The news media all dutifully reported that Eric Fuller, a former campaign worker for Gabrielle Giffords who was of the last persons to actually speak to her before she was shot in the head and he took bullets in the knee and back, yelled and screamed “You’re dead!” at Tucson Tea Party leader Trent Humphries, which action caused Fuller to be hauled off and involuntarily committed to a mental hospital pending a medical evaluation.
What these stories didn’t mention is what might have led Fuller to confront Humphries in the first place.
Humphries has been caught on YouTube saying things like this:
“It’s political gamesmanship. The real case is that she [Giffords] had no security whatsoever at this event. So if she lived under a constant fear of being targeted, if she lived under this constant fear of this rhetoric and hatred that was seething, why would she attend an event in full view of the public with no security whatsoever?” he said. “For all the stuff they accuse her [Palin] of, that gun poster has not done a tenth of the damage to the political discourse as what we’re hearing right now.”
As Raw Story points out, Giffords herself, prior to being shot, pointed out the poisonous effects of the sleazy and violence-baiting campaign Humphries and the rest of the Arizona Republicans were running with her opponent Jesse Kelly. And now Humphries is trying to dodge the blame for this.
If you were a disabled combat veteran who had just been through working during a grueling campaign where for over a year Tea Partiers and their Queen Bee Palin had done the whole Radio Rwanda bit, all but ordering their followers to shoot your boss, then be forced to watch your boss be shot in the head before your eyes and get shot yourself along nearly twenty others, six of whom would die, by a David-Wynn-Miller-worshiping, right-wing-theory-spouting, Gold and Silver Bug (Beck being the most notable current promoter of metallic currency) named Jared Loughner, and THEN, with your physical and emotional wounds still raw, have to listen to the guy who you hold responsible for all of this try to weasel out of it like the sleazy creep he is, I expect you might have a tough time not yelling a few intemperate remarks, too.