Leonard Pitts: Spinning Spin Once Again

Leonard Pitts, Jr. is one of the most eloquent editorial writers in today's America. But, if a reader pays too close attention to the beauty of his words and the striking contrasts in his metaphoric symbolism, one might simply miss the fact that he is nearly always wrong.

This is simply another example of beautiful wrongness in a way that only Leonard Pitts can deliver.

In today's Free Press:

It was probably to be expected that the political spin was in motion before the bodies had even cooled. Tea Party activist Judson Phillips quickly deflected blame for the tragedy. Giffords, he reportedly noted on his Web site, is "a liberal," but, he said, "that does not matter now."

Of course, if it didn't matter, he wouldn't have mentioned it. "At a time like this," he said piously, "it is terrible that we do have to think about politics, but no matter what the shooter's motivations were, the left is going to blame this on the Tea Party movement."

So, Judson Phillips correctly anticipated a left-wing political wacko of Pitts' ilk would blame conservatives for the massacre in Tuscon. (How hard was that, even Pitts said "it was probably to be expected.")

The kicker is that now Phillips is guilty for accurately reading the minds and predicting the behaviors of leftists like Sheriff Dupnik--as if knowing the obvious somehow makes him and the tea party guilty of creating the atmosphere where such massacres can be expected.

It goes something like this.

1. Some otherwise anonymous (and left leaning wacko) goes on an assassination rampage where six are killed and fourteen others are wounded.
2. A conservative anticipates being blamed for the incident because, as we have all seen for the past twenty years or so, conservatives are blamed for everything from starving children to gasoline gouging to poor education to wall street greed to pillaging of the earth to racism to the homeless to...well, you get the idea.
3. "Blame the conservatives for their political vitriol" meme goes viral with politicians, television hosts, journalists and bloggers piling on.
4. A short term investigation disproves leftist accusations that conservatives are to blame for the shooter's actions.
   
5. Pitts blames conservatives for the vitriolic atmosphere that didn't cause the violence.
6. I bang my head against the desk.
   

In a nutshell, we conservatives know we are going to be blamed for everything. What kind of prescience does it take to make that prediction--it always occurs.

But this realization in itself has helped to create a whole new blame standard. Because we know we are going to be blamed for everything, we actually deserve the blame--after all, we created the atmosphere in which we know that we are going to be blamed for everything.

Try that on for size.