From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. And here's Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik on CNN, holding fast to his belief in what set the stage for tragedy in Tucson last Saturday.

It's my belief that the hard right is deliberately fueling the fire against public officials,

elected officials, government, and the administration.

He repeated it even after FBI director Robert Mueller described such a portrayal as premature,

and after the media storm that followed,

led by such notables as Bill O'Reilly.

Sheriff Dupnik has turned a horrific murder case into a political circus.

Who does that serve, Sheriff?

Sarah Palin.

Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very

hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. And Rush Limbaugh. Hey Sheriff, I'll bet you hope

he's acquitted, right? What do you know about it? I don't know anything. I just know how liberals are,

Sheriff, because it's always somebody else's fault, right, Sheriff? It's never the guilty's fault. They didn't do it. Somebody made them do it, right, Sheriff?

Jared Loeffner was known for making death threats in Pima County. Some even suggest that

the sheriff's remarks were motivated by guilt in failing to avert his rampage. But others

find larger reasons for discounting his view. Slate's Jack Schaefer observed that

such words as targeting, attacking, destroying, blasting, crushing, and burying have long-guided

political thought in action, and that, quote, only the tiniest handful of people, most of whom

are already behind bars and psychiatric institutions or on psychomedes,

can be driven to kill by political whispers or shouts.

Schaefer wrote that, quote,

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