I had bought $20 worth of Marks a Lot.

The shooting revived a political issue that had been overtaken by the economy, health care and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By Monday morning, vitriolic debate filled blogs and social networking sites

This was a wedge issue that the republicans and the far right wing media use to divide us and cause the right wing nut jobs to vote against their own best interests. It's not a real polical issue.

"Words Have Meaning" from Thoughtcrime.org:

Monday, June 1. 2009
Words Have Meaning: Like "Bullshit."

Terrorism: the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes. Random House Dictionary

I would hope the other murderers out there at Planned Parenthood and other death mills start looking over their shoulders a little wondering who will be next? Poster on the right wing website Free Republic, in the hours after Dr. George Tiller’s murder

Yesterday, less than a year after a man killed three people in a Unitarian church, Dr. George Tiller, a courageous and dedicated physician, was gunned down in the vestibule of the Lutheran Church he attended. Tiller’s clinic in Wichita is one of only three in the country that perform abortions after the third trimester.

It was striking to watch a CBS segment about the murder last night. The phrase “violence surrounding the issue of abortion” kept being invoked -- as if both sides were equally guilty, as if pro-choice activists have been bombing pediatric clinics and knocking off obstetricians. I’m listening to a CNN segment on the subject right now, and noting the glaring absence of a certain word, one that’s generally left out of mainstream news accounts of anti-abortion bombings or murders.

The word is “terrorism.” Here’s a quick exercise for online readers. Do a search for the words “terrorism” or “terrorist” in pieces on CBS, NBC, ABC, etc that deal with the Tiller murder. When such words do crop up in the coverage, they’re almost always enclosed in quotes, as if there were some question about whether or not they apply when the perps are white, conservative, Christian Americans.

Words have meaning. For some reason our media and our political class have spent the last twenty years pretending that ignoring the actual meaning of words is a sign of political sophistication. The violence underlying the right wing rhetoric on talk radio, on the Internet, on cable television has been laughed off as “hyperbole,” dismissed as mere bids for attention. “Just ignore them and they’ll go away,” we’ve been sagely told, even as the inherent violence of the language has increased and become more and more mainstreamed, echoed not just on obscure internet boards or local talk radio, but in bestsellers, and on nationally broadcast radio and television shows.

And then, when something like this happens, everyone pronounces themselves “shocked,” or “stunned.”

Here’s another word. Simple. To the point. Appropriate.

Bullshit.

I don’t believe for one minute that anyone familiar with the abortion issue is truly “shocked” or “stunned.” I don’t believe any moderately informed American is even very surprised.

Outraged, maybe. Disgusted. Furious. Anguished.

And there are other words that apply too. Oh yes, folks, there are, and anyone who did a quick look-see at various right wing websites before they were scrubbed in the hours after the murder can see them demonstrated.

Gleeful. Satisfied. Celebratory. Hopeful.

Hell, go to Free Republic, (always a fertile source of comments other website administrators can't stomach) and you can still find a smorgasbord of messages on the murder that embody these terms.

No humane, caring person would ever celebrate the death of another human being, a monster, well now that's a different story.......

I'll celebrate this dirtbag's dirtnap.

actually, the fear this strikes may thwart some babykillers pressure ran all the clinics out of Mississippi...there may be one left..and fear does play a part

Maybe it's time for another "shot heard around the world".

Do I need to reiterate the criminal harassment Tiller endured for over a decade? The vandalism, the threats? The attempted assassination he survived? Do I even need to post the quotes that connect the dots? Other people already have, citing quotes from Bill O’Reilly in which he described Dr. Tiller as “executing babies,” equated him to Al Qaida and NAMBLA,” said that “if the state of Kansas doesn't stop this man, then anybody who prevents that from happening has blood on their hands as the governor does right now.”

No intelligent, informed person can believably claim to see the murder of Dr. George Tiller as a bolt from the blue.

And now, as the news cycle moves on, and this murder is supplanted by other stories, the moment of clarity, the instant where our pundit class furrows its middle-brow, scratches its head and goes “Heeeeeyyyy…” is passing. Tucker Carlson, classy as always, says of O’Reilly’s campaign against Tiller, “Every one of those descriptions of Tiller is objectively true. I sincerely think it's appalling that he was murdered. But Tiller was a monster, no doubt.”

Sure, Tucker, you’re “appalled,” as you praise with faint damns a doctor being shot dead in a church. And oh so sincere! No doubt you put on your frowney face as you wrote it.

In a few months something like this is likely to happen again. It may not be in a church, and it may not involve an abortion provider. But not too long from now, another right-wing terrorist is going to kill another perceived enemy, another liberal “monster.” And they will do it to a great extent because we have allowed the kind of rhetoric that portrays such a crime as understandable, even moral, Godly, and patriotic, to flourish.

No, I'm not in favor of censorship. I am in favor of argument and outrage, of calling people on it when they use hatred and stupidity as a political lever.

When it happens again people are once again going to pretend to be “shocked.” God forbid we acknowledge that right wing political terrorism is a problem in this country.

God forbid we face the ugly reality of the intent behind the “hyperbole.”

Hard to peck that way.