The Gabrielle Giffords Tragedy—and Ours

Martha note: Denise Zito is a regular contributor to WMRA's Civic Soapbox -- in fact one of her essays is set to air this Friday. She sent me the following reaction to the Arizona shootings because, she said, she "needed to vent." And I hope it will stimulate some constructive venting in you as well. 

As surely as the sun rises in the east, the public, repetitive analysis begins as to why someone would pull a gun and shoot into a crowd of people. This time, the shooting takes place at a shopping center and a Congresswoman in Tucson and fourteen others are gunned down.

Columbine. Oklahoma City. Blacksburg, Virginia and so many others.

Some argue that the political climate is so caustic that the mentally vulnerable are driven to act out the metaphorical language that ‘targets’ politicians for removal from office.

Others claim that these are simply individual acts, and the sole responsibility of the shooter.

Those who attended religious services this weekend heard some version of these opinions in the petitions served up to God.

This time, I’m observing an interesting twist. As an example of how ‘unhinged’ Jared Loughner supposedly is, a reporter listed the books that Loughner posted on his Facebook page: Brave New World, Animal Farm, Alice in Wonderland and others that nearly every high school student in the country is asked to read. How does this list classify someone as ‘unhinged’?

Loughner also posted a disturbing video of a hooded figure in the desert, burning an American flag. Yes, I find this disturbing, and I would ask if anyone has been to a movie theater lately? I find many movie previews to be as horrifying as Loughner’s video posting. Nearly half of all movie previews these days involve guns, car chases and intense terror.

I’m not writing to advocate movie censorship, only pointing out that a ready supply of guns and the persistent glorification of violence in our society are moving us toward an expected outcome. But nothing about this incident should surprise us. Our political climate characterizes one side as ‘the enemy’ when in fact we are Americans with different opinions. One party allows the demonizing of our President and our elected officials. One party uses imagery of weapons and war in describing political debate.

As expected, we’ll all line up to reflect on the tragedy of Congresswoman Giffords and the others as either the random act of a mentally ill person, or the playing out of the worst scenario of our culture of violence.

The most discouraging part of this for me, is that I’ve stopped expecting anything in our society to change, no matter how horrific the acts of violence. I’ve concluded that only the small, personal acts of kindness are in my control. This is a sad commentary in a Democracy.

                   --Denise Zito lives in Free Union.

Just shut up?

Those of you who follow us on Facebook, know that the traditional first post of the day is "Bob's Morning Edition  pick," which is Bob Leweke's choice as the do-not-miss  feature of the day. Today, Bob's pick was "Shooting Fallout: Political Rhetoric Takes the Heat ."  At npr.org, Corey Dade begins his story begins this way:

The shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) has raised concerns about the effect of inflammatory language that has become a steady undercurrent in the nation's political culture.

No kidding? You think maybe that might be the case?

Later on in the same article, Corey Dade brings up "The Crosshairs Controversy,"

During the midterm elections, Giffords and other Democratic House candidates were featured on the website of Sarah Palin's political action committee with crosshairs over their districts. Giffords, disturbed at the reference, said at the time, "When people do that, they have got to realize there's consequences to that."

In a Sunday interview with talk radio host Tammy Bruce, Rebecca Mansour, who works for Palin's PAC, said the images of crosshairs weren't intended to evoke violence: "We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights," she said.

The controversial image (which SarahPac took down over the weekend) is shown above. As someone who occasionally target shoots, it seems to me both disingenuous and unhelpful to claim those circles with crosses in the middle have nothing to do with targets and shootings. Isn't denying the obvious yesterday tantamount to squirting gasoline on today's rhetorical flames? I mean, truth still exists, right? Surely, the meaningful question about the above image is not what is it, but what are its consequences.

There have been many, many calls for moderation in our political language over the last 24-hours. However, Fox News seems to be complaining today that . . .

. . . many on the American Left said the horror could be traced to the malign influence of American conservatives; members of the Tea Party; right-wing pundits Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck; former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin; and Fox News. 

Among the "many" cited by Fox News (4 in all) was Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman who wrote yesterday, "We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was.  . . . " And Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a Democrat and friend of Gabrielle Giffords, who, according to the article, "argued that the 'vitriol' of the country's harshly polarized political climate was partly to blame, arguing that unbalanced individuals are uniquely 'susceptible' to vitriol."


Which, you know, just might be the truth. And what's wrong with speaking that, I'd like to know?

Gabrielle Gifford on the way to intensive care

The New York Times today writes in its lead editorial that

Jared Loughner, the man accused of shooting Ms. Giffords, killing a federal judge and five other people, and wounding 13 others, appears to be mentally ill. His paranoid Internet ravings about government mind control place him well beyond usual ideological categories.

But he is very much a part of a widespread squall of fear, anger and intolerance that has produced violent threats against scores of politicians and infected the political mainstream with violent imagery. With easy and legal access to semiautomatic weapons like the one used in the parking lot, those already teetering on the edge of sanity can turn a threat into a nightmare.

Okay, okay, enough!

The point I'd like to make is who cares anymore whose fault our poisonous partisan state of affairs is? Hasn't who said what, when, and to whom after yesterday become much less than important. Can't we all just shut up, calm down, and start our political conversation over at a much lower pitch..

And another thing. Jared Lougher seems to have been obviously lurching  toward Sunday's violent murder spree. Why didn't we do something? Were we just too busy talking heated and pointless nonsense to realize that the last thing we needed was to allow Jared Lougher's mental illness to  go untreated, while, at the same time allowing him access to a gun?

Your thoughts?

WikiLeaks and the War on Terror, an essay by Fred Hitz

One can argue about the adverse impact of the WikiLeaks info dump on U.S. diplomatic relations, and about the bizarre system that allows a U.S Army enlisted man access to such a treasure trove of U.S. State Department secrets. What is not disputable, however, is the potential damage to high-level information sharing within the U.S. Government that might result if the State Department and other government agencies now decide that henceforth they will keep their sensitive information to themselves.

This is particularly risky if it should adversely affect the sharing of counter-terrorist information. Perhaps the biggest lesson learned from the 9/11 attacks is that information sharing between the FBI and CIA was not all that it should have been prior to the attacks. Clearly, the suicide attacks, themselves, were events that fell between jurisdictional cracks among the agencies of the U.S. Government charged with protecting us.

The 9-11 plot was hatched in the Middle East, Hamburg, Germany and Spain – for whom intelligence gathering is the jurisdiction of CIA. But the plot was designed to take place in New York and Washington, where, in most instances, jurisdiction shifts to the FBI. Nothing illustrates any better than 9-11, how critical it is that there be air-tight sharing of intelligence information between CIA and the FBI.

However, the 9/11 Commission, subsequently reported that, in several important instances, critical information had not been shared in a timely way between these agencies before the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The report resoundingly concluded that, on questions of counter-terrorism, the U.S. Government needed to create a more efficient information-sharing environment; making it clear that, in the interest of greater national security, the silos that protected info all the way to the top would have to come down. Need-to-know would have to be replaced by need-to-share.

Congress responded to the 9-11 Commission’s conclusion by passing the Intelligence Reform and Ant- Terrorist Act of 2004, creating the National Counter-Terrorist Center and charging it with tracking terrorist activity. By all accounts, a real start has been made in intelligence sharing within the purview of the Center. Lifelong habits of compartmentalizing information within a single agency have been altered to permit a degree of information sharing, if, by doing so, it seems a terrorist attack could be prevented.

Knowing the way the U.S. Government reacts to an event like Wikileaks, however, it would not surprise me to see some backsliding from this laudable effort to share intelligence information. I note, for example, that the State Department is trying to withdraw its sensitive diplomatic traffic from full distribution to the Department of Defense. This, I suspect, is just the opening salvo. I expect to witness further diminution of info-sharing.

Maybe this is really what Mr. Assange is all about? He knows that the reactions to revelations about what U. S. diplomats really think about Prime Minister Berlusconi are small potatoes alongside a break-down in info-sharing on counter-terrorist issues.

Let’s hope our government keeps its wits about it on this set of issues.

--Fred Hitz teaches at the University of Virginia's Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He retired from the CIA in 1998, where he last held the position of Inspector General. Mr. Hitz currently lives in Charlottesville.

Women, watch out?

Yesterday, Republicans took control  of the House of Representatives. Today, there will be a ceremonial reading of the U.S. Constitution;  which, evidently, has never been done before.

And speaking of the Constitution, news sources today report a mild-to-middling uproar over Justice Antonin Scalia's acceptance of Tea Party House Caucus founder Michele Bachmann's invitation to address House members on that very document.

From the LA Times:

The meeting "suggests an alliance between the conservative members of the court and the conservative members of Congress," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, who said Scalia had shown "exceedingly poor judgment."

That same paper, however, carries an editorial saying, "Let Scalia speak." 

Antonin Scalia has sat on the Supreme Court for 24 years. Oyez.org remembers his ascension this way,

In 1986, President Reagan promoted William H. Rehnquist to the position of chief justice in the wake of the retirement of Warren Burger. To fill the vacancy created by Rehnquist's promotion, Reagan nominated Scalia to the Supreme Court. The political focus on Rehnquist's nomination drew all the attention away from Scalia. Thus, even though Scalia had a much more conservative record than Rehnquist, ironically Scalia's nomination passed unanimously and virtually uncriticized. Scalia took the oaths of office, becoming the youngest justice on the Court. His staunch conservatism and obvious intellect excited many conservative advocates who saw much promise in his confirmation.

Answers.com presents Justice Scalia's judicial philosophy concisely in this way:

Justice Antonin Scalia is a conservative. He is one of two justices on the court (the other being Clarence Thomas) who believe in the philosophy of constitutional originalism, that the Constitution should be interpreted solely in terms of the framers' original intent. 

Amidst all the flaps and fanfares associated with the swearing in of a new Congress, however, came a glancing reference in the Washington Post to Justice Scalia's insistence that the Constitution (the same document about which he's been invited to instruct House members) does not protect equal rights for women, let alone gay men and lesbians.

The article referred to an interview  Justice Scalia had given to California Lawyer. Here's the relevant question and answer.

In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?

Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don't need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don't like the death penalty anymore, that's fine. You want a right to abortion? There's nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn't mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea and pass a law. That's what democracy is all about. It's not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

This all took me back to 1996, when Justice Scalia was the only justice to dissent in United States vs. Virginia, the case that allowed women to attend Virginia Military Institute. In his dissent, Scalia wrote:

...the tradition of having government funded military schools for men is as well rooted in the traditions of this country as the tradition of sending only men into military combat. The people may decide to change the one tradition, like the other, through democratic processes; but the assertion that either tradition has been unconstitutional through the centuries is not law, but politics smuggled into law.

Hmmmmm. So do I really not have Constitutionally guaranteed equal rights? Does Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia truly believe that  my employer can cite the Constitution as reason to pay me less than my male colleagues for equal work?

To me, it seems that he does. But, please, your thoughts . . .

Groundhog Day for health care reform?

Incoming Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Speaker of the House John Boehner

Virginia Representative Eric Cantor is suddenly everywhere as a newly-anointed leader of  the Congressional charge to take down "Obamacare." This, just as some of the legislation's very appealing provisions (particularly for seniors) go into effect.

Cantor's bill to repeal healthcare reform is called the “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” It's up for a procedural vote this Friday, and is scheduled to be considered by the Congress next Wednesday.


So, is this a good move for Mr.Cantor politically and, actually more importantly, for Americans?


Salon ran an article yesterday on "The GOP's risky bet to repeal healthcare reform" in which reporter Andrew Leonard asks:

If the real reason for voter anger is the economy, what happens to the Republican agenda if things get better?

Toward the end of the article Mr. Leonard writes:

More health coverage is good for Americans and good for the insurance industry. The latter fact may not offer much solace to progressives pining for a true public option, but it ought to be positively alarming to Republicans. As the new healthcare rules continue to be rolled out, both individuals and industries will have vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Meanwhile, Republicans are offering nothing more than a rejection of the bill, without any solution to the underlying problem -- rising healthcare costs. Who is going to buy that?

Legislation to repeal  "Obamacare" was promised by Michigan Representative Fred Upton on Fox News Sunday. In his capacity as incoming chairman of the  Energy and Commerce committee, one of the House committees that oversees health policy, Mr. Upton crowed, “I don’t think we’re going to be that far off from having the votes to actually override a veto.” If a take down fails, however, Congress, according to Mr. Upton, will go after healthcare reform "piece by piece," by refusing to fund provisions that require funding.


Fred Upton's district includes Kalamazoo, and the Kalamazoo Gazette is running an editorial today that, after also pointing out that Upton is making these comments just as attractive new provisions of the health care bill go into effect, concludes

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been controversial since it passed. A Virginia judge recently struck down a provision in the act and further challenges are pending.

However, there are many provisions in the bill that are beneficial to consumers. It is also equally clear that steps must be taken to stop runaway health care costs. 

Why not keep the best, most beneficial, parts of the legislation and craft new legislation to address the problems? That would make the most sense.

The path Upton and other congressional leaders are choosing will just continue the dysfunction that has wasted time and taxpayer money for the past several years. 

They should reconsider this action and seek to strategically revise, not repeal, the law.

Yesterday, Michael Falcone and Amy Walter blogged  on ABC News bout "Risk vs. Reward On Health Care Repeal." They make the point that for new, ultra-conservative Tea Party House members, their "no government health care" rhetoric meets reality squarely on the issue of their own health care.

From the DCCC’s (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) memo: “House Republican candidates affiliated with the Tea Party ran strongly against ‘government health care.’ … Despite their campaign rhetoric and public opinion, most incoming Republican Freshman will not say whether they will accept government health care.  Their silence can only mean one thing: Republican Freshman will hypocritically take government funded health care even though they ran campaigns against it.”

What I wonder is, have those of us Americans who are quick to offer our opinions on whether or not health care reform should be repealed, taken the time to understand what we're supporting or opposing.

Politics is noise; health care is real. Talk is cheap; medical care is expensive.

So, are you in favor of repeal?

Yes, I'm really going to write about my hair on a public radio station blog . . .

I left TV for radio for many reasons, but right up there among those reasons is that I am basically uninterested in wearing stockings or spending much time on my hair -- both of which TV work requires.

That's me, on the left, with my idea of a hairdo. As you will notice, I'm a 60-something woman with long hair -- which makes society's Fashion Police mighty uncomfortable. But then, I'm such a rebel in so many ways that maybe that's the point?

But anyway, just because I don't care much about how I look, doesn't mean I don't try to take reasonable care of my hair. It, however, is baby-fine, fly-away and a great generator of static electricity. For six decades of winters, my hair has either floated about my head or clung itchily to the side of my face. Nothing commercial helps. Nothing. And I am not too proud to try any shampoo, any conditioner, any goo or any spray that anyone suggests. The truth is that, while I may have very good qualities, I have very bad hair.

Back in October, the New York Times ran a story by Dominique Browning asking, "Why Can't Middle-Aged Women Have Long Hair?" Evidently, this is a burning question among New York Times readers, because when last I checked, Ms. Browning's article had generated 1256 comments. 

I rarely post on my personal Facebook page, but I did post that article and got quite a few responses. One person (Carolyn O'Neal, was it you?) commented that while she could see long hair, she couldn't see giving up shampoo as the article suggested?

What??? I'd missed that! So back I went and read what I had indeed overlooked the first time . . .

You would think that having long hair means you are spending a lot of money on hair products. I won’t even tell you what my Madison Avenue hairdresser, Joseph — the consummate high-end hair professional! — told me about how we shouldn’t even be using all those chemically laden shampoos.

Valery Joseph salon website photo

O.K., I will tell you: Those shampoos strip out the hair’s protective oils, and then you have to replace them with other chemical brews. He recommends regular hot water rinses and massaging of the scalp with fingertips. A little patience is required while the scalp’s natural oils rebalance themselves and — voilà — glossy, thick tresses, for free.

Glossy thick tresses!!!? No way are they going to appear on my head. I'll leave those to Troy Polamalu.

But, I reasoned, what's there could not get more bothersome. So I Googled away and found many sites advocating the No Poo approach to hair care. Most of these suggested substituting some kind of baking soda mixture for shampoo and then rinsing with diluted apple cider vinegar. 

I began experimenting a couple of months ago, and, as of now, mix 1 tablespoon baking soda and one cup of water in an old plastic, pointy-topped mustard dispenser (the kind you see in diners), spread the stuff all over my scalp, rub vigorously, rinse. Next, I condition my ends and rinse. Then, using the companion, pointy-topped ketchup dispenser, I rinse my hair with 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar diluted in 1 cup of water. 

So far, much better -- at least as far as static electricity goes. You'll have to tell me how I look.

Okay, okay, so this is a pretty low-minded topic for a public radio blog.  I would submit, however, that if you're turning up your nose in disgust, you've never spent a winter with your hair levitating on its own. 

If you have, and you've got any questions you'd like to ask, please shoot me an e-mail.

Here's looking at you . . .

Life as an American "other . . ."

The late Ollie Branham was my husband Charlie's neighbor when he and I first met twenty-some years ago.

At the time, Ollie was about 80, straight as an oak, strong, calm and wise. He'd lived in Amherst County, Virginia, his whole life, but had been a recognized (by the Commonwealth of Virginia) member of the Monacan Indian Nation only since February 14, 1989.

Before that, Ollie had been an "other," a  mongrel unaccepted by either blacks or whites in the carefully racist structure of the first three-quarters of last-century Virginia. The only time I ever saw Ollie Branham close to angry was when he took out his identity card, pointed at the word "Monacan" and shouted something like that's who I am, and that's who I've always been, and now can't no one say otherwise!

Author (and WMRA member) Kate Buford has just published the first complete biography of perhaps our country's most famous Native American "other," Olympian Jim Thorpe.  Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe doesn't need me to describe it as the exhaustively researched, well-written biography it is. For that, read reviews in the likes of The New York Times and Powell's. All I'll add by way of straight assessment is that, if you enjoy a biography that ranges across the early, chaotic days of professional sports, read this book! For me, it would have been worth reading just for the portrait it gives of that glorious self-promoter, Pop Warner -- whom I'd always before assumed was a sports saint.


I do, however, have a couple of things to say about Native American Son as a social history.

Jim Thorpe throws the discus in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm 

Jim Thorpe competed for the United States in the 1912 Olympics (long before our country accepted him as its citizen). He won gold medals in both the pentathlon and decathlon, and then lost them, because he'd gotten paid to play summer baseball -- which was a common practice back then among white amateur athletes who got to keep their medals..   

Although he went on to be one of the Founding Fathers of American professional sports, Jim Thorpe (as Ms. Buford details) remained the restless and rootless creature America had made him by doing almost everything wrong in its treatment of Native Americans. He was, like my friend Ollie Branham, constantly told what he wasn't, rather than being left alone to discover what he was.

Sure Jim Thorpe was a drunk and a bit feckless and a bad parent. But who knows what this man -- arguably the best American athlete of his century -- might have become had his society not beat up on him (and exploited him) every chance it got. 

I'm a firm believer that we can walk around in other people's shoes only by listening to their stories. Kate's telling of Jim Thorpe's story details the dark underbelly of 20th Century American social history. It's a tale which we have every right to be ashamed of and every need to remember.

To me the greater question Kate Buford's fine biography asks is: Are we Americans as a society ever going to learn how to function without designating and denigrating "others?"

I'd suggest reading Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe if you feel any need to give your social conscience a call to action for 2011.