The Flap about the Map

I've debated on if I should comment about the Palin map controversy and finally decided I had too.

I'll say at the outset that I don't think Palin map had anything to do with the nut case in Tucson.

But the response of Palin and company to the criticism of the map is so disingenuous it needs to be pointed out. Rebecca Mansour, an aide to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin said: We never ever, ever intended it to be gun sights...It's a surveyor's symbol" She went on to say that this was done by an outside agency implying somehow it was the agency's fault for using the symbol.

I'm sorry but that looks like a gun sight. Why do I think that? Because of all the gun imagery that Sarah Palin uses. When health care passed she said don't retreat, reload. She talks about taking up arms but then says she means people voting. Really?

Once again this one thing didn't cause the nut case to do what he did.

But it seems to me it's time to step back and take a good long hard look about what we say and what we have printed to further the cause whatever that cause might be.

Concern about the map came from none other than Congresswoman Giffords:

"We're on Sarah Palin's Targeted list," Giffords told MSNBC in March, after the door of her Tucson office was smashed after her vote in favor of the health care bill. "But the thing is the way she has it depicted, it has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district and when people do that, they've got to realize there are consequences to that action." Giffords, however, demurred when the interviewer noted that such imagery has long been a staple of politics and asked whether Palin really meant it. "I can't say, I'm not Sarah Palin," Giffords replied.

Below is the best perspective on the flap about the map: