The other day I was unsettled by a story that appeared in The New York Times about a photograph posted on a man's Facebook web page. The photograph showed a bunch of gun-toting guys holding up a T-shirt of President Obama. Bullet marks were splattered across the President's face and emblazoned in bold letters on the shirt was the word "HOPE". That's when I had my own "profiling moment"…and thought, "Those guys had to be from Arizona." Sure enough, the boys from the land of cactus and sage brush didn't disappoint!
I found the story unsettling for another reason. It's been almost a year since that wing-nut opened fire on Arizona Democratic Congresswomen Gabby Giffords in Tucson, killing six and wounding thirteen. In the aftermath of that incident, former Alaskan governor, Sarah Palin took a lot of flack (deservedly so in my estimation) for a website she'd previously posted identifying 20 House Democrats she was vehement about opposing, using rifle scope cross-hairs. Gabby Giffords was one of Palin's targets. Of course, Palin denied with disdain the suggestion that she'd countenance something as heinous as political assassinations in this country, but denials of sinister suggestions back then sounded eerily similar to the denials of the guy the other day in The New York Times article. You don't have to hail from Arizona or Alaska to know what cross-hairs and bullet holes signify or the message they convey.
I was hoping that America had moved beyond the Palin's target fiasco. Sadly, I see we haven't!
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