The "T" Word

It was exactly a year ago that I wrote about tragedy- an Earthquake in Haiti. At the time, I felt terribly inadequate as a journalist to tell that story. I said it would happen again.

It has.

And once again I am shown how far short we fall in our effort to tell the story.

So, six people are dead and many more injured after some guy decides he knows better than the rest of the world. He decides who’s worthy of living and pulls a glock in Arizona. Yes, I’ve told stories of earthquakes, floods and terrorists attacks that killed hundreds… or even thousands. But these six lives are still taking a back seat to one person, who survived that attack in Tucson.

By now you know that I’m writing about the “shooting rampage” that put Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the hospital with a gun shot to the head. But I’ll detour for a second to tell you why I’ve titled this post “The T Word.”

Nearly every news network I’ve seen has given this story a title: Tragedy in Tucson. Of course, local stations have followed. Yes, it is a tragedy. Yes, it happened in Tucson. How convenient for a legion of lazy journalists. (Notice how I used “Legion” and “Lazy?”) Both start with “L.” Anyone who’s taken a high school poetry course knows that’s what we call alliteration. Tragedy in Tucson gives news outlets a nice little package to put the story in. But this story is not little and it should not be packaged.

The headline is this: A United States Congresswoman is in the hospital. It’s brutal.

That guy approached her and pointed a gun at her head. But after that, he killed a bunch of people, including a little, 9-year-old girl. We have no way of knowing which act had the biggest consequence on us as a society. If a little girl had been shot dead in Tucson, the President would not have led the nation in a moment of silence. We mourn as a country because a member of Congress is injured. I’m not saying we shouldn’t. The attempt by anyone to assassinate a public official for their vote or their beliefs is deplorable. But who knows what little Christina Taylor-Green might have contributed to society or to American government in two or three decades.

Geez, she was born on September 11th, 2001. She was committed to learning more about civics and service and was well aware of the inequalities in society and thankful for the blessings in her life.

I could spend a lot of time and a lot of space on this page talking about the discourse of American politics – how the rhetoric and tone has become hostile and may have led to this kind of violence. Maybe I will someday…. Soon.

Okay, I will for a second. Jared Loughner is crazy. He is solely responsible for what happened Saturday in Tucscon (allegedly). But surely, all this talk about “crosshairs” and “reloading” couldn’t have helped. It’s not as if Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are responsible for what he did. Of course, they’re not. But it’s obvious that their language, which is entirely self-serving, added fuel to the fire. It’s not about left or right. I’m sure Keith Olbermann is adding fuel to the fire of some other nut-job out there too.

I am one person – and so are you. I share this country with 300 plus million people. All of them have different needs, different backgrounds, different philosophies and different ideals. I accept that half of those people, maybe more, disagree with me on issues of national health care, taxes and abortion. Of course they do! We’re 300 million different people. The point is: No one is right (correct). You don’t have the answers for me and I don’t have the answers for you. We have to deal with it. We SHARE this country. And that means accepting views that might be different from yours.

Okay. Enough of that. Back to the original point. Over the last two days, news networks, and local TV stations have told you the story. They told you about Representative Giffords’ condition. They’ve told you about the Jared Loughner’s past.

And they’ve put it all under the lazy and convenient title: Tragedy in Tucson. But you don’t have to buy it. Maybe some other news outlet there is more focused on the life of a 9-year-old girl than whether their coverage has a title with alliteration. Maybe someone out there wants you to know more than the condition of a Congresswoman, but also wants you to know that this is not okay. We don’t have to buy that bullshit.



I didn’t know who Christina Taylor-Green was before someone killed her on January 8, 2011. Now I know a little bit about who she was and I miss her. I’ll miss what she might have brought to this world. And I do not care if my news coverage has alliteration.