And.... Scene.

So much for the good feelings that briefly enveloped our little desert burg. Well, really, the vitriol only hiccuped for a second or two there while it stayed near the surface. People started grousing about Sheriff Dupnik right away, as well about the order in which victims' names were listed in news stories and about who went to what funeral and about people cheering at the memorial service instead of weeping.

In the past few days, the reliably unhinged crew of regular commenters on the Arizona Daily Star's website have even begun sniffing dismissively and derisively at Rep. Giffords' impending transfer to a rehab hospital in Houston. Why doesn't she stay in Arizona for rehab, they whine. Why do people feel the need to turn out to line the streets to watch her ambulance go by on the way to the airport, they grouse. Why does she even say she's from Arizona if her husband lives in Texas, they howl.

Distasteful, stupid, and not worth the energy. As long as nobody stands out there with a sign demanding that Giffords apologize to Sarah Palin, I don't much mind their going on and on and on. Better to let all that bile out than keep it bottled up until someone has a coronary, I suppose.

Some of these folks, however, aren't content to just plaster their stupidity across the discussion boards of a mid-major newspaper that doesn't get a whole lot of pageviews outside Arizona. The Pima County tea party people have decided to plaster their stupidity all over the public right-of-way and inevitable TV cameras outside Sheriff Dupnik's headquarters next Friday, in response to Dupnik having had the temerity to point out that Arizona has become the epicenter of stupid in this country a "mecca of prejudice and bigotry."

Pima County Tea Party Patriots say they plan to "indict" Dupnik for politicizing the shootings, blaming free speech for the crime without evidence, failing to protect Giffords, failing to recuse himself from the investigation, and embarrassing the community in front of the nation.

Oh, honey child. Arizona has already done plenty on its own to embarrass itself in front of the nation, despite Tucson's best efforts to mitigate some of the state's crap act. We would be remiss, of course, if we failed to point out that the founder of the Tucson Tea Party (no relation, apparently, to the county-level patriots) has already let Dupnik off the hook for one of those charges, having placed the blame for the failure to protect Giffords squarely on Giffords herself (she should have known better than to go out in public without security, because there are lots of people running around in public in Arizona with concealed weapons, which the tea party has campaigned for vigorously because having lots of people running around in public with concealed weapons = safety!).

And so the curtain comes down on Act I with a resounding oh, for fuck's sake. I do not know how Act II will unfold.