By firing an individual who said such a deplorable thing. Years and years ago, FOX News anchor John Gibson made a horrible joke about the death of Heath Ledger. He was fired. Nonetheless, I saw many use the fact that he made the joke, and that he worked for FOX, as somehow proof that conservatives are heartless bastards and it's time to abandon the traditional ship for the beautiful people who live left of center.
I will say no such thing. What she said was terrible, and it reflects a shallowness and void within her own heart, and the fanatical devotion to her own political dogmas and gross intolerance of all who don't conform to her thinking. But it means nothing about those who swing left, are proud liberals, or want gun control, or anything else. Even those who find fault with conservatives in a situation like this are not - repeat, NOT - like her just because they might agree with her politics.
She represents the worst of any society, ever. And she shows that only fools try to make such behavior as indicative of one side or another, or use it as an excuse to attack or dismiss a particular viewpoint. CBS acted swiftly and was right. That's good enough.
You have actually gotten to the heart of the evil that is around us these days. The tendency of seeing others as part of a group rather as individual people. If you think about the shooting itself. The killer was firing from a great distance away into a large crowd. He wasn't killing Fred, Suzy, or Stan but members of the other, whatever identity he had assigned to the crowd of concert goers. So to with this person at CBS who couldn't find any sympathy for Republicans, could she have found sympathy for Joe, Bill, or Sarah? When we see others as only members of a group then you can wipe away their humanity. Once we have done that then we can operate a gas chamber, fly a plane into a building, fire a gun into a crowd or even just fail to have sympathy for their victims.
ReplyDeleteMy only quibble is that it's not the great evil of today, but an evil that has haunted mankind forever.
DeleteI think that is an important point. I heard a rather damning talk about the Vegas Shooting, and that it was a Country Music concert. The fellow pointed out that, in our popular media culture, Country Music fans, like many in that culture, have been all but dehumanized, often mocked and laughed at and insulted and accused simply because they are in 'that group.' So whatever the motives of the gunman, if there are any at all, from one POV, the victims were already part of a cardboard stereotype, rather than actual people.
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