The best satirist in the conservative blogosphere is David Burge, captain of the blogship Iowahawk. When you can read Iowahawk and Ace of Spades and Powerline and Instapundit and Ed Morrissey at HotAir every day…well, who needs Paul Krugman?

Apparently, some people do. Iowahawk skewers those folks, and the MSMers who feed them, in this parody, titled “CSI Tucson.

On the asphalt outside supermarket, the CSI squad gathers around a spilled bag of groceries outlined in chalk.

[CSI Investigator Paul] KRUGMAN

Good work rookie. Well, well, well. What do we have here?

Crouching down, Krugman picks up a box of Lipton tea bags with the tip of his pencil.

KRUGMAN (whipping off sunglasses)

If I know my demand curves, I’d say our young Republican wasn’t acting alone.

Cue opening credit sequence

THE WHO

BRAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!

When you read the piece, you’ll see that David Burge isn’t satirizing Tucson’s police or people, or making light of what happened here. (The only Tucsonan mentioned is Sherriff Dupnik). He’s satirizing that crew of pundits and journalists who took our tragedy and tried to get something out of it for themselves.

I do have one addition to Iowahawk’s genius; it’s in boldface below:

Flashback: outside Dakota Hotel in New York 1980. A man strolling along sidewalk suddenly freezes midstep. Split screen of beauty pageant in Alaska. Closeup of contestant receiving Miss Congeniality crown. Her eyes turn pulsating red. The New York man pulls gun from leisure suit.

Flashback: inside Texas Schoolbook Depository, 1963. Warehouse worker suddenly freezes. Split screen of baby girl in Eskimo papoose. Baby’s eyes turn pulsating red. Man grabs rifle and walks toward window.

Flashback: intermission at Ford’s Theater, 1865. At concession stand, man suddenly freezes. Split screen of pelt-strewn Governor’s office. A woman is seated behind desk, whose eyes begin pulsating red. Eyes of moose heads on walls begin pulsating red. Man retrieves derringer from waistcoat.

WOMAN BEHIND GOVERNOR’S DESK

I can see 1865 from my window! Bwa ha ha!

Flash forward to January 2011. An editorial cartoonist at the Arizona Republic listens to news reports of the President of the United States coming to Tucson to speak at a memorial service, and the impending arrival of a repaired and revived World Trade Center flag. The newscaster says that the flag will be used as a sign of hope and comfort at the memorial that will dominate Tucson’s upcoming weekend.

The cartoonist ponders what cartoon he should draw…a cartoon which will run the day after the president speaks and the day the flag arrives.

As the cartoonist ponders, his eyes wander over to a pile of old newspapers on a nearby desk. On top of the pile is an article from the paper’s Entertainment section, about “Dancing With The Stars.” The article shows a picture of a contestant, seated next to her mother.

Split screen to closeup of the mother’s picture; her eyes flash pulsating red, followed by the daughter’s . The cartoonist suddenly freezes…and then picks up his pen…

When America’s mainstream media enlisted in the Democratic Party, American conservatives did what Americans have done for hundreds of years—we built something better.

On January 16th, Pulitzer-Prize winning editorial columnist Steve Benson, of the Arizona Republic, posted a touching cartoon about the Tucson tragedy. On January 13th, he did not.

Please follow the link to Nick Gillespie’s article in Reason magazine about what Steve Benson—-presumably Arizona’s premier editorial cartoonist, given his Pulitzer Prize—wrote during one of the most trying times in recent Arizona history.

His 16 January cartoon is beautiful. It shows Christina Green wishing that all the adults would stop yelling at each other.

Does Steve Benson ever stop to think that maybe his cartoons stoke some of the anger behind that yelling?

Especially his 13 January cartoon, which shows Sarah Palin morphing into a Glock handgun.

Benson’s 13 January cartoon ran the day after the U of A memorial service.

Hey…I guess that, if you’re an editorial cartoonist, you’re an ubermensch. (Apologies to Nietzsche). Someone who’s above it all.

Everyone else needs to be civil, but…hey, you just have to be you. You get a pass that the rest of us don’t. You get to be you, and do your own thing. Mmmmkay…

IMO Steve Benson, and the editors of the Arizona Republic, weren’t very good citizens last Thursday. Of course it was their right to run that cartoon. But last week wasn’t really a week for focusing on ourselves, our own prerogatives and rights, was it?

Someone should tell that to Steve Benson. As if it would do any good.

Oh, and if the Arizona Republic wants to lecture anyone on civility and tone anytime soon, they should start with their editorial cartoonist, and then come to the rest of us.

“We have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.” — Winston Churchill

Churchill was speaking of rhe British when he wrote that, but that same spirit (Churchill’s mother was American, BTW) infused many of the settlers who came to and settled Tucson.

Over the centuries, Indians, conquistadores and cowboys came together to create a glorious melting pot that still bubbles at the foothills of the Santa Catalina and Rincon Mountains.

Gabrielle Giffords’s congressional district encompasses the following places:
- The route that Coronado used to enter the New World
- The sites of Forts Huachuca, Lowell, Bowie and other Army bases, from which one of the last great Indian campaigns, the Geronimo campaign, was waged and won.
- Tombstone, the town too tough to die.
- Bisbee and Naco, whose residents watched the battles of a Mexican revolution and Pershing’s Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa.
- National parks, wildlife refuges and border town and ranches that are STILL the sites of an ongoing border struggle.

Tucson is not SoHo or Chautaqua or the Hamptons. Its recent ancestors were used to strife and struggle. They were not made of sugar candy. Neither are their children and grandchildren. (Most of them, anyway).

I’m seeing comments on my other posts, some from people fretting that America is coming apart.

This is for those commenters: Chill, people.

This is Tucson. It’s seen tough things, tough times in the not-too-distant past. Turbulence is part of our heritage. We met past challenges, dealt with them—some more successfully than others, I’m sure—and moved on.

American politics is full of tension, anger and confrontation because we are the soverign. One of the reasons the Declaration of Independence is such a landmark document, is its assertion that governing authority comes from the people themselves, not some King empowered by divine authority.

Well, when the people govern, or debate the issues of the day, things can get very messy. Why? Well, there are literally millions of viewpoints in “We The People,” because there are literally millions of people in this great country of ours. Everyone has their own particular collection of viewpoints or opinions, but ALL of us have passions about what is and isn’t the right thing to do.

There will be many angry times ahead, because We The People have many great issues to debate. What will we do with health care? Social Security? Federal spending writ large?

All of these issues are fraught with passion. Yet, we must grapple with them now. We can’t let our King or Tsar do the dirty work for us; that’s not the kind of country we live in. Thank God for that.

So, while we should moderate our tone where we can, we must not kid ourselves: there will be many angry days ahead. As there have always been, even in our recent past.

That’s OK. We’re not made of sugar candy.