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Saturday, February 11, 2012, 5pm ET.
A Safeway in Arizona: What the Gabrielle Giffords Shooting Tells Us About the Grand Canyon State and Life in America
Chat with Tom Zoellner about his new book, hosted by bmaz.
A riveting account of the state of Arizona, seen through the lens of the Tucson shootings
On January 8, 2011, twenty-two-year-old Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at a Tucson meet-and-greet held by U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords. The incident left six people dead and eighteen injured, including Giffords, whom he shot in the head.
Award-winning author and fifth generation Arizonan Tom Zoellner, a longtime friend of Giffords’s and a field organizer on her Congressional campaign, uses the tragedy as a jumping-off point to expose the fault lines in Arizona’s political and socioeconomic landscape that allowed this to happen: the harmful political rhetoric, the inept state government, the lingering effects of the housing market’s boom and bust, the proliferation and accessibility of guns, the lack of established communities, and the hysteria surrounding issues of race and immigration.
Zoellner offers a revealing portrait of the Southwestern state at a critical moment in history- and as a symbol of the nation’s discontents and uncertainties. Ultimately, it is his rallying cry for a saner, more civil way of life.
Tom Zoellner is the author of Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World, winner of the 2010 American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award, The Heartless Stone: A Journey Through the World of Diamonds, Deceit and Desire, and co-author of An Ordinary Man. He has worked as a reporter for The Arizona Republic and San Francisco Chronicle. (Penguin)
1 Comment
The shootings of Congresswoman Giffords and all the others took place in front of a Safeway Supermarket in a strip mall in a city of strip malls and housing subdivisions – many of them failing financially. It must be unbelievably difficult for a young person to make sense of such an incoherent environment and such cruel swindling culture. A society that habitually and incessantly lies to itself is apt to choke to death on its internal contradictions. Jared Lee showed an unusual concern for language and literacy. His videos were all words, no pictures. I wonder if the word SAFEWAY flashed through his brain when he pulled the trigger.
Kunstler
http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/01/jared-got-a-gun.html