The false rush to cry 'balance'

By: Michael Kinsley January 11, 2011 04:41 AM EST

When Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot and six other people — including a federal judge who was coming out of Mass — were killed at a shopping center in Tucson, Ariz., I was staying at a resort a few miles away. Among the guests, there were three immediate reactions: outrage, sadness and, if you’re headed to the airport, make sure to turn right at Tangerine instead of staying on Oracle to Ina, because traffic’s going to be a mess down there.  Life goes on incredibly quickly. No one is to blame for that — it’s inevitable. If you didn’t know the congresswoman or the federal judge personally, you still have a plane to catch. But it does seem that we absorb recurring episodes of political violence a bit more quickly than we used to because they’ve become more common. Indeed, they’re so common that everybody knows the script. First, we deplore the event and say we’re praying — and, in most cases, actually do pray — for the victims. Then we deplore the corrosive politics that may have contributed to the tragedy. Next, someone on the left will say that right wingers are more to blame, because they vilify people more than the other side. Then voices on the right will recoil in horror that someone is trying to politicize a national tragedy.  Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation, wrote on his website in time for Sunday’s papers: “While we need to take a moment to extend our sympathies to the families of those who died” — there; was that about a moment? Good. Where was I? Oh yes — “we cannot allow the hard left to do what it tried to do in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing. Within the entire political spectrum, there are extremists, both on the left and the right. Violence of this nature should be decried by everyone and not used for political gain.”  The “extremists of the right and left” formula generally appeals to newspaper editorialists and the media because it is balanced. And maybe I’m too ideologically blinkered to see the situation clearly. But it seems — in fact, it seems obvious — that the situation is not balanced. Extremists on the right are more responsible for the poisonous ideological atmosphere than extremists on the left, whoever they may be. And extremists on the left have a lot less influence on nonextremists on the left than extremists on the right have on right-wing moderates. Sure, NPR, despite denials, tilts to the left. But not the way Fox News tilts toward the right. Rachel Maddow is no Glenn Beck.  Here is how “balance” works. A front-page piece in The New York Times on Sunday is headlined: “Bloodshed Puts New Focus on Vitriol in Politics.” The piece says, “Democrats have ... pointed out cases where Republican candidates seemed to raise the prospect of armed revolt if Washington did not change its ways. But many Republicans have noted that they too are subject to regular threats and abuse from the public, and, during the health care fight, some suggested Democrats were trying to cut off responsible political opposition and paint themselves as victims.” So Democrats have noted that Republicans have advocated armed sedition while Republicans have noted that Democrats sometimes attempt to portray themselves as victims in order to stifle debate. Neither side has a monopoly on virtue. Balance!  As I write, what we are learning about the man arrested in the shooting paints a portrait straight out of central casting: nutty ravings on the Internet, neighbors say he kept to himself and so on. There’s no evidence that he was influenced by anything Sarah Palin may have said — strictly metaphorically — about targeting Democrats. He may even be a Democrat for all we know. Furthermore, Republicans are right that you can’t run a democracy with people biting their tongue for fear of offending someone else. Perhaps harder to accept is the fact that you can’t run a democracy with everyone censoring themselves for fear of flipping some switch in the brain of a nutcase. Democrats should be cautious about flinging accusations at a moment when, because of a tragedy, they have the moral upper hand. It looks like unseemly exploitation.  People who work in the news media get used to the nastiness. The other day, exercising my First Amendment right to procrastinate by searching the Web for my name — a widely practiced secret vice of writers — I came across an anonymous posting on a website that I’d never heard of, asking, “Is Kinsley Dead Yet?” I thought of writing back, “Not yet. Sorry,” but lost my nerve. What if this guy, or someone else, decides to rectify that situation? I was a bit more unnerved a few years ago when Bill O’Reilly, who didn’t like an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, where I then worked, declared: “They’ll never get it,” referring to his gripe, whatever it was, “until they grab Michael Kinsley out of his little house and they cut his head off. And maybe when the blade sinks in, he’ll go, ‘Perhaps O’Reilly was right.’” O’Reilly has millions of followers — just ask him. Who could know whether one might decide to give him a present?  In truth, I’m indulging here in “death-threat chic.” Far from being scared, I was delighted and flattered to be singled out for decapitation by O’Reilly. Maybe I’m going to have to rethink that cavalier attitude.  Michael Kinsley is a columnist for POLITICO. The founder of Slate, Kinsley has also served as editor of The New Republic, editor-in-chief of Harper’s, editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times and a columnist for The Atlantic.