{"id":30770,"date":"2011-07-29T07:43:48","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T13:43:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=30770"},"modified":"2011-07-29T07:43:52","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T13:43:52","slug":"apologies-to-pearce-and-his-supporters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/07\/apologies-to-pearce-and-his-supporters\/","title":{"rendered":"Apologies to Pearce and his supporters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

Earlier this week, I ran a guest column that essentially said supporters of U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce want to see IRS agents killed and lament the fact that the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords wasn\u2019t successful.<\/p>\n

And it implied Pearce shares those views by calling him \u201cOne of Them.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t one of my finer moments. After much thought, I\u2019ve decided to retract the column. I\u2019ve already removed it from the site.<\/p>\n

You may recall me suggesting earlier this week<\/a> that people need to support media that puts the news in context rather than sensationalizing and inflaming. While there are extremists on the far right and left, and there may very well be some Pearce supporters who advocate violence against government officials, I don\u2019t believe for a moment that such people are in the majority or even constitute a significant percentage of his base.<\/p>\n

But the column implied that they do.<\/p>\n

After Giffords was shot in January, Pearce released a statement<\/a> strongly condemning such violence. He called Giffords a friend and a \u201ctrue public servant and a voice for the people of Arizona and the United States.\u201d He said the shooting in Tucson was an \u201catrocious act\u201d that was \u201cnot only an attack on Gabrielle, but on the Constitution she has consistently labored to uphold, and the freedoms she fights to protect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pearce also called it \u201can attack on all Americans: our freedom of speech, our freedom to interact with a government who will listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

NMPolitics.net\u2019s comments policy<\/a>, which also applies to guest columns, requires that people be respectful \u2013 which doesn\u2019t mean they can\u2019t criticize, but they must do so in a way that is constructive. Commentaries must add to the dialogue, not degrade and tear down. I\u2019ve worked hard to make this site a forum for productive discussion. This column did the opposite.<\/p>\n

Unlike some pundits and media personalities on the left and right, I\u2019m not in the business of exaggerating differences between liberals and conservatives to inflame passions. But in this instance, I published a guest column that did just that.<\/p>\n

My actions in this instance contributed nothing to the process of solving our nation\u2019s problems, and in fact did the opposite. For that, I apologize to all of you.<\/p>\n

For the insult I allowed to be published, I apologize to Rep. Pearce and his supporters.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t claim to be perfect, but I do promise to learn from my mistakes. I will do just that in this instance.<\/p>\n

Haussamen bio<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Commentary page<\/a>\u00a0\u2502\u00a0Feed<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not in the business of exaggerating differences between liberals and conservatives to inflame passions. But this week, I published a guest column that did just that. It was a mistake, and I\u2019ve removed the column from the site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[134,137,116],"class_list":["post-30770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-media","tag-news-about-this-site","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30770\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}