I was waiting for it. I knew that Edgar Allen Beem would not be able to stop himself from blaming “the Right” for Jared Loughner’s shooting rampage. Once Paul Krugman, Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann blazed the trail, Beem would jump right in.

However, I also knew that he would twist himself into a pretzel to 1) find a way to blame “crazy talk” from right-wing opinion-makers for the shootings even though most recent Quinnipiac survey shows that only 15 percent said that overheated political rhetoric was the main reason for the shooting and 2) find a way to agree with President Obama and Jon Stewart that we should tone down the political rhetoric while in the same breath blame only right-wing opinion-makers for the overheated political rhetoric.

Yet when a young man held personnel at the Discovery Channel hostage in September 2010 and claimed that Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” inspired him, Beem was silent. And after the Fort Hood shooting the media said “Let’s not rush to judgment. His Islamic beliefs may not have had anything to do with his actions.” The double standard is striking.

I agree with Jon Stewart and his message at his rally – let’s debate the issues and stop the finger-pointing and blame-game. It’s childish.

Craig Barnes
Woolwich