via AlterNet:
The Tragic Arkansas Shooting and Conservative Hate Speech
Posted by Steven D.,
Booman Tribune at 3:52 PM on August 14, 2008.
Conservatives have long called for the heads of prominent liberals. Looks like they got their wish. I've waited to make my first comments about the murder of the Chair of Arkansas' Democratic Party. I wanted to make sure that there was no personal connection between the shooter and Bill Gwatney, and apparently there wasn't one. Instead, there are some initial eerie similarities between the shooter Timothy Dale Johnson, and the man who massacred members of the Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tennessee last month. Both, for example had just lost their jobs, and both were very, very angry about that fact:
Wreaths and flowers lined the sidewalk in front of Arkansas' Democratic Party headquarters Thursday while police and others tried to explain why a man who lost his job at a Target store drove more than 30 miles and fatally shot the party's chairman.
Until Wednesday morning, when he wrote profanity-laced graffiti on a store wall, Timothy Dale Johnson had been a good employee in a stockroom, a Target spokeswoman said.
Johnson apparently lived alone and had never married. Under most circumstances he probably would have continied this isolated, but not all together unproductive life. He probably had certain emotional difficulties with people. According to neighbors he kept to himself, yet was considered a model employee at target. Yet, after losing his job, the first action he decided to take was to murder a prominent liberal and Democrat, much like Jim David Adkisson decided to take his rage and anger at his personal situation out on the "liberal" church in Knoxville. Both chose to use firearms to murder innocent people they did not know personally. It is logical to assume that they both chose their targets to make a statement. Indeed, we know for a fact that Adkisson, the church shooter, wrote a specific hate filled manifesto detailing his reasons for targeting the most prominent "liberal" church in Knoxville for his massacre.
I don't think it is a coincidence that within a few weeks, another disturbed individual who had lost his job (at least by his own perception -- Target is denying they terminated him), chose to shoot someone associated with "liberals" and "Democrats." The right wing bloggers and talk show hosts can deny their complicity in these "random" actions, and, indeed, legally they are not responsible for the criminal actions of a few "rogue" individuals. However, their writings and commentary, widely disseminated has spread a culture where violence against liberals, Democrats, feminists, gays, blacks, immigrants, Muslims and any other out group is frequently expressed as "comedy" or in fantasies of wish fulfillment. They can claim all they like that they cannot be held accountable for the aura of hatred they have engendered in American society, but their protestations ring hollow. ........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/95112/the_tragic_arkansas_shooting_and_conservative_hate_speech/