"Have I no friend will rid me of these liberals?"
I'm not one to harp in endless postings about the political and the current, but this Tuscon shooting and the froth and blather it has prompted is lacking, as far as I can tell, in one telling literary parallel. So far, no one in the mainstream media has compared Jarod Loughner to Lord Exton from William Shakespeare's Richard II.
For those who haven't cracked the play yet: In Act V, Scene IV, we read:
Enter EXTON and Servant
EXTON
Didst thou not mark the king, what words he spake,
'Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?'
Was it not so?
Servant
These were his very words.
EXTON
'Have I no friend?' quoth he: he spake it twice,
And urged it twice together, did he not?
Servant
He did.
EXTON
And speaking it, he wistly look'd on me,
And who should say, 'I would thou wert the man'
That would divorce this terror from my heart;'
Meaning the king at Pomfret. Come, let's go:
I am the king's friend, and will rid his foe.
Exeunt
Exton thence goes to the Tower with two assassins -- whom Richard himself dispatches with an axe -- and kills the king. After the deed is done, he praises Richard's handiness with the axe and expresses some regrets:
EXTON
As full of valour as of royal blood:
Both have I spill'd; O would the deed were good!
For now the devil, that told me I did well,
Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.
Expecting newly crowed Henry IV to welcome this deed, Exton takes Richard's body to the castle, and hears this instead from the King:
Exton, I thank thee not; for thou hast wrought
A deed of slander with thy fatal hand
Upon my head and all this famous land.
(I emphasized.)
Here's the kicker for me, and a detail that dovetails this killing plot with the Tuscon shootings: at no point in the play does the character Henry Bolingbroke utter the words later repeated by Exton and confirmed by the servant. I wasn't sure myself, seeing as it's been decades since I read Richard, so I searched the text of the entire play. (Love these computers!) Based on the fact that two characters were discussing the quote, Shakespeare undoubtedly meant to infer that Exton was not mad; but at no time in the play did the audience hear this damning question uttered from the lips of Bolingbroke.
In a modern parallel, the right is famously regrouping and noting that Loughner at no time was told to go and shoot liberals, that he was deranged and we should as a nation -- nay, as a world! -- attribute the shootings to derangement alone. They thank Loughner not, for he hast wrought a deed of slander upon their heads.
And that's the message that the mainstream media has run with. For example, NPR's On The Media Bob Garfield, discussing the violent rhetoric with a guest, said this:
I wanted to tell you about some of our own deliberations on the show, before we even had this conversation, because there has been no connection established between Jared Loughner’s motives and the political environment in general, because he appears to be a paranoid schizophrenic acting out of his illness, there is a question as to whether it’s fair to even discuss this issue. If there’s no connection, why are we discussing the connection?
(I emphasized again.)
No, Bob, you're partially right: there has been no king on tape quoted as saying "Go, shoot liberals, Jarod." Instead, as the guest pointed out -- as you yourself pointed out in the piece -- the rhetoric was unspecific . . . but still very specific in its "rid me" references. Nothing that would hold up in a court of law, no; but does that establish "no connection"? Why bend over backwards trying to repeat the insistent strident assertions of those Republicans who feel this deed of slander upon their heads? Are you just covering your ass just as they are covering theirs, and just as desperately? After all, one wouldn't want to be branded a media Liberal, would one, Bob?
Here's the real point I think every talking head in mainstream media is avoiding, the point that makes the emboldened Garfield assertion specious at best: We as a society should avoid violent rhetoric not just because it makes for a more civil discourse, but specifically because there are paranoid schizophrenics out there who WILL act out of their illness! Yes, Loughner was mentally ill -- no duh. But that doesn't mean he lived in a cave and never watched the news, never listened to the radio, never picked up a magazine, newspaper, never opened a web page. It's possible, even likely, that he was both sick and a member of society. It's further likely that, unfettered by his illness, he was acting on those hints of violence it has become all but impossible to avoid.
Henry knew his court was filled with nobles who sought the favor of the king and would go just a wee bit too far in seeking that favor; the right wing media hit machine knew it was speaking its violent rhetoric to a few people who were already unhinged and who just needed to have their unhinged-ness guided in the right direction. The right knew full well their invocations of "Second Amendment remedies," their "lock and load," their "armed and dangerous" and their graphic cross hairs were going out to everyone, not just to reasonable people who knew the difference between political hyperbole and calls to killing action.
Just like Henry, the violent bloviators need only give that call to action, wait, and then denounce as misguided those who carry out their call. Both were acting on the principal of plausible deniability.
Those in the media that avoid this obvious diagnosis of the current situation are acting either in concert with the violent rhetoricians, or out of fear of being branded as liberal themselves . . . and therefore having the rhetorical (but now all too real) cross hair mark on them just like it is trained on those in political office who happen to support policies to the left of the political spectrum.
Henry ended the play noting a damning consequence of rising in political power. After banishing Exton and professing his own despair over Richard's death, he notes to the court, "Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe, That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow." Someone else, another person or another party, is always in the way of your own political rise, and those someones need to move -- or be moved -- before you can continue your clawing up the power ladder . . . before your growths can spread.
