Archive for January, 2011

Obama’s Speech in Tucson

Or link.

To the families of those we’ve lost; to all who called them friends; to the students of this university, the public servants gathered tonight, and the people of Tucson and Arizona: I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneels to pray with you today, and will stand by you tomorrow.

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts. But know this: the hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy pull through.

As Scripture tells us:

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.

On Saturday morning, Gabby, her staff, and many of her constituents gathered outside a supermarket to exercise their right to peaceful assembly and free speech. They were fulfilling a central tenet of the democracy envisioned by our founders – representatives of the people answering to their constituents, so as to carry their concerns to our nation’s capital. Gabby called it “Congress on Your Corner” – just an updated version of government of and by and for the people.

That is the quintessentially American scene that was shattered by a gunman’s bullets. And the six people who lost their lives on Saturday – they too represented what is best in America.

Judge John Roll served our legal system for nearly 40 years. A graduate of this university and its law school, Judge Roll was recommended for the federal bench by John McCain twenty years ago, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and rose to become Arizona’s chief federal judge. His colleagues described him as the hardest-working judge within the Ninth Circuit. He was on his way back from attending Mass, as he did every day, when he decided to stop by and say hi to his Representative. John is survived by his loving wife, Maureen, his three sons, and his five grandchildren.

George and Dorothy Morris – “Dot” to her friends – were high school sweethearts who got married and had two daughters. They did everything together, traveling the open road in their RV, enjoying what their friends called a 50-year honeymoon. Saturday morning, they went by the Safeway to hear what their Congresswoman had to say. When gunfire rang out, George, a former Marine, instinctively tried to shield his wife. Both were shot. Dot passed away.

A New Jersey native, Phyllis Schneck retired to Tucson to beat the snow. But in the summer, she would return East, where her world revolved around her 3 children, 7 grandchildren, and 2 year-old great-granddaughter. A gifted quilter, she’d often work under her favorite tree, or sometimes sew aprons with the logos of the Jets and the Giants to give out at the church where she volunteered. A Republican, she took a liking to Gabby, and wanted to get to know her better.

Dorwan and Mavy Stoddard grew up in Tucson together – about seventy years ago. They moved apart and started their own respective families, but after both were widowed they found their way back here, to, as one of Mavy’s daughters put it, “be boyfriend and girlfriend again.” When they weren’t out on the road in their motor home, you could find them just up the road, helping folks in need at the Mountain Avenue Church of Christ. A retired construction worker, Dorwan spent his spare time fixing up the church along with their dog, Tux. His final act of selflessness was to dive on top of his wife, sacrificing his life for hers.

Everything Gabe Zimmerman did, he did with passion – but his true passion was people. As Gabby’s outreach director, he made the cares of thousands of her constituents his own, seeing to it that seniors got the Medicare benefits they had earned, that veterans got the medals and care they deserved, that government was working for ordinary folks. He died doing what he loved – talking with people and seeing how he could help. Gabe is survived by his parents, Ross and Emily, his brother, Ben, and his fiancée, Kelly, who he planned to marry next year.

And then there is nine year-old Christina Taylor Green. Christina was an A student, a dancer, a gymnast, and a swimmer. She often proclaimed that she wanted to be the first woman to play in the major leagues, and as the only girl on her Little League team, no one put it past her. She showed an appreciation for life uncommon for a girl her age, and would remind her mother, “We are so blessed. We have the best life.” And she’d pay those blessings back by participating in a charity that helped children who were less fortunate.

Our hearts are broken by their sudden passing. Our hearts are broken – and yet, our hearts also have reason for fullness.

Our hearts are full of hope and thanks for the 13 Americans who survived the shooting, including the congresswoman many of them went to see on Saturday. I have just come from the University Medical Center, just a mile from here, where our friend Gabby courageously fights to recover even as we speak. And I can tell you this – she knows we’re here and she knows we love her and she knows that we will be rooting for her throughout what will be a difficult journey.

And our hearts are full of gratitude for those who saved others. We are grateful for Daniel Hernandez, a volunteer in Gabby’s office who ran through the chaos to minister to his boss, tending to her wounds to keep her alive. We are grateful for the men who tackled the gunman as he stopped to reload. We are grateful for a petite 61 year-old, Patricia Maisch, who wrestled away the killer’s ammunition, undoubtedly saving some lives. And we are grateful for the doctors and nurses and emergency medics who worked wonders to heal those who’d been hurt.

These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, all around us, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, just waiting to be summoned – as it was on Saturday morning.

Their actions, their selflessness, also pose a challenge to each of us. It raises the question of what, beyond the prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to their memory?

You see, when a tragedy like this strikes, it is part of our nature to demand explanations – to try to impose some order on the chaos, and make sense out of that which seems senseless. Already we’ve seen a national conversation commence, not only about the motivations behind these killings, but about everything from the merits of gun safety laws to the adequacy of our mental health systems. Much of this process, of debating what might be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, is an essential ingredient in our exercise of self-government.

But at a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized – at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do – it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds.

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, “when I looked for light, then came darkness.” Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

For the truth is that none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped those shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind.

So yes, we must examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of violence in the future.

But what we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

After all, that’s what most of us do when we lose someone in our family – especially if the loss is unexpected. We’re shaken from our routines, and forced to look inward. We reflect on the past. Did we spend enough time with an aging parent, we wonder. Did we express our gratitude for all the sacrifices they made for us? Did we tell a spouse just how desperately we loved them, not just once in awhile but every single day?

So sudden loss causes us to look backward – but it also forces us to look forward, to reflect on the present and the future, on the manner in which we live our lives and nurture our relationships with those who are still with us. We may ask ourselves if we’ve shown enough kindness and generosity and compassion to the people in our lives. Perhaps we question whether we are doing right by our children, or our community, and whether our priorities are in order. We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

That process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions – that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires. For those who were harmed, those who were killed – they are part of our family, an American family 300 million strong. We may not have known them personally, but we surely see ourselves in them. In George and Dot, in Dorwan and Mavy, we sense the abiding love we have for our own husbands, our own wives, our own life partners. Phyllis – she’s our mom or grandma; Gabe our brother or son. In Judge Roll, we recognize not only a man who prized his family and doing his job well, but also a man who embodied America’s fidelity to the law. In Gabby, we see a reflection of our public spiritedness, that desire to participate in that sometimes frustrating, sometimes contentious, but always necessary and never-ending process to form a more perfect union.

And in Christina…in Christina we see all of our children. So curious, so trusting, so energetic and full of magic.

So deserving of our love.

And so deserving of our good example. If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let’s make sure it’s worthy of those we have lost. Let’s make sure it’s not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.

The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better in our private lives – to be better friends and neighbors, co-workers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let’s remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy, but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud. It should be because we want to live up to the example of public servants like John Roll and Gabby Giffords, who knew first and foremost that we are all Americans, and that we can question each other’s ideas without questioning each other’s love of country, and that our task, working together, is to constantly widen the circle of our concern so that we bequeath the American dream to future generations.

I believe we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved lives here – they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another is entirely up to us. I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

That’s what I believe, in part because that’s what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed. Imagine: here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation’s future. She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.

I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us – we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.

Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called “Faces of Hope.” On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child’s life. “I hope you help those in need,” read one. “I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart. I hope you jump in rain puddles.”

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit.

May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in restful and eternal peace. May He love and watch over the survivors. And may He bless the United States of America.

Giffords: Part Two

“It has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the capacity for moral self-reflection.”

- Steve Almond

I was a junior in high school when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, armed with guns and ammunition they should have never been able to possess, walked into Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado, murdered 12 students and a teacher, and injured 24 others, before they turned their guns on themselves. In the aftermath of Columbine, America’s punditocracy seemed to obsess over the notion that our culture was culpable: Harris and Klebold listened to Marilyn Manson. They played violent video games. They read subversive stuff on the still relatively nascent Internet. We argued over the ways in which culture enabled their sociopathic and monstrous actions. We struggled with it.

Here in Louisiana, the Columbine massacre provided a reason to implement a series of institutional changes: mandatory uniforms, ID badges, and, in many schools, expensive metal detectors. In Rapides Parish, we even passed a tax increase in order to ensure that every single school in the district would have a full-time deputy assigned to them.

To be sure, Columbine was not the first school shooting in the 1990s; there had been several others, some of which involved elementary school students. Columbine, however, because of its scale, because it was premeditated, and, perhaps, because it occurred in a middle-class suburban community, terrorized the entire country. It captured our collective imagination, and we felt compelled to respond, even if was merely instituting a series of largely symbolic policies.

(For the record, I support the School Resource Officer program, but I’ve never been a fan of mandatory school uniforms, particularly in a public high school. I don’t think it’s appropriate for the government to serve as the fashion police; I’ve never seen any credible evidence that a uniform policy actually increases safety, performance, or discipline; and I think if you want to encourage teenagers to become invested in themselves and their education, then there’s absolutely no harm in allowing them to pick out their own clothes every morning. Of course there should be some standards about obscenity and indecency, but until the rash of school shootings in the 1990s, there was no reason for anyone to assume that mandating a strict uniform policy had any real impact on school violence; indeed, prior to Columbine, there were a handful of school shootings that occurred in schools with mandatory uniforms).

In my opinion, the emphasis that we placed on popular culture, on people like Marilyn Manson, for example, was completely misdirected. Marilyn Manson was one of many red herrings, and as a teenager who had owned a couple of Marilyn Manson albums, I remember, very clearly, how completely absurd and disconnected so-called adults sounded when they attempted to connect Manson’s music with a school shooting massacre. Manson was just an entertainer, a late 90s post-industrial goth rock musician who trafficked in religious subversion for headlines the same way Michael Jackson leaked false stories about anti-aging hyperbaric chambers, the same way Lady Gaga dresses up in a gown made out of raw meat to protest Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

More often than not, the people who wanted to blame music and video games were also skilled at deflecting simple questions like, “Don’t you think we should make it more difficult, if not impossible, for high school students to collect a huge arsenal of weapons?” I’m a supporter of the Second Amendment, but I seriously doubt our founders would have pivoted away from such an easy question.

To me, the lasting lessons of Columbine have been about how easy it was for us to accept and promote a deflection.

I say all of this knowing full-well that some may find distinct parallels between the media narrative after Columbine and the current narrative surrounding the massacre in Tucson. After Columbine, people blamed the toxicity of American popular culture, but that missed the point: It wasn’t about music or video games; it was about parental and institutional failure, the parts of culture that really define and shape our values and inform our understanding of the world.

Of course, there’s a sound and legitimate reason Americans decided to significantly beef up school security after Columbine: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold both terrorized and threatened what has been established as a fundamental right of all American citizens, the right to a free education. We may have gone a little overboard. We shouldn’t have simplified and cheapened the tragedy by assigning blame to rock musicians and video games. We definitely shied away from the truly difficult questions.We focused far too much on cosmetic changes and not nearly enough on pedagogical and institutional changes. In many instances, we further fortified and depersonalized public education.

But it’s all profoundly understandable. After enduring a series of senseless, high-profile school shootings, the vast majority of Americans believed we needed to better protect our right to a free education. Our collective desire for more school protection was earnest, well-intentioned, and grounded in real experience. As I mentioned earlier, in my home parish, we even passed a tax increase for school security, something that, today, would seem nearly impossible.

Here’s what I’m getting at: Public education in America wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for publicly-elected officials. Sure, violent language has always been a part of American politics, but you know, American politics has always been way too violent. According to former First Lady Laura Bush, she and President George W. Bush “may have been poisoned” during the G-8 Summit in 2007. In fact, all of our modern Presidents have faced credible attempts on their lives. The 1960s were particularly brutal, especially for a country that likes to champion itself as a model of peaceful democracy: Assassins murdered our President, two of our nation’s most influential African-American leaders, and a Senator who seemed destined to become the Democratic nominee for President. In the 1980s, our President, Ronald Reagan, was wounded by a bullet after an assassination attempt. This, taken as a whole, is the awful and frightening subplot of American political history.

We need to grow up. We need to become responsible. We need to stop pretending as if it’s acceptable to use violent language, violent metaphors, and violent imagery in order to discredit someone who seeks to serve the public as a representative of our democracy. It’s not acceptable. It never has been. It’s reckless, and likely, it contributes to a culture of distrust and depersonalized hatred more than any music video ever could.

Politics is not merely theater. We’re far more fragile than some may hope.

Here in Alexandria, there’s a guy who posts on his website, almost daily, about how our local mayor, a man who was recently re-elected overwhelmingly, is actually a crazy, drug-addled, Nazi-loving communist. Seriously, he spews this venom almost every day, and often, he extends his hatred toward the mayor’s staff. It’s always disturbing, each and every time it occurs. The first couple of times this blogger manipulated a photo of the mayor or me, I thought it was absurd but amusing. Today, there are nearly a hundred altered photos, nearly all of which are altered in an incendiary and hateful way: The mayor of a town of less than 50,000 people and the mayor’s staff are often depicted as Nazis or members of the Ku Klux Klan or mass murderers.

This shouldn’t be accepted and isn’t normal in our political discourse. It’s not playful or flippant conjecture. This blogger thinks the city owes him legal fees, though, unfortunately for him, the Louisiana Supreme Court disagrees. This is not about politics or principles; it’s about money, and he’s never been honest enough to just come out and say it.

Again, we need to be more responsible. Hatred can be toxic, and toxicity can be rapidly spread.

Hopefully, we can be decent and mature enough to respond decently and maturely. Hopefully, this time, we’ll realize the problem should be treated systemically, not cosmetically. Hopefully, we’ll stop supplying a blow-horn to the most divisive and destructive blowhards. Hopefully, mutual respect will become imperative.

No, I am not trying to equivocate or mandate , only to elucidate and explain.

