A member of Congress is shot by a lunatic gunman, and all of a sudden you can't say "crosshairs" on CNN. Not to make light of a tragedy, but had Rep. Giffords been hit in the face with a whipped cream pie, would the Food Network have to go off the air?

What the Tucson shootings reveal about our political culture is its gross opportunism, not its violent imagery. Six people died in an attack on a freely elected member of our republican government, and the left decided that the appropriate response was to rip the nation apart by blaming the tragedy on the right in general and Sarah Palin in particular.