Do They Even Listen To Themselves?
By Mitch Berg
Michelle Griffith at the Minnesota Reformer has a think, sorta, piece about the first anniversary of the shooting of Melissa and Mark Hortman (and the Hoffmans).
We need more civility, we’re told, and we just don’t have it yet:
In the year since former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed, their son has spent countless hours researching political rhetoric. He used the moment with his late mother’s co-workers to emphasize that how legislators craft their arguments matters. He wasn’t there to lay blame on any individual lawmaker or political party.
“This can really feel abstract for the general public, but the people in that room, for myself, for my sister, for our whole family, political violence will never feel abstract again,” Hortman said in a Reformer interview.
Conspicuous in its absence in the article – Aisha Gomez telling Elliot Engen to “go shoot himself” over the GOP’s refusal to pass the DFL’s cynical gun grab bill.
But who’s counting individual hypocrisies? Even I gave up on that years go – and to quote Rochefoucald, “hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue” – only people with principles can violate them.
But back to Colin Hortman:
In the year since former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed, their son has spent countless hours researching political rhetoric. He used the moment with his late mother’s co-workers to emphasize that how legislators craft their arguments matters. He wasn’t there to lay blame on any individual lawmaker or political party.
“This can really feel abstract for the general public, but the people in that room, for myself, for my sister, for our whole family, political violence will never feel abstract again,” Hortman said in a Reformer interview.
I’m going to try to invite Mr. Hortman onto my show one of these weekends to talk about this research.
Because I have a strong hunch that having a presidential ticket including our governor calling half the nation “Nazis” and “Fascists” – people are near ancestors spent the best years of their lives killing – didn’t help a whole lot.