Giffords

Like most Americans, I was shocked and shaken by the tragedy that occurred yesterday in Tucson. It is, of course, far too early to know what, exactly, motivated this young man to carry out such an attack. As we’ve learned over the last 24 hours, he left a trail of online rants, including a few bizarre YouTube videos concerning currency and the gold-standard and his frustration with people, specifically people in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, who couldn’t speak English properly. It seems clear that the man wasn’t involved in the Tea Party movement, and it’s also clear that he’s not a liberal or a progressive. It’s ridiculous to pin this man’s derangement on any particular political movement. If his favorite books are indicative of anything, it’s that, as Republican Senator Jon Kyl said, this man didn’t really possess a coherent political philosophy.

However, to me, it’s totally appropriate to call attention to the “vitriolic political rhetoric” that often dominates cable news, talk radio, and the blogosphere. To be sure, violent language has always been a part of the American political process. But it doesn’t mean that we should ignore the unfortunately prescient and ominous things Congresswoman Giffords, a woman former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said could be the “first or second female President,” had previously warned against. She had felt threatened. Last year, someone shot a bullet through her office in Tucson. Thankfully, no one was injured.

Giffords is a conservative Blue Dog Democrat. Last week, in a move that frustrated some liberals, Giffords voted against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House. It was a purely symbolic vote, of course; John Boehner’s victory was preordained. But it speaks to her Blue Dog bonafides and her independence from the so-called Pelosi Democrats that the Tea Party movement and many Republicans had sought to discredit and defeat during last year’s midterm elections. (Giffords didn’t vote for Boehner; she voted for Representative John Lewis). Yet despite Congresswoman Giffords’s record and her status as a Blue Dog, she was one of only twenty incumbent members of Congress specifically “targeted” by Sarah Palin. Giffords’s reelection campaign was heated; her Republican opponent attacked her personally, suggesting that even her own husband wouldn’t vote for her (leaving out the fact that her husband, as a NASA astronaut with children in Texas, had to declare residency in Houston). And then there was the crosshairs ad. From ABC News (bold mine):

Like so much with Palin, the roots are on Facebook. On her Facebook page last year when she posted the a map of 20 congressional districts targeted by SarahPac, the headline of the map: “It’s time to take a stand.”

At the time Giffords reacted to the map in an interview on a cable news program.

“When people do that, they’ve got to realize there are consequences to that action,” Giffords said.

Before any of my conservative friends jump on my case, let me be abundantly clear: This isn’t about Sarah Palin or the Tea Party. It’s about using violent imagery and violent language to promote a certain political agenda, something liberal activists have also been guilty of. It’s about the climate this type of rhetoric can create, and the culture and the narrative it can help to legitimize.

Take a step back. Congresswoman Giffords had been specifically targeted; she’d been victimized by threats before; she became the focus of a national campaign that was funded and promoted by one of the nation’s top Republican leaders; she had expressed, time after time, on national television, that she felt the type of rhetoric employed against her was dangerous and threatening. There’s no escaping from that.

If there is any lesson to be drawn from this awful tragedy, I hope it’s that our political discourse must become more respectful, responsible, and civil. Politics isn’t simply a game. Not only do words have consequences, they inform and define our culture. When you spend tens of millions of dollars on a media campaign that uses violent metaphors against individual politicians, it will leave an impression, and even if you think you’re being figurative or flippant, it’s still irresponsible. The stakes aren’t that high. America is not under attack from within. It’s incendiary to suggest this; it cheapens and simplifies our discourse, and it provides credence to a reactionary, paranoid, and anti-government agenda.

Earlier today, Ezra Klein of The Washington Post referenced the blogger Jon Bernstein. Quoting Mr. Bernstein:

American democracy has thousands and thousands of politicians, all of whom, collectively, are overvillified and undercelebrated. Alas, that’s unlikely to change. What we can hope also won’t change, however, is the very ordinariness of our politicians outside of the presidency, the way they can go about their lives as ordinary citizens, meeting with their fellow citizens and neighbors not just in great democratic events like the one interrupted in Tuscon, but in casual encounters, too.

Amen.

As a postscript: As a Louisiana blogger, I think it’s appropriate to acknowledge a couple of things. First, it’s worth noting that Louisiana State Senator Karen Carter Peterson is a friend of Ms. Giffords. According to Ms. Peterson, they were both fellows in a program at the Aspen Institute. Shortly after the news broke, Senator Peterson posted a comment on Twitter, expressing prayers and praise for her friend. It’s also worth noting that the older brother of one of Louisiana’s most outspoken and influential progressive bloggers was Congresswoman Giffords’s campaign manager.

This is, undoubtedly, difficult for everyone who knows and has worked for the Congresswoman.

May our humanity and decency sustain all of us.