By Erik Sherman, bnet
In the wake of the Arizona shootings, the usual suspects quickly lined up to point fingers at one another. Lefties blamed rhetoric of the Tea Party or Sarah Palin, especially the latter’s use of symbols that easily can be interpreted as rifle targets. Right-wingers said that the shooter was deranged and that political talk had nothing to do with the event, and complained that some on the left are also given to inflammatory speech.
Weirdly enough, there’s an important business lesson here. Sarah Palin’s reaction — particularly the attempts of her people to distance her from the shooting controversy and to claim, implausibly, that a notorious graphic she used bore surveyor’s marks and not rifle sights to “target” Democratic legislators — offers the important reminder that while it can be easy to start a social media campaign, it’s often far harder to control it afterward.