This morning I was on the "Domestic News Roundup" hour of the Diane Rehm show, on WAMU in Washington. The topics naturally started with the latest gun-safety proposals and went on through Chuck Hagel, the economy, the Dreamliner, and so on.
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Here's a message from a listener in the Midwest, who objects to the way the gun discussion unfolded on this show and in most other political/media forums. Emphasis added:
This is an opportunity to mention again Dina Rasor's powerful article about the toll of the "daily gun deaths" as opposed to the too-frequent but not-quite-daily newsmaking mass killings. Previous discussion of it here.This panel, and the rest of the media nearly always misses two points that are critical.- Daily gun deaths [not the big massacres] are the real killer.- The shooters are most likely to be either pissed off and jealous or perfectly rational with a heavily distorted value system, not mentally ill. And mental health experts state whenever they can that it is very hard to determine which patients will become violent. Most will not, and that is certain.The neglected mental health workers are glad to hear that they can get some attention and funding ... and the NRA is glad to put the blame on, of all things, lack of government funding for mental health.Here in tea party country, my cousin, the local outspoken liberal, is afraid to write to the paper about guns. Me, too. We are rightfully afraid of being shot. After all, the gun nuts don't have to be mentally ill to pull the trigger, just pissed off, and Limbaugh and Beck have that service covered.
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Bonus point: I also argued on this show that Barack Obama's long-standing success in luring his critics and opponents out onto extreme, hard-to-defend positions applies to several items in the news now. This is what Andrew Sullivan has often called the "meep-meep" effect, and what Chuck Spinney identified this way immediately after then-nominee John McCain chose then-phenom Sarah Palin as his running mate:
I am beginning to sense that McCain behavior is destroying himself and that Obama has the good sense or instinct to take a deep step back and let McCain dig a hole so deep he can not get out.I think of this as "Obama overreach" in reverse: he has found a way to bait, lure, outwait, and in other ways entice his opponents to overreach themselves. And I think we see this now with:
- the GOP threat to bring on a financial crisis by not raising the debt ceiling, a position from which the party is even now in evident retreat;
- with differences in degree, the GOP positions on immigration, abortion, gay rights, etc: popular with a minority, very difficult to sell to a 51% majority;
- the Wayne LaPierre-style angry counter-response from the NRA, which in the long run will put the NRA in a difficult position. (Though it will probably win this year's legislative battles.)
- the over-the-top attempt to disqualify Chuck Hagel from Cabinet consideration by preposterously labeling him an anti-Semite rather than simply opposing him on policy grounds. This manifestly did not work in dissuading Obama, and if anything it rallied support for Hagel and -- increased denunciation of the groups and people leveling the charges. On the other hand, I agree with John Norris in Foreign Policy that the Obama administration has gone way too far in "vetting by trial balloon." That is, letting a potential nominee's name be "mentioned" and seeing how the pro-and-con goes.
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