If an event similar to today’s Tuscon shooting happened in India or Columbia, the headlines would call it what it is: an assassination attempt. Yet here in the US the horrific event is characterized as a typical American fatal shooting rampage that just happened to involve a member of the United States Congress.
Are we as a culture in denial? Is this compartmentalization a defense mechanism employed so that we may avoid giving up feeling of superiority because the US is a place where political assassinations infrequently occur?
Please share widely!
Yes, this was an attempted assassination.
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p>Yes, this was a terrorist attack.
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p>Yes, we as a culture are in denial.
You’re right – this isn’t being called what it is. It might be because the object of the attempt survives while six others are dead – perhaps if only she died in the attempt – but that is no excuse. It’s getting pretty plain this was an assassination attempt, not “just” a rampage.
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p>Past loonies with even weirder reasons who’ve attempted assassination got the designation – like Hinckley – so we should be calling this what it is.
Sunday, the day following the shooting, I saw for the first time in the MSM this tragedy being correctly called an assassination attempt. The AP article on the front page of Boston.com used the term once in the middle of the article. Today, the term seems to be utilized more frequently.
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p>And if there was still any doubt, setting aside the shooter Laughner’s note featuring the word “assassination”, today Laughner was charged in court with attempting to assassinate a member of Congress.
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p>Also, Hinkley is exactly whom I thought of when people tried to use the looney designation. I mean, by all accounts Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t seem like the most stable, clear-headed of people either.