More than Palin to blame.

After tragedy, people start pointing fingers. How else to understand why it happened? The Jan. 8 shooting in Arizona, that left Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition and six dead, including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge, is no different. No sooner had the shots been fired did we start pointing fingers at the incendiary and polarized political rhetoric -specifically Sarah Palin's map that showed gun crosshairs on 20 Democratic Congress members. Giffords was one of the politicians Palin targeted. The map has since been removed from Palin's Facebook page. Palin issued a statement that offered sympathy for the victims, and she has not commented on her target map.
But everyone else has. Countless media have offered answers to the question: Is it her fault?
The only real answer is that we don't know yet. We don't know what influenced the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner. We have no idea what moved him to such violence.
We do know that he was a strange and troubled young man. He was kicked out of a community college for mental health issues. He tried to enlist in the U.S. Army, but was rejected. One of his hobbies was making anti-establishment videos on YouTube.
We also know that our political atmosphere has been increasingly inflammatory since the 2008 election, and it only continues to allow people like Palin a platform to dispense jaw-dropping, blood-boiling, misinformed or downright false statements on a regular basis.
In no way does Palin need any defending. Her idiocies are her responsibility. But if this tragedy brings to light the need for the political and media attitudes to be more reasonable, then it might be the only good that results from the violence.
We can blame the media for allowing talking heads like Palin to have platforms. We can blame the media for reporting on politics as if it were a football game, as if there were no real people affected from the point-mongering and political meandering that we have become accustomed to. We can blame the media for bias and inaccurate reporting.
We can also blame ourselves for being entertained by the news. We are not supposed to be entertained by the news; we are supposed to be informed. The fact that 24-hour news networks feel the need to fill their hours with obnoxious talking heads doesn't mean we have to watch or listen to them. The emotional high that comes from watching outrageous and fear-mongering news isn't something we have to become addicted to. We can choose to be smarter than that, even though it's not easy- especially when schools tend not to educate their students about the civic process, much less media literacy. It is a brave new world in journalism right now, and as media outlets hang on by the skin of their teeth, anything that garners Web site page views and TV ratings is what's news.
The media isn't about to correct itself, nor are politicians – no matter what they say during the aftermath of the tragedy. There will continue to be people like Palin around, as long as the media thinks there is the audience that's interested in hearing about her. It's up to us to tell the media we want fair, thoughtful news, and to tell our politicians to work towards solutions that fairly benefit us all.
We have no idea yet what propelled the unstable young man to such violence. But the collective unease we are feeling after the tragedy, whether we're a member of Congress, the media or just this country, is there for a reason: We can all do much better. And especially now, we must.