet, a particularly thoughtful post from conservative Rod Dreher, who examines whether words in the media can incite:

"Some are blaming the entire pro-life movement for Tiller's murder, and blaming specifically pro-life rhetoric for supposedly inciting the abortion doc's murderer. There's not much point in objecting to this at this point; the people who say such things are looking for an excuse to despise the pro-life cause, and this lawless vigilante has now given them one.

"It is worth reflecting on, though, to what extent our words are seeds for violent deeds. It cannot be true, however much some pro-choicers may want it to be, that pro-lifers are obliged to shut up and go away because one violent kook killed an abortion doctor. Think about the harsh criticism of the U.S. torture policy under Bush. If, God forbid, someone infuriated by that committed murder against one of the Bush officials who devised the policy, it would be a heinous crime, but most people would understand that torture critics could not be blamed for it. Nor would the severity of their moral indictment of torture be at issue. If torture -- or abortion, or war, or discrimination, or any other morally consequential issue -- is wrong, then we are obliged to speak out against it, no matter what. George Tiller was a violent man, and the fact that he died violently, at the hands of a criminal, does not change who he was and what he did for a living.

"But we can't let ourselves off that easily. Our words are not spoken in a vacuum. In our media today, they are amplified to a degree previously unimaginable. It seems to me that this puts a special obligation on all of us, whatever our cause or political stance, to choose carefully what we say, and how we say it. I don't think there are any hard and fast rules here, but the virtue of prudence in speech really is important to observe. We live in a time when red-hot rhetoric, on both the right and the left, sells; I saw a TV producer friend over the weekend here, a guy who used to work for cable news back in the U.S., and told him how frustrated I was that there is no place on broadcast media for nuanced or moderate voices. They don't want light, they want heat, and the only way to get heat is to have intense friction. So our media culture valorizes intense emotion, and we are acculturated to embracing our passions, especially our anger, as a matter of justice and authenticity."

No ambivalence from Frank Schaeffer, who accepts responsibility in the Huffington Post:

"My late father and I share the blame (with many others) for the murder of Dr. George Tiller the abortion doctor gunned down on Sunday. Until I got out of the religious right (in the mid-1980s) and repented of my former hate-filled rhetoric I was both a leader of the so-called pro-life movement and a part of a Republican Party hate machine masquerading as the moral conscience of America. . . .

"In the early 80s my father followed up with a book that sold over a million copies called A Christian Manifesto. In certain passages he advocated force if all other methods for rolling back the abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade failed. He compared America and its legalized abortion to Hitler's Germany and said that whatever tactics would have been morally justified in removing Hitler would be justified in trying to stop abortion. I said the same thing in a book I wrote (A Time For Anger) that right wing evangelicals made into a best seller. For instance Dr. James Dobson (of the Focus On the Family radio show) gave away over 100,000 copies."

He closes with these words: "I am very sorry."

Looking Back at Bush

At National Review, Victor Davis Hanson argues that 44 is helping 43's reputation:

"The result of . . . Bush Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is that, thanks to Obama, history will soon begin reassessing George W. Bush's presidency in a more positive light.

"Why? Because the more Obama feels compelled to trash Bush, the more he draws attention to the fact that he is copying -- or in some cases falling short of -- his predecessor. He seems to wish to frame his presidency in terms of the Bush years, even though such constant evocation is serving his predecessor more than it is serving Obama himself.

"For eight years conservatives whined -- and Democrats railed -- at the Bush deficits. In the aggregate over eight years they exceeded $2 trillion. The administration's excuses -- the 2000 recession; 9/11; two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq; Katrina; and two massive new programs, No Child Left Behind and Medicare Prescription Drug -- fell on deaf ears.

"Between 2001 and 2008 we still spoke of annual budget shortfalls in billions of dollars. But an early effect of the Obama administration is that it has already made the Bush administration's reckless spending seem almost incidental. In the first 100 days of this government we have learned to speak of yearly red ink in terms of Obama's trillions, not Bush's mere billions. Indeed, compared to Obama, Bush looks like a fiscal conservative."

Of course, Obama inherited an economy in free fall from his predecessor.

Sotomayor and Discrimination

Bill Kristol argues that the debate over Obama's Supreme Court nominee will turn on the Ricci case (in which Sotomayor was part of a panel that upheld a lower-court ruling):

"We will have an unusual moment in the Sotomayor confirmation process -- one that will stand out from the customary small-bore senatorial back-and-forth during judicial confirmations. We'll have a high-profile Supreme Court ruling highlighting a very questionable judicial decision by the president's nominee. Most Court observers expect the judgment in which Sotomayor joined to be reversed. But even if it isn't, there will be a closely observed decision by a probably closely divided Supreme Court that will bring home the importance of the Sotomayor nomination for jurisprudence in this area. The public will have occasion to see how a nominee, herself picked for identity-politics reasons, was unempathetic, one might say, and unjust to the victims of identity politics, the firefighters of New Haven who were denied promotions.

"Sotomayor will probably be confirmed. But nothing is certain. And a Ricci-focused debate over her confirmation will serve to remind Americans of the unseemliness and injustice of the Constitution-corrupting, identity-politics-driven agenda so dear to the hearts of the modern Democratic party, the Obama administration, and Sonia Sotomayor."

But a very different perspective at Scotusblog from Tom Goldstein, the lawyer I profiled in this space yesterday. He looked at all of Sotomayor's rulings in discrimination suits:

"Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous."

Here's what PBS's Gwen Ifill had to say on "This Week":

"I've spent the last year talking to a lot of people who got elected -- black elected officials -- for a book, and all of them talked about 'identity politics.' They defined it as being part of what you are, but not all of what you are. And I think that's what the defenders of Sonia Sotomayor are trying to say. Which is that her point was, yes, what she is, and what we all are, shapes us. But it's not all that shapes you.

"I always try to take arguments like this and turn them on their heads. And I never hear people say that for a white male that it's identity politics if he is shaped by his white maleness, and by the things that affected his life, and whether privilege affected his life. That's never considered to be a negative. It's only considered to be a negative when ethnicity is involved, or race is involved, or gender is involved."

He Can't Help Himself

There's no other conclusion: The mayor of Los Angeles is a serial journalistic romancer. The LAT has the story:

"A Los Angeles television reporter is dating Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, about two years after his extramarital affair with another local newscaster led to the breakup of his 20-year marriage. KTLA-TV Channel 5 reporter Lu Parker, a former Miss U.S.A., has been dating Villaraigosa since March, station officials confirmed Monday.

"On Sunday, while working as a weekend anchor, Parker announced a story about the likelihood of Villaraigosa running for governor in 2010. 'Now that we're aware of the relationship, she will no longer be covering local politics,' said KTLA-TV news director Jason Ball, who defended the journalist's ethics but declined to elaborate. 'I have the utmost faith in Lu Parker's abilities.' "

Well, I don't. The guy's no longer married, but she's reporting on stories about her boyfriend? The previous paramour, who also reported on Mayor Romeo, lost her job.

Playboy's Blunder

I first heard about this on Twitter from Washington Times columnist Amanda Carpenter, who was on the list. Playboy had posted a piece on -- how do I put this on a family blog? -- conservative women who the author would have relations with despite the fact that he hates them.

With humor both sophomoric and obscene, the author reviews the charms of Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and others.

At Politics Daily, Tommy Christopher was disgusted:

"Each entry has its own brand of offense, saying of Mary Katherine Ham 'This Ham's not kosher,' for example.

"I get that Playboy is a sex magazine, but I don't see what hate has to do with sex. While the author might think it's funny or edgy, none of these women consented to be [expletive], and the whole exercise is just foul and creepy.

"What's worth noting, too, is that although he singles out conservative women, the author belies a hostility toward all women."

Well, all the tweeting and posting had an effect. By day's end, Playboy had pulled the piece.