Jeffrey Goldberg Full of It On Arizona Shootings

...which, admittedly, isn't exactly a rare thing.

But why on earth would he try to claim this?

Imagine if the Ft. Hood shooting had been covered the same way as the Giffords shooting? During Ft. Hood, commentators and politicians were falling over themselves to preemptively announce that Nidal Hasan's religious faith had nothing to do with the shooting.

Which commentators would those be? Because I happen to recall rather a lot of blather about the extent to which this guy's religious faith had EVERYTHING to do with the shooting, especially once it came out that he wasn't happy about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Goldberg either doesn't get it, or won't admit it. It may be unseemly to tie together the act of a lone nut and the right's incredible and disgusting eliminationist attitude towards anybody more liberal than Glenn Beck. But I haven't the slightest doubt that, were the guy to turn out to be progressive, liberal, or leftist, the right would be up in arms about it?

And do you know how I know? BECAUSE THEY'RE ALREADY DOING IT.

No links, because to hell with those guys, but we're already seeing wingnuts seize on the brief impressions of a few twitterers who knew the guy 3 or 4 years ago to try to blame progressives for what happened. We've already got delusional asshats trying to tie together a DailyKos commentator who said "Giffords is dead to me" and the killer, despite the simple fact that the communications we do see from the man are nowhere near as lucid as the posts that are supposedly from him.

The conservative movement and its various hangers-on are always, ALWAYS purely instrumental when it comes to their outrage over things like this. If it's one of theirs, they'll apologize their asses off, and do whatever they can to shift the blame. If it's not one of theirs, they'll scream to the heavens about the evils of the liberal-progressive-socialist-leftist-whatevers that were (naturally) entirely responsible for this.

Those of us who are disgusted and repelled by said movement need not adopt these tactics. At least, not necessarily, though damned if they don't work like a charm on the Usual Suspects in the media. But we should never, EVER forget what's going on, and why. NEVER give them the benefit of the doubt.

Because if you do, they'll just grab it, pocket it, and scream that much louder about how repulsively evil you are.