A friend wrote me this morning that America seems to have collectively decided not to blame either the Right or the Left for the shootings in Tucson. I'd sure like to believe that but my cynical side would like to see some of the more extreme accusations retracted (with respectful apologies) before I'll believe that.
And my even-more-cynical side suspects that the reason we're not for the most part blaming each other is because neither side has found a way to gain any real yardage by doing so. Supposing tomorrow, a video emerged that was made by this Jared Lee Loughner. And supposing that in it, he was expressing some pretty extreme political views, either Liberal or Conservative. How many in the other group would be saying, "The criminal is responsible for his crimes. Inflammatory political rhetoric is not responsible"? (See, the loophole in taking that viewpoint is that we never think the excesses on our side are inflammatory political rhetoric. Inflammatory political rhetoric is the bad stuff they say about us. The bad stuff we say about them is simply telling the truth…and anyway, they started it.)
As I said, I liked Obama's speech…and I am impressed that some (not all) right-wingers are grudgingly admitting it was pretty good and that it did a lot to heal and calm that particular matter. I thought Palin's was just self-destructive. And other than that, I don't think a lot changed yesterday. Everyone's still waiting to pounce on anything they can use on the other side.