What Obama Should Have Said in Tucson But Lacked the Courage to

That was a pep rally.  It wasn't a memorial service, it wasn't about about people grieving.  It wasn't an 'Irish wake', as so many p0Iitical operatives around here tried to defend it as while it was ongoing (I guess those were the White House operatives who had just gotten off the phones trying to spin the staffs of the lrish-Amer­ican hosts at MSNBC).

This was a town trying to stem the flow of bad publicity, save the image of the city of Tucson, a Chamber of Commerce effort to save tourism and the image of the state of Arizona.

Look at this, 'chest thumping', cheering for "My tribe is better than your tribe".  

It was wholly inappropri­ate, but it didn't end at the invocation­.  The cheering for things 'Tucsonian­', having nothing to do with the v!ctims or the situation, and speeches by federal government officials (with the highest law enforcemen­t officer in the land and head of the Department of Homeland Security reading passages from the bible?) -- HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND????!!

I never in my life thought I would have to remind people what a national memorial service is (or hold George W. Bush up as a model for anything good or appropriat­e), but here is what authentici­ty looks like.  

Nobody but a handful in that stadium at the University of Arizona was mourning anything but what they perceived to be a loss to the image of the city and the state where this tragedy took place.  

By the way, you don't give out t-shirts as "remembran­ces" of a memorial event; you're in mourning, you're grieving the loss of loved ones.  Its not like you're going to forget, and, in fact, you wish you could; it's not something pleasant you want to remember.  The very absence of your loved ones is your "remembran­ce".
About Jared Lee Loughner
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