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Binghamton shootings; Now it's personal

Limbaugh, Newsweek (AP Photo)

A couple of months ago, a fellow examiner, Rabbi Ben Kamin, wrote a story about what was going on in Gaza because it had suddenly gotten personal; his nephew, a soldier in the Israeli army, had been deployed.

 

Today, the conduct of American life—or rather, misconduct—got personal for me. Today, a gunman shot and killed at least a dozen people in Binghamton, NY, the city where I went to college. I’m quite sure I did not know anyone at the scene; I graduated a LONG time ago. But the shooting did occur next door to where half a dozen Binghamton students were lodging, and the police got them out to safety, just in case.

 

Already on many blogs, blame for “permission” to commit such horrors is being traced in part to the obscene, thoughtless, craven, hateful posturings of the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R0-MN). I agree with that assessment; one cannot expect people with weak minds, weak ethics, overwhelming burdens and aberrant psychology to do anything but take hateful remarks—especially Bachmann’s unconscionable request for people to be “armed and dangerous”--as permission to commit mayhem.

 

I pity the spiritual poverty that Bachmann and Limbaugh and Coulter et al must enjoy; I loathe the effect their self-serving, ignorant and hostile “instructions” have on a society already reeling from the effects of an imperial presidency, a hog-tied government, a rapacious financial industry, and a criminally gutted educational system.

But as I said, it’s personal. Of all the places for such a thing to happen, Binghamton—placid, ordinary, workaday Binghamton—is the very last place that deserves it.

 

Here’s what you need to know about Binghamton:

Binghamton has always been a blue-collar city of sorts (although its nickname is The Parlor City of New York State), with a very visible contingent of intellectuals. It has not had a conspicuously consuming population; it even looks a bit ragged. But it has always been a very centered and very real and welcoming place, where people work hard, go to church and football games, and the odd theatrical performance. It even has a zoo, Ross Park Zoo. It’s pretty nice, for a city of only 47,000.

 

And so, although it was my home for only five years (four of college and one of just living), it has a warm spot in my heart. It is unusual for a blue-collar urban area to be so accepting of the longhaired weirdoes inhabiting the college campus. But … Binghamton is different.

And so, although it has gotten very personal for me, it is also an extremely unfortunate thing to happen right here, right now. Mr. Obama is busy in Europe, successfully resurrecting our international reputation. But here at home, we have unbalanced human beings, aided and abetted in their insane behaviors by so-called media pundits, making America seem more like the land of the freaked and the home of the knaves than anything else. It gives Mr. Obama--as if he didn't have enough American disasters on his hands--one more thing to worry about, explain and cope with while he makes his first presentation of a renewed American ethos on the world stage. Thank God, though, it is Mr. Obama who has to handle all this. He, at least,  is ethically and spirtually centered, and has a good deal of common sense as well.  Thank God.

 

But no matter how Mr. Obama handles this incident, one might, of course, debate whether incendiary statements broadcast by outsize and outlandish rightwing, rootin'-tootin' gunslinging, mudslinging personalities have had any effect on this shooting, or on any other.

 

What one cannot debate is that even the appearance of wrongdoing is sometimes too much. It is sometimes unethical to say what's in one's heart, especially if it is hateful and violent. It is reprehensible for Rep. Bachmann to condone and even suggest mayhem; it is scurrilous for Mr. Limbaugh to say the stomach-turning things he has said lately (I refer, swallowing my gorge, to his “anal” remark.) By taking the public stage, they have assumed a public responsibility. I'm certain, since they also lack a sense of personal responsibility, that they will contend that they have no effect on citizens. If that's so, then what are they yakking for? Indeed, they DO think they have an effect on their listeners, making it even more ethically necessary that they watch what they say and how they say it.

 

I'm not advocating putting a clamp on free speech; Mr. Bush tried that and failed. I am suggesting that media outlets begin to use some common sense in what they dump onto public airwaves. If Mr. Limbaugh wants to make crude remarks in private, so be it. If he wants to make them in public, perhaps an adult (a station manager, for example) should determine whether those remarks are worthy to be broadcast. And perhaps that person needs to have some education in ethics, mass psychology....or even common sense. (Ditto for Ms. Bachmann; I would further suggest that the electorate of Minnesota tend its garden and decide if such a person fairly represents the majority of the population, and elect someone else next time if they find they'd rather be humane than hostile.)

 

Although it has become personal, I think it might be my ethical duty to hold up to scrutiny all such reckless behavior, however small an audience it might reach compared to the audiences of Limbaugh and Coulter, and the electorate of Ms. Bachmann.

 

When it comes to resurrecting the ethics of this nation, not to mention its sanity, it is my opinion that every little bit helps and I intend to do my part.