Obama In Tucson, Far Right Goes "La-La-La"

By Steve Hynd

Here's the text of President Obama's words at the Tucson memorial service. It's a moving speech, full of personal detail about the lives of those who died. Digby calls it "the best speech he's given as president" and the NYT's Gail Collins writes "Maybe President Obama was saving the magic for a time when we really needed it."

What Obama didn't do, however, was offer any concrete proposals for moving beyond the highly charged political rhetoric of today, or any plans to perhaps mitigate or prevent future such shootings by increased oversight of gun and ammunition purchases, or even to do so by funding programs that would stop the mentally ill falling through the cracks of today's "I'm Allright, Jack" society.

Maybe that was for the best - to do so would have been decried as politicising a memorial service. Maybe it's all to come, part of an umpty-dimensional chess game. Maybe I just have a niggling worry in my mind that a "best speech as president" can be so essentially content-free; and worried about what that says about the man himself and our approach to him.

The one bit that could have been more substantative:

"what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together."

Is being interpreted by the Right as a "powerful rebuke to the Left�s shameful politicisation of the Arizona shootings". No, really.

Meanwhile, instead of attending the memorial service in Arizona, Speaker John Boehner was back in Maryland�s National Harbor resort hosting a cocktail party for the Republican National Committee. Apparently his schedule was too important to disrupt for a trip on Air Force One to Tucson.

And then there's Tammy Bruce - and as usual it's all about her:

Upon hearing the awful news Saturday morning, within an hour�even before we knew the number of dead�Barack Obama�s gestapos moved in for the kill�the Kill of Palin and the Kill of Conservatives in this country. For 5 days Tea Party, conservatives and Sarah Palin were blamed for murder. I spent the weekend, as did so many others, not being allowed to grieve but having to listen to crass political smears and libel, while defending those falsely accused of horrific complicity.

And Michelle Malkin, who's upset about T-shirts.

If Obama was intending a post-partisan, healing speech that would bring a disunited states back together again --- well, for all these people cared to notice, he'd have been as well calling for a gun ban and universal health coverage!