Confusion at Daily Kos today in the swirling aftermath of the Giffords shooting – the right-wing commenters at Palin’s Facebook page, on Twitter, and on many, many blogs have pounced on the curious case of a Daily Kos diary that criticized Rep Giffords was deleted earlier today. They were quick to howl that the diarist, a low-level member named BlueBoy whose diary didn’t get very many comments or “recs,” must be the same person as Jared Lee Loughner, the accused shooter.
Well, it appears he’s not, as he’s been posting in comments threads on Daily Kos tonight. He took the diary down out of respect for the Giffords family, but also because… it’s his diary and he has the right to delete it. It would have been better if he’d UPDATED it with an apology and an explanation, as this way, the moderators and indeed @Markos himself had no way to know who deleted it, or why.
No such respect from La Palin; she’s posted a rather stilted “hold her in our prayers” post on Facebook but made no apology for the now-infamous graphic showing crosshairs over Gifford’s district that was also taken down today. It’s likely it was removed out of respect, but more likely, it was removed because it had become an embarassing liability. In related news today, FOXNews covered a vigil for Giffords on the state capitol steps in Phoenix, but cut away suddenly when the young man on camera said “And I say to you, Sarah Palin…”
Yes, they cut away, the cowards, to that creepy scary clown commercial from the US Postal Service.
I checked in with friends online, where we sat around a virtual campfire and sang Kum-Bah-Yah… okay, yes, we did, but it was a punk version and then there was a lot of other great music while people talked quietly about the events of the day. It was a lot less accusatory than you might think; the general agreement there and at Daily Kos was that we needed to get away from constantly assigning a right/left stance to every crazy person that flips out and shoots someone. We were just decompressing from the day’s events and trying to relax together with music.
Sometimes a nut is just a nut — but it’s likely to be a right-wing nut most of the time (at least since the 70’s).
Daily Kos is a very active, very big group blog/diary site, and it’s characterized by a system of “tipping” and “reccing” to get posts (known as diaries) promoted to the front page so that they remain visible longer rather than scrolling off with every refresh. This Boy Blue’s post, in which he declared Rep. Giffords was “dead to me” was deleted, but not before screenshots made their way onto every social media site where conservatives gather on the Internet.
Twitter exploded earlier; not long after the shooter was identified, someone claiming to be a former high school classmate of his insisted that he was gay, “left-wing, quite liberal,” you name it. Meanwhile, the kid’s own reading list is kind of a mixed bag – but two of his favorite authors are Hitler and Ayn Rand, along with Karl Marx and some other more conventional “AP Senior English” reading list writers.
The fans of Sarah Palin on Facebook are flagging critics as fast as they post, and also making the same claims that the shooter, Loughlin, is the “radical leftist,” Boy Blue. So’s the UK’s Daily Telegraph, calling it an “unseemly rush” to blame Palin and the Tea Party.
Everybody’s making false equivalencies while simultaneously removing pages and graphics that either implicate their “side,” or would hurt the Giffords family by remaining visible, or both. Meanwhile, the right-wing partisan hordes are screaming: “They’re both from Arizona! They’re both gay! They either shot Giffords, or said she was “dead to me.” They must be the same guy! The shooter can’t be a good real American conservative, he MUST THEREFORE be a BAD UNREAL unAmerican LIBERAL.”
Well, no, not if this “Blue Boy” you identify as “Jared Lee Loughner” is actively posting at Daily Kos tonight while the shooter is most definitely in custody – unless you want to holler “Conspiracy!” and wank-merrily-ho to your heart’s content.
Also, all known YouTube and social media postings by Loughner have been linked and/or transcripted by BoingBoing and the page will be updated.
A later diarist at dKos posted quickly, before all the facts started to sort themselves out, and updated as below after being given better info (some from Blue Boy himself) in the comments. It was pointed out that the diary wasn’t all that popular, got very little attention when it was posted, and even that the cliche “dead to me” is kind of how you say you’re going to ignore someone forever, rather than threaten them with murder.
UPDATED Thanks to all for their information about what really happened. It seems that a diary was posted in the past week by someone who was upset at Rep. Giffords for voting for Rep. Lewis for Speaker of the House. The person entitled their diary: My Congresswoman voted against Nancy Pelosi! And is Now Dead to Me! The diary contained no threats of violence, no gun sites, no Sarah Palin-like ‘reload’ language. Other than the title, the harshest remarks were something to the effect of no longer being a volunteer for Rep. Giffords. Hardly the stuff of rousing vitriol. When Rep. Giffords was shot today, the diarist out of respect for Rep. Giffords and after apologizing for causing any distress, deleted the diary of his/her own free will. There is no equivalency between what the diarist wrote in the title and what Sarah Palin posted on her web page or wrote in her twitter remarks about reloading. There is no equivalence between what the diarist wrote and what so many extreme right wing politicians, TV commentators or radio hosts say each and every day. Bai’s brand of journalism is dishonest and shoddy. Shame on him.
via Daily Kos: UPDATED! NYT’s Matt Bai accuse Dkos of scrubbing comment about Rep. Giffords..
