Political Profit From the Pain

Liberal Talks Calm Face

I purposely avoided writing about the Gabrielle Giffords shooting because I felt it unseemly to take advantage of such a tragedy, particularly in light of a nine-year-old girl having been killed. Conservative talk shows probably would have shown the same reticence if not for the disgusting exploitation exhibited by the Liberal side.

Left wing pundits and politicians were instantly seizing upon the opportunity to ride this vehicle of violence until the wheels fall off. Nearly orgasmic were they in their unbridled glee at the chance to advance their agenda at the expense of every victim of Jared Loughner, the perpetrator responsible for the girl's death and Giffords' critical condition.

Now we are being treated to a relentless barrage of admonitions to mind what we say, and Conservatives are being accused unjustly for somehow encouraging Loughner to commit this heinous act, when the facts point in the opposite direction. Projecting their own culpability on the Right, people such as the Reverend Al Sharpton are demanding "civility in discourse", but only from the Right. The Left continues to feign innocence, and the media are willing accomplices in these baseless accusations.

The Ruins of Freddie's Fashion Mart

It is particularly ironic coming from the likes of Sharpton, considering his complicity in past incidents, actually and more directly resulting in death, acts for which he was never criticized by the media. Let's examine some of the past deeds of the good Reverend, who now seeks to be the voice of reason, shall we?

It was 1995, and Freddie Harari of the Bronx, NY was a business owner who rented a retail building on 125th Street in Harlem called Freddie's Fashion Mart.  The landlord, The United House of Prayer, was a black Pentecostal Church. They had asked Freddie to evict his subtenant in order to expand. That store was The Record Shack, a black-owned business that had been there for quite some time.

Sharpton led a protest in Harlem against the planned eviction, saying, "We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business." On December 8th of 1995, one of the protesters, Roland J. Smith Jr., entered Harari's store and shot several customers. He sprinkled a flammable liquid and ignited it before turning the gun on himself. He was among the eight dead at the scene.

Yankel Rosenbaum

Four years earlier, it was also Sharpton's rhetoric that fueled the Crown Heights Riots, which lasted for three days. When it was all over, 152 police officers and 38 civilians were injured, 27 vehicles were destroyed, and 7 stores were burned or looted. And Yankel Rosenbaum was dead.Now he wants others to tone down the rhetoric?

Appearing on the Ed Schultz Show after the Arizona shooting, Sharpton said that "there are some very unbalanced people here, in this country, that anything can trigger". I guess Sharpton is suggesting that the rest of us, who are not "unbalanced",  must walk on egg shells as a result. Of course, that only applies to Conservative speech. The music that Loughner listened to is immune from such scrutiny and causal effect, despite the violent nature of the lyrics. It has not been demonstrated that he listened to Sarah Palin, or read any of her work, yet she is the object of the Left's angst.

And Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) actually suggested that the reading on the House floor of the United States Constitution - which he said was "uncalled for" - somehow contributed to the Arizona shooting. This is a member of the party that held a political rally in 2002, disguised as a memorial service for Paul Wellstone. The same party whose president said they would bring a gun if we brought a knife. And the same party that is once again pushing to censor freedom of speech in the name of the Fairness Doctrine - a misnomer if ever there was one - on the back of Gabrielle Giffords, and the memory of 9-year-old Christina Green, and the other five dead.

John Green, the father of Christina, asked that his daughter's death not be used as an excuse to remove more freedoms, saying, “We don’t need any more restrictions on our society.” I agree wholeheartedly, and condemn the greedy opportunists who refuse to heed his grief-stricken words.

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