MONDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2023
Auburn, Maine resident speaks: First, Lewiston replaced the Middle East. Then, Matthew Perry replaced Lewiston.
So it tends to go within the culture of round-the-clock "cable news." In all instances, coverage tends toward the "human interest" perspective—toward CNN's favorite type of question:
How did you feel when you saw your grandmother swept away by the flood?
We Americans don't have an especially bright news culture. Nor do we necessarily understand this fact about ourselves.
Can a very large modern nation survive such cultural dumbness? The answer may not be yes.
That said, we occasionally come across highly enlightened public statements. So it was when CNN's Poppy Harlow interviewed a resident of Auburn, Maine whose son was killed in last week's mass shooting event.
The interview occurred last Friday morning. According to the CNN transcript, this is what we saw at that time. With the exception of one deletion, this is what we heard:
HARLOW (10/27/23): This morning, Maine is in so much pain. So many families waking up without their loved ones, without their friend, without their coworker—all gone because of another mass shooting in America.
Our next guest, NAME WITHHELD, says his son died a hero, and he did. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: My son actually—because he's manager of the bar and everything else—picked up a butcher knife and went after the gunman to try to stop him from killing other people. And that's when he shot my son to death.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: His son, Joey Walker, was the manager at Schemengees Bar & Grille where at least eight people were killed. And his father says, "My Joey will be missed by thousands."
[He] joins us now. He's also a city councilor in Auburn, Maine, just miles from where this happened.
Thank you for being here this morning. And what a hero your son was. When you think about that what does it say about the man that he was to you?
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: I'm very proud of my son. I know that, definitely, he would do this all over again if this was to happen. All my life and all my son's life we have faced many other things that have been crazy at times in life. Meeting people is my son's biggest thing. Knowing people and understanding them is also a big thing to Joe. Loved by many, loved by myself, and he would love back to everybody.
So I know he would do such a thing to try to save lives and not let somebody hurt the people that he loved. And this was family. This place brings thousands of people in, in a year and Joe was usually the first face that they see coming through the door and the last one they see going out the door.
It's going to be hard. It's going to be hard for a lot, a lot of people. And, of course, hard for myself and my family, and his wife, grandchildren, his stepchildren. It—they're a loving family.
And for someone to do this to so many families, as well as mine, is just crazy. It leaves you an empty hole that I don't know how it will ever be filled.
HARLOW: We're looking at these wonderful pictures of the two of you together as you're helping everyone remember your son and his big smile. Our heart obviously is with his wife, Tracy, and his whole family as well.
He did so much to help people that needed it the most. He did a lot for veterans. He was about to raise money for veterans.
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Yes. Him and I had talked about it. I connected him with a good friend of mine that's a veteran, and Jerry DeWitt and him were going to meet I believe the next day. Of course, that's not going to happen now. But hopefully, somebody can pick up that ball and run with it. But it's a very short time. November 11 was the date picked to do this and—
HARLOW: Yeah.
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: —I don't know if it's going to happen at this time.HARLOW: I'm struck by your remarks yesterday that you do not harbor hate or anger for the man who took your son's life. And I wonder how that's possible despite your grief.
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Uh, you have to put that part of it—you have to put it out of your mind. You have to let the Lord do whatever needs to be done. And if this person was, at the time, in his right mind, I believe he would have been a loving person just like we are. There's something that went wrong.
And I just can't hate him. I believe in the Lord and I think the Lord will prevail in the end here. And I guess we can make our choices on people but I can't—I can't hate this person. I've been taught different than that—I hope, anyways. And I believe in the Lord and I have to feel that way.
You can't run around this world hating people. If you do, these kind of things will happen more and more. They may be more individual things that happen. But if you hate and the hate drives you crazy you're going to hurt people. And I've had my ups and downs in my life and I don't want anyone to hurt me and I don't want to hurt anybody.
And I'm sure this man—whatever happened to his mind, I'm sure he wasn't born to be a killer. And he's got, I'm sure, a father and a mother that would have never believed this would have happened with him. So all I can say is, I'm sorry that it's happened to all of us, and I'm sorry what may happen to him. And God will prevail.
HARLOW: It's just—
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Hate will never bring my son back.
HARLOW: No, it won't.
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: It just—
HARLOW: It's just amazing to hear you with so much love in your heart. For people who don't know, you also lost your daughter 25 years ago—
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: I did.
HARLOW: —in a car accident. So to have to lose two children and still be able to have faith, have such faith and such love in your heart is remarkable. What can everyone watching do for you? How can we help you?
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Uh, just pray for everybody. Pray for the people that passed away with my son. Pray to the Lord that this doesn't happen again in our community.
None of us would have ever believed this if we would have asked each other five days ago if this was a possibility. Nobody would have believed it. Nobody would have thought it.
We have—we really have a loving community. We have two cities here—sister cities. They both believe that their city is the best city, and that's the way we are. But we love each other.
We travel back and forth to all businesses. We make plans together. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And as a city councilor, I know a lot of their feelings and they know a lot of mine. The two cities try to make the cities the proudest place to be...
[DELETED REMARK]
So you know, I just hope we can move on through this and get it behind us so that we can start healing. And thank God we have you people to keep our loved ones alive for a few more days.
HARLOW: [NAME WITHHELD], your son—it is clear that all the good in him came from so much good in you. Thank you for sharing about him with us this morning. And we're here for whatever you need.
AUBURN, MAINE RESIDENT: Thank you very much.
HARLOW: Of course.
(Turns to co-anchor.)
HARLOW: No love like a parent's love, right?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: I don't—I don't have anything to say.
HARLOW: What a great human.
MATTINGLY: He said all of the things. And I wish I and everyone else could be more—
HARLOW: Like him.
MATTINGLY: —like him.
HARLOW: We'll be back.
There were pauses for emotion on the part of the Auburn resident, but also on Harlow's part. Mattingly felt he had nothing to add to what their guest had said.
To our ear, the Auburn resident was unusual on two counts:
First, he seems to believe that (severe) mental illness is an actual force in the world. He spoke with empathy on that point, recalling for us the words of the not-especially famous song from the American songbook:
He was some mother's darling,
He was some mother's son.
Once he was fair and once he was young.
And some mother rocked him, her darling, to sleep.
But they left him to die like a tramp on the street.
The resident seemed to believe that (severe) mental illness can have its way, even with some mother's darling and son. That perspective rarely intrudes on our routinely unimpressive public discourse, within which you're going to hear few discussions about the possible nature of the (presumably severe) mental illness involved in this latest mass shooting event.
Beyond that, the resident was preaching love, not hate. We recalled the way some families responded to the June 2015 mass killing in Charleston—a response which occasioned statements of surprise and admiration from all across the globe.
Harlow seemed to know that the Auburn resident was giving voice to an unusual point of view. Having said that, we'll also say this:
Along the way, the resident made a somewhat odd remark about "diversity" in Lewiston and Auburn. Today, we've omitted that slightly peculiar remark. We'll look at it tomorrow.
Two years ago, the resident made an even stranger public remark concerning race. He was accused of racism at that time.
Concerning the Auburn resident, we will now offer this:
To our eye and to our ear, the resident isn't a Harvard professor. He's doesn't seem like a "highly educated" member of our blue tribe's ranking elite.
We don't know his party affiliation. We don't know if he even might have voted for Donald J. Trump!
(In Auburn, Trump narrowly outperformed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. Four years later, Biden outperformed Donald J. Trump by a wider margin.)
The Auburn resident didn't seem like a part of our tribe's most admired elite. That said, is it possible that the Auburn resident is a good, decent person?
We'll examine that question this week. As we do, we'll examine the way we blue tribe members may sometimes insist on creating a nation of Others, in ways which help bring us down.
The Auburn resident voiced an unusual set of views. To their credit, Harlow and Mattingly were each well aware of this fact.
Because he seemed like an everyday person, he made us think of Dr. King's not especially famous remark:
DR. KING (2/4/68): Everybody can be great. Because everybody can serve.
You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
Might the Auburn resident be listed as great? Or must he be scored as an Other?
It's pretty much all anthropology now. But that's the question we'll be exploring in the course of this Halloween week.
This week: The ways the two Clintons view others
Sometimes the family of a Murder victim react with grace and and an almost unbelievable sense of forgiveness. Sometimes (much more often?) they don’t, and they feel to behave that way would do a disservice to the victim of the violence.
ReplyDeleteIs the latter reaction foolish or illegitimate?
In this latest horror the murderer seems to be suffering from serious mental illness. Because of the Republican gun lobby, there is no way for the public to insure that they are safe form this sort of well regulated madman, other than the dubious solution of more guns all the time. It was not even a case like the MAGA Crumblys, whose solution to their struggling Son was to arm him and force him back into school.
"First, Lewiston replaced the Middle East. Then, Matthew Perry replaced Lewiston."
ReplyDeleteDid any of these stories actually replace any other story? People can be interested in, read about and care about multiple stories per day. A newspaper never consists of only one report at a time. And there is no such thing as "out of sight out of mind" when it comes to news reporting. So this is a ridiculous construction of Somerby's. Why does he say such ridiculous things, if not to adopt a carping, griping tone while complaining about news media?
It seems to me that the “carping, griping tone” is found in your comment.
DeleteBut what is your opinion of what Somerby has said?
Delete"How did you feel when you saw your grandmother swept away by the flood?"
ReplyDeleteI've been following Gaza, the hurricane in Acapulco, and the Lewiston shooting and I have not seen any of this sort of interviewing. But if people are expressing feelings about what has happened to them and their loved ones, is that some sort of crime?
Somerby just loves to distort song lyrics for his own purposes. Today he talks about mental illness and quotes the Hank Williams song Tramp on the Street as if it were about mental illness. It was actually sung during the Great Depression when there were literal tramps crossing the country as vagabonds in search of work, some starving and dying of physical illness in the streets.
ReplyDeleteFollowing wars, many of the tramps and homeless people tend to be disabled veterans, some with PTSD (shell shock), alcoholism and drug abuse as self-medication for mental distress. Today, 80% of the people on California's streets have unpaid medical bills and half are over 50 (unemployable).
Homeless people have real problems that cannot be dismissed as "mental illness" so that it can be forgotten, as the Hank Williams song deplores not excuses. After his labeling of people as mentally ill, what does Somerby consider to be the next step. He always stops with pity, but what about advocating treatment and health parity for mental illness, what about housing for those who are on the streets? What about keeping guns out of the