Anybody for cherry pie?

Might as well quit cherry-picking that quote....

There were two more shootings today, on opposite coasts, as it turns out.

One of those two is going to suck all the national oxygen out of the room.  The other will be a footnote, at best.

And I'm wondering how many people were shot in New Orleans in the last 24 hours. Or in Houston, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, Atlanta, San Antonio (when I spent some time there the evening news always led with the shootings in the bars.  It was as regular as the weather report.), and so on and so on and so on.  We won't even notice.  We certainly won't talk about it.

NPR ran a "conversation" between a GOP Rep from Michigan and a Democratic rep from Florida.  He quickly brought up the NRA slogan about bad guys with guns and good guys with guns, and then took all kinds of umbrage when she called it an NRA slogan in response (he doesn't work for the NRA, you see).  As best I could tell, the conversation started nowhere and went nowhere.  Guns save us from the bad guys; guns threaten us all.  You can write that script by now.

This is America.  This is what we do.  We shoot each other, and then we blame each other for the fact that we shoot each other.  Occasionally, someone among us sinks so low that even Fox News won't put up with it:

“The intensity on the left is very real,” Gingrich said. “Whether it’s a so-called comedian holding up the president’s head in blood, or it’s right here, in New York City, a play that shows the president being assassinated. Or it’s Democratic leading national politicians who are so angry they have to use vulgarity because they can’t find any common language.”

Fox’s Melissa Francis at this point objected and questioned whether it was right to blame the shooter’s actions on Democrats who swear.

“With respect, though, even if everything you’re saying is true, to talk about it in those kinds of terms, in left and right, right now in the wake of it, does that make sense?” she asked.

“If you want to know the truth,” Gingrich replied.

“But do you rise above it and say…” she began.

“No!” Gingrich objected.

The proper response there is that Newt Gingrich is no longer fit to be among civilized people, yet alone have privileged access to our national airwaves/conversation.  Or to at least point out if we did rise above it, Newt couldn't see us anymore, and wouldn't that be a shame?  We'd certainly have to look down on him more than we do now.

But this is America.  This is what we do.