Standort: fm4.ORF.at / Meldung: "The 'Angry White Men Strategy'"

Chris Cummins

Letters from a shrinking globe: around the day in 80 worlds.

11. 1. 2011 - 18:52

The 'Angry White Men Strategy'

After the Tucson shootings, will the US dare confront the uncomfortable truths?

Democrat Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who is in a critical condition in hospital after being shot in the head by 22-year old gunman Jared Lee Loughner at the weekend, had been worried by the vitriolic rhetoric of modern day US politics. She and many of her party colleagues had been vilified by conservatives, and in particular by the Tea Party, as sort of enemy of the American people for backing President Barack Obama’s progressive legislation.

Gifford was particularly concerned by a map on former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin’s site SarahPac featuring target symbols against Democrats including who voted for the healthcare bill. "We're on Sarah Palin's target list," she said. Gifford’s reaction turned out to be an eery prophesy “When people do that,” said Giffords, “they have to realize that there are consequences to that action."

President Barack Obama has said last Saturday’s shootings have left the nation "grieving and shocked", but has it left it introspective? Can the US use the tragedy of Arizona to take a deep breath and rethink the way it debates its domestic political differences? Only then will there be any chance that the polorised country can, as Obama wished today, "come together as a stronger nation"

By all accounts Loughner, who obtained his semi-automatic gun perfectly legally, is an angry and deeply disturbed young man. We will learn more about his murderous motivation when his trial gets underway and that will require patience. It would be crassly over-simplistic to suggest that his shooting spree outside a Tucson supermarket, which cost the lives of 6 people including a 9 year old child, was purely due to the aggressive political rhetoric. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t provide a significant and perhaps vital contribution to the climate that has led to this act of violence. That’s why many analysts are calling for a national discourse on the issue.

And to show this is not a phenomenon unique to Palin and the Republicans, here is an example of a ludicrously gun-glorifying political advertisement for a Senator Joe Manchin, a politician from Obama's own Democrat party. It's a campaign strategy that for most Europeans, I think, has to be seen to be believed:

Palin will be relieved to read that at the moment the majority of Americans think I’m wrong. According to the findings of a new poll that suggests most of those asked think harsh political rhetoric was not a factor in the Arizona shootings.

The map has since been removed from Palin’s site but it seems she is keen to sweep this issue under the carpet before it damages a possible future bid for the Presidency. In a publicized email exchange with Fox host Glenn Beck she complained that “politicos just capitalize on this to succeed in portraying anyone as inciting terror and violence.” She claims she personally “hates violence”.

But if anyone trumps politicians in terms of angry rhetoric language it is the media hosts themselves. Yet Beck, whose inflammatory style has made him a media star, has absolved himself of any blame as easily as he absolved Palin. Instead he has attacked those who he says are "blaming others for the acts of madmen." He's taken an unlikely soundbite from the hippy bible, telling his audience that "peace and love will stand".

Fm4 Reality Check spoke to media analyst Danny Schechter who is not as quick as Beck to absolve the talking heads. He says it’s time that certain networks took a long hard look at themselves: “There are media outlets that thrive on heating up the rhetoric as a means of keeping their audience angry. It’s called the 'angry white men strategy'”.

Schechter says this strategy borrows much from the American love of TV wrestling with its theatrical confrontation. In this culture of screaming matches, it is hard to find any solutions let alone having any reasoned debate and the average American, who often has real reason to be angry amid threats to his job or home, ultimately loses out.

In the aftermath President Obama, who can't risk being accused of exploiting the tragedy for political gain, preferred to focus on the "Yes We Can" positives. He praised the "extraordinary courage" of the Tucson residents who had wrestled Loughner to the ground and disarmed him. He said they had shown "the best of America". That's the sort of that inspirational talk that Americans want to hear right now. But soon, when the mmediate grieving is over, it is surely time for him to address the awkward, uncomfortable issues they don't want to hear. Those include what you could perhaps describes as the worst of America: inflammatory polarization of politics, hate on television and the national addiction to guns.