Sarah Palin's Shooting Target

Commentary by Timothy Horrigan; January 8, 2011

I am a New Hampshire state representative, so I get a little of the craziness which Members of Congress deal with all the time. In August 2009, I briefly became the target of nationwide hatred after some comments I made about Sarah Palin were widely misconstrued.

Speaking of targets, Palin's fundraising web site had a graphic for many months which looked like rifle range target with a map of the USA. 20 Congresspeople were in the crosshairs. One of them, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), was shot in the head today (January 8, 2010) at a public event in Tucson: Amongst the other victims were a federal judge, the director of the Congresswoman's district office, and a 9-year-old child. A suspect was arrested at the scene, a college student named Jared Lee Loughner. Nine months before the shooting, Rep. Giffords commented on MSNBC that "Sarah Palin has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district and when people do that, they've gotta realize there are consequences to that action."

This shooting came a few days after the new Republican leadership of the New Hampshire legislature eliminated almost all the rules about weapons at the State House. One of the rationales for this was that it would empower the Reps and Senators to return fire in case of an incident like this one.

Because the Tea Party has been so outspoken during the past couple of years, and because Palin did target Giffords last year and even used ballistic metaphors in her tweetage, I must admit that I joined the media in inferring that the assassin or assassins might have links to the Tea Party. If I offended any of my right-wing friends (and I have more than a few) let me tell you:

I still like you
and:
Stop whining! Your hurt feelings are of no importance. People got shot and killed, for God's sake!

The Palinoids were predictably offended that we could possibly think that Palin could be in any way to blame for what happened. They made much of the fact that the gunman Jared Lee Loughner included the Communist Manifesto in a list of favorite books, thus proving that he is a liberal and "likes Marx." They seemed to be unable to dig up the entire list, which includes mostly non-Commie books, even a novel by Ayn Rand (a short one, not one of her boat anchors.) The Palinoids were however able to dig up an instance of a Democrat using a USA map-themed shooting target. This was used by the relatively low-profile Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute and the Democratic Leadership Council. It was used to illustrate an innocuous article about the aftermath of the 2004 election. Even though this map ran a long time ago, and even though this map does not target any individuals, we liberals supposedly have no right to object to Palin's map. (The targets, by the way, look like dartboard or archery targets.)

[August 1, 2011] Congresswoman Giffords returned to work less than seven months after she was shot. She cast her first vote in favor of the debt ceiling compromise bill which averted a global financial meltdown.

[January 22, 2012] Congresswoman Giffords announced that she would be resigning from Congress.

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