How Obama Can Talk About Tolerance without Trivializing a Tragedy
President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are joined by government employees on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Monday, Jan. 10, 2011, to observe a moment of silence for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and the other victims of an assassination attempt against her.
/ AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
This post originally appeared on Slate.
For the second time in his tenure, President Obama will eulogize the victims of a shooting. In November 2009--it now seems another era--he gave a small masterpiece of a speech in honor of the 13 people killed when Army Maj. Nidal Hasan allegedly opened fire at Fort Hood in Texas. When Obama speaks Wednesday night in Tucson, he will of course memorialize those killed and wounded when Jared Lee Loughner allegedly opened fire. He is at his best telling stories.
But Obama will also have to talk about tolerance. And he will have to find a way to talk about the need to civilize our debate when he is aligned with only one side in that debate.
Special Section: Tragedy in TucsonEven addressing the idea of tolerance is going to close some ears. Conservatives will hear an accusation even if he says there is no connection between the shooter and Tea Party rhetoric. If there's no connection, why are you bringing it up--at a memorial service, of all places? Liberals who hear the president call out his own side will be irritated by the false equivalence. How can you compare us in any way to those people who say you hold office illegally?
The solution may be to focus not on the political conversation that existed before the shooting but on the one that's come out of it. This allows the president to avoid the question of what motivated the shooter but does not limit his ability to talk about the problems with our political culture. He has fresh evidence, minted by the hour, of the problems of our political conversation.
Not long after the shooting, it became just another chapter in an ongoing fight. After the shooting, Markos Moulitsas tweeted, "Mission accomplished, Sarah Palin." Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips urged followers to blame the shooting on "the left." Anthropologists on either side looked for clues in the shooter's background to support their case that he was motivated by the ideology of the other side. Then, when the debate moved to a new phase, they traded facts from the past to attack or defend. The pattern of debate is not dissimilar to that which follows the release of cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
Giffords Breathing on Her Own, Doctors SayPoll: Most Americans Feel Rhetoric, Tucson Shooting Unrelated
Jared Loughner's Parents "Hurting Real Bad"
This was a tragedy, yes. But it was also an opportunity. When you are engaged in a desperate fight with an opponent so outside the bounds of reason, a catastrophe like this is irresistible. It serves as the last word in the fight: See, conservative talk is dangerous. Or: See, liberals will immediately turn any tragedy into a political weapon regardless of the facts. Or, from the media: If you can make your point quickly, we would like to book you for our program. Sure, we want a reasoned debate, but not at the expense of speed. Better to be wrong, loud, and fast than slow and considered.
In the past, the president has tried to find a reasonable middle ground by illuminating how each side shares the blame. It's not clear how effective that is. Both sides are obsessed with magnitude. Sure, partisans may admit, we may jump to conclusions and mangle the facts to make our point--but the other sides does it more! That's not the issue. The issue is speed and lack of restraint. The president has the chance to make the case that the speed with which the old battle flared anew is proof that both sides have locked themselves into a self-perpetuating and unproductive cycle. Saturday's shooting did not create a pause in the confrontation--it accelerated it.
Arizona Shooting Victims
This is not just unhealthy; it's abnormal. How many Americans are actually engaged in this debate? Not as many as the number of comments on Sarah Palin's Facebook page would lead you to believe. Proof of that can be found in the lives of those who Obama will be in Tucson to mourn. Leave the anthropological inquiries into the mind of Jared Lee Loughner to the pundits. Obama can perform a valuable service by telling us more about the lives that were lost. Two of them were public servants: Judge John Roll and Gabe Zimmerman (who handled community outreach for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords). Three were retirees who had simply lived by the grace of their daily obligations--raising children, attending church, hating the snow back East. Mavy Stoddard believes that her 76-year-old husband, Dorwin, died because he shielded her with his body when the shooting started. Nine-year-old Christina Taylor wanted to be a politician.
This will serve as a welcome balance to the obsessive coverage of the shooter. It will also remind us of lives that are measured not by the number of arguments won or Twitter followers gained. All the president has to do to restore a little balance to this debate is talk about the people whose lives it did not define. In doing so, he will make the case for tolerance far better than any words directly aimed at the topic.
More from Slate:
Are Assassins More Likely To Target Liberals?If the Arizona gunman is too insane to be influenced by anyone, he's too insane to be executed.
Life after Loughner.
John Dickerson is a CBS News political analyst. He is also Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. You can also follow him on Twitter here.
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by RealiteBites January 12, 2011 6:08 PM EST
"On a more positive note, that's great that Pres. Obama's going out to Arizona, because maybe it'll bring comfort to the area where this tragedy struck, and to the friends and family members who were directly involved in this terrible incident"
********
ce paragraphe aurait suffi, le reste de ta dissertation
n'?tait qu'un bla bla incompr?hensible
*********
this paragraph would have sufficed, the rest of your dissertation
was just blah blah incomprehensible.lol au revoir
.
au revoir a toi :p
In the past, the president has tried to find a reasonable middle ground by illuminating how each side shares the blame. It's not clear how effective that is.
.......................................................................................................................................................................................................
I think I'm getting a better sense for where the people who are upset by the discourse, where they're at and what they're looking for. It confused me a little because it was initially packaged as 'compromise' being superior to 'extremes' as evidenced by the tax package, which wasn't superior by any measure, substantively speaking. And then the complaints started zoning in on 'tone', but the people who were complaining about 'tone' are so negative themselves I kind went like, huh? But now I think I'm getting a better feel ...
I do agree that if the conversation between the sides were more productive, more could be accomplished. So that's a desirable goal to aim for that everybody should want to see happen.
So how to get there from here? It's definitely not going to work for somebody who doesn't have a high tolerance for conflict to 'blame' people who do - they're just going to peg that person as weak and push them off to the side. If people feel overrun by 'extremes', then that's probably a sign that the people leading the conversation are strong individuals, right? All it takes then is another strong individual to act as mediator to the debate, somebody who listens and will acknowledge the positions on every side, who's got the ability to evaluate those positions substantively for their chance of furthering a mutual goal like social progress, who's trusted to be competent and fair.
So how that process would play out would be that the mediator, rather than saying that the 'partisan tone' has gotten too 'heated' and 'extreme' and that both sides are to 'blame', might instead put it all on the table and say that this shooting was awful, and that (if the statistics show that it happens more in the US per capita than other countries) it doesn't have to be this way. What areas are people willing and able to change? Community responsibility for our neighbors in trouble? The way we treat mental health? Balancing gun freedoms against the public need for safety? Is there a better way to get our views across that's more productive and less angry? Like rather than focusing in on what people DON'T want touched, people need to focus on what they ARE willing to change, because this is serious, and something needs to be done.
Unfortunately, I don't know that Barack Obama is a mediator, so much as he's one of you who doesn't have a high threshold for conflict. Like I think he shares the desire for less heat, but lacks the stomach to actually stand up to the so-called 'extremes' and initiate the process of mediation? I mean I dunno - I just personally have him pegged as somebody who's more likely tonight to just pay lip service to 'unity' and 'getting along' and 'progress' rather than actually taking the concrete steps to bringing it about. But I'll bet that won't stop the punditry from gushing about his 'showing of leadership' and 'positive tone'. And then tomorrow those same people will be complaining about the 'tone' of the 'rhetoric' from the 'extremes' while nothing has changed.
On a more positive note, that's great that Pres. Obama's going out to Arizona, because maybe it'll bring comfort to the area where this tragedy struck, and to the friends and family members who were directly involved in this terrible incident.
I guess basically what I was suggesting is that the antidote to bickering is perhaps mediation and problem-solving on the issues by somebody tolerant.
Like the people who are bothered by the bickering, while their inclination might be to back off and tune out and call people names like 'extremist', might perhaps instead find they get better results in terms of the tone of the dialogue by sticking to the issues and trying to find win-win solutions? Like rather than just sit and complain about 'partisanship', perhaps people could try seeing if they can articulate the positions of each side, and then see for themselves whether there's any way to satisfy both sides with one solution?
Just an idea ...
qui d'autre pourrait trouver les mots justes, si ce n'est Obama, parce que lui aussi souffre de l'intol?rance de la part son peuple,
les discours d'Obama sont pleins d'?gard et de d?licatesse et de respect pour les autres.
********
who else could find the right words, if not Obama, because he also suffers from intolerance by his people and that's unfortunate
Obama's speeches are full of respect and sensitivity and respect for others au revoir
Vi R
As if any of this had anything to do with this maniacs motives.
Politicians and those that idolize them need to get over themselves. It is not all about you. It is about a crazy person to which all of us can be targets...
Really, "masterpiece of a speech"
Then there is this:
"But Obama will also have to talk about tolerance. And he will have to find a way to talk about the need to civilize our debate when he is aligned with only one side in that debate."
Oh, I see it was the discourse of political fighting that caused this maniac to strike.
Yeh, I want to hear another lecture from Obama how we are all to blame and not the actual person who did this.
He should stay home......