It’s not that people should be defined by their skin color, gender, or who they love. But in this case, these details are important enough to focus on for a moment.
Capitol Police special agents Crystal Griner and David Bailey are widely credited with saving Republican lawmakers and staff during the horrific shooting in Alexandria, Virginia that left Representative Steve Scalise in the hospital in critical condition.
Both Griner and Bailey were wounded.
Both Griner and Bailey are minorities.
Crystal Griner is a female minority, who just so happens to be married to a woman. Griner married Tiffany Dyar in 2015.
As ESPN’s LZ Granderson pointed out, Griner saved the life of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who is opposed to same-sex marriage,
Crystal Griner risked her life to save @SteveScalise. She was comforted in the hospital by her wife. Scalise is against same sex marriage.
Scalise has also been close to white supremacists such as David Duke and has played the dirtiest kinds of racist politics of the type that is common in the Party of Lincoln as it turned to the Party of Jesse Helms.
The bravery of these two people, Crystal Griner and David Bailey, saving the life of a racist, homophobic bigot whose slavish service to the gun industry caused not only his injury but theirs should be the real focus of attention. There are thousands of bigoted Republican hacks, there are far too few real heroes who risk their lives to save others, even their enemies.
Well said.
ReplyDeleteThere is some indication this incident has shocked some people in D.C. into awareness that rhetoric is not what their job is about; that maybe it's about governance instead, about not demonizing those who don't agree with you.
ReplyDeleteEven Ted Nugget has reportedly said he's going to be more civil and less incendiary.
Of course that's not touching Newt Gingrich but then, what does? (Oops, I just demonized him. Well, that's a problem for me, frankly....). And the change may be fleeting. I wonder, if he survives, if Scalise will reconsider his rabid support of guns, now that he knows what they do to people? Will he imagine that if he had had a gun, he wouldn't have been shot? Or would "packing heat" have made no difference to him at all (much more likely).
Maybe it will change things; maybe it won't. Just the noises being made are good enough for now. Take what you can get, light a candle, don't curse the darkness, etc.
Baby steps. Always and forever: baby steps.
If it's a demon, it's not demonization, making them what they already decided to be, themselves.
DeleteNewt Gingrich is in that class of people who you can't determine who is the worst of because they're all superlative in such evil.
Well, when you're too extreme for Nugent, maybe it will tell you something.
DeleteNow if we can just get cable news to quit putting Newt in front of a camera (or broadcast news, for that matter)....
He's like a plate of jelly doughnuts filled with petroleum jelly and sprinkled with arsenic. Apparently they figure their audience likes that kind of thing, though I think it's the advertisers they really want to keep happy.
DeleteI'm not expecting Nuge's moderation to last more than a news cycle or two. Stupid old pop music people don't generally develop. They'd get out of that genre if they were capable of it.