Pima County Sher­iff Clarence Dup­nik at the post-​​shooting press con­fer­ence. Source: AP.

Pima County Sher­iff Clarence Dupnik’s widely-​​reported obser­va­tion that hate speech was par­tially respon­si­ble for the shoot­ing of Rep. Gabrielle Gif­fords (D-​​AZ) has prompted sev­eral heated dis­cus­sions on this blog, as well as other venues.

Let me say one thing, because peo­ple tend to pooh-​​pooh this busi­ness about all the vit­riol that we hear inflam­ing the Amer­i­can pub­lic by peo­ple who make a liv­ing off of doing that. That may be free speech, but it’s not with­out consequences.

Paul Krug­man took this fur­ther:

Where’s that toxic rhetoric com­ing from? Let’s not make a false pre­tense of bal­ance: it’s com­ing, over­whelm­ingly, from the right. It’s hard to imag­ine a Demo­c­ra­tic mem­ber of Con­gress urg­ing con­stituents to be “armed and dan­ger­ous” with­out being ostra­cized; but Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michele Bach­mann, who did just that, is a ris­ing star in the G.O.P.

And there’s a huge con­trast in the media. Lis­ten to Rachel Mad­dow or Keith Olber­mann, and you’ll hear a lot of caus­tic remarks and mock­ery aimed at Repub­li­cans. But you won’t hear jokes about shoot­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials or behead­ing a jour­nal­ist at The Wash­ing­ton Post. Lis­ten to Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly, and you will.

On this blog and else­where, the dis­cus­sion devolved into a pre­dictable round of tu quoque, where com­menters who iden­ti­fied them­selves as con­ser­v­a­tive accused the left of just as much out­rage speech as the right. (more…)