David Von Drehle's Time magazine piece on the Tucson shooting overflows with false equivalences. For instance: Markos Moulitsas, activist and proprietor of Daily Kos, is exactly the same as Sarah Palin; David Brock, founder of a media watchdog website, is the same as Glenn Beck, who reaches tens of millions of Americans through Fox News and his radio show.
After Oklahoma City and a decade of abortion-clinic bombings culminating in the murder of George Tiller, progressives are justifiably worried about right-wing violence. They may have gotten ahead of themselves with the shooter in Tucson, but it is not unreasonable to be concerned about the paranoid (and sometimes violent) rhetoric emanating from the right. But, in fitting with his commitment to false equivalence, Drehle compares wary progressives to birthers and Tea Partiers who attack the legitimacy of the president: "They babble about bizarre alternate realities in which right-wing fanatics terrorize the land or a socialist in the White House plots to overthrow the Constitution."
That said, I can deal with false equivalence; it's lazy and mostly incoherent, but it's hard to avoid in political journalism -- and if you follow politics, you have to live with it. If I'm actively annoyed with anything in Drehle's piece, it's this:
Take a moment to ask why Moulitsas and Palin, who agree on almost nothing, would be united in targeting Giffords. The first reason is that she refuses to indulge their shared delusion that the U.S. would be a better place if it were run by ideologues. She is a person of moderate views and pragmatic politics, able to listen respectfully to the opinions of others and disagree without being disagreeable, which places her squarely in the American mainstream. She doesn't vote in lockstep with either party, and thus neither extreme is willing to tolerate her.
Notice the conflation of "moderate views" with "pragmatic politics" and the ability to "listen respectfully." In Drehle's mind, these are all exclusive to each other; liberals and conservatives are too intemperate -- too ideological -- to ever have a place in constructive dialogue. But this is nonsense. "Moderate views" are completely separate from "pragmatic politics" and the ability to "listen respectfully." There's nothing about liberalism (or conservatism, for that matter) that precludes you from pragmatism or civility (see, for instance, The American Prospect). Likewise, the opposite is true: The mere fact of being a moderate doesn't imply anything about your ability to be reasonable (see Ben Nelson).
It's funny that Time called this piece the "Vital Center," since I can't help but be amused by someone who uses one hand to decry politicization and the other to attack those with a competing ideology or approach to politics.
One last point: It's a little odd to see Drehle assert that neither extreme is willing to tolerate Rep. Giffords. If his definition of extreme (on the left, at least) is Daily Kos, then he obviously missed the scores of reader diaries expressing support for and solidarity with Giffords. For instance, this one -- from user "teacherken" -- approvingly quotes Republicans and ends with a short sentence, "This is what Gabby wants."
-- Jamelle Bouie