For those who haven't cracked the play yet: In Act V, Scene IV, we read:
Enter EXTON and Servant
EXTON
Didst thou not mark the king, what words he spake,
'Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?'
Was it not so?
Servant
These were his very words.
EXTON
'Have I no friend?' quoth he: he spake it twice,
And urged it twice together, did he not?
Servant
He did.
EXTON
And speaking it, he wistly look'd on me,
And who should say, 'I would thou wert the man'
That would divorce this terror from my heart;'
Meaning the king at Pomfret. Come, let's go:
I am the king's friend, and will rid his foe.
Exeunt
Exton thence goes to the Tower with two assassins -- whom Richard himself dispatches with an axe -- and kills the king. After the deed is done, he praises Richard's handiness with the axe and expresses some regrets:
EXTON
As full of valour as of royal blood:
Both have I spill'd; O would the deed were good!
For now the devil, that told me I did well,
Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.
Expecting newly crowed Henry IV to welcome this deed, Exton takes Richard's body to the castle, and hears this instead from the King:
Exton, I thank thee not; for thou hast wrought
A deed of slander with thy fatal hand
Upon my head and all this famous land.
(I emphasized.)
Here's the kicker for me, and a detail that dovetails this killing plot with the Tuscon shootings: at no point in the play does the character Henry Bolingbroke utter the words later repeated by Exton and confirmed by the servant. I wasn't sure myself, seeing as it's been decades since I read Richard, so I searched the text of the entire play. (Love these computers!) Based on the fact that two characters were discussing the quote, Shakespeare undoubtedly meant to infer that Exton was not mad; but at no time in the play did the audience hear this damning question uttered from the lips of Bolingbroke.
In a modern parallel, the right is famously regrouping and noting that Loughner at no time was told to go and shoot liberals, that he was deranged and we should as a nation -- nay, as a world! -- attribute the shootings to derangement alone. They thank Loughner not, for he hast wrought a deed of slander upon their heads.
And that's the message that the mainstream media has run with. For example, NPR's On The Media Bob Garfield, discussing the violent rhetoric with a guest, said this:
I wanted to tell you about some of our own deliberations on the show, before we even had this conversation, because there has been no connection established between Jared Loughner’s motives and the political environment in general, because he appears to be a paranoid schizophrenic acting out of his illness, there is a question as to whether it’s fair to even discuss this issue. If there’s no connection, why are we discussing the connection?
(I emphasized again.)
No, Bob, you're partially right: there has been no king on tape quoted as saying "Go, shoot liberals, Jarod." Instead, as the guest pointed out -- as you yourself pointed out in the piece -- the rhetoric was unspecific . . . but still very specific in its "rid me" references. Nothing that would hold up in a court of law, no; but does that establish "no connection"? Why bend over backwards trying to repeat the insistent strident assertions of those Republicans who feel this deed of slander upon their heads? Are you just covering your ass just as they are covering theirs, and just as desperately? After all, one wouldn't want to be branded a media Liberal, would one, Bob?
Here's the real point I think every talking head in mainstream media is avoiding, the point that makes the emboldened Garfield assertion specious at best: We as a society should avoid violent rhetoric not just because it makes for a more civil discourse, but specifically because there are paranoid schizophrenics out there who WILL act out of their illness! Yes, Loughner was mentally ill -- no duh. But that doesn't mean he lived in a cave and never watched the news, never listened to the radio, never picked up a magazine, newspaper, never opened a web page. It's possible, even likely, that he was both sick and a member of society. It's further likely that, unfettered by his illness, he was acting on those hints of violence it has become all but impossible to avoid.
Henry knew his court was filled with nobles who sought the favor of the king and would go just a wee bit too far in seeking that favor; the right wing media hit machine knew it was speaking its violent rhetoric to a few people who were already unhinged and who just needed to have their unhinged-ness guided in the right direction. The right knew full well their invocations of "Second Amendment remedies," their "lock and load," their "armed and dangerous" and their graphic cross hairs were going out to everyone, not just to reasonable people who knew the difference between political hyperbole and calls to killing action.
Just like Henry, the violent bloviators need only give that call to action, wait, and then denounce as misguided those who carry out their call. Both were acting on the principal of plausible deniability.
Those in the media that avoid this obvious diagnosis of the current situation are acting either in concert with the violent rhetoricians, or out of fear of being branded as liberal themselves . . . and therefore having the rhetorical (but now all too real) cross hair mark on them just like it is trained on those in political office who happen to support policies to the left of the political spectrum.
Henry ended the play noting a damning consequence of rising in political power. After banishing Exton and professing his own despair over Richard's death, he notes to the court, "Lords, I protest, my soul is full of woe, That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow." Someone else, another person or another party, is always in the way of your own political rise, and those someones need to move -- or be moved -- before you can continue your clawing up the power ladder . . . before your growths can spread.