James Fallows: The Cloudy Logic of 'Political' Shootings
[James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. A 25-year veteran of the magazine and former speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, he is also an instrument-rated pilot and a onetime program designer at Microsoft.]
After this horrible news from Tucson....
... let me amplify something I said half-coherently in a live conversation with Guy Raz on All Things Considered a little while ago. My intended point was:
Shootings of political figures are by definition "political." That's how the target came to public notice; it is why we say "assassination" rather than plain murder.
But it is striking how rarely the "politics" of an assassination (or attempt) match up cleanly with the main issues for which a public figure has stood. Some killings reflect "pure" politics: John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln, the German officers who tried to kill Hitler and derail his war plans. We don't know exactly why James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, but it must have had a lot to do with civil rights....
Read entire article at The Atlantic
After this horrible news from Tucson....
... let me amplify something I said half-coherently in a live conversation with Guy Raz on All Things Considered a little while ago. My intended point was:
Shootings of political figures are by definition "political." That's how the target came to public notice; it is why we say "assassination" rather than plain murder.
But it is striking how rarely the "politics" of an assassination (or attempt) match up cleanly with the main issues for which a public figure has stood. Some killings reflect "pure" politics: John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln, the German officers who tried to kill Hitler and derail his war plans. We don't know exactly why James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, but it must have had a lot to do with civil rights....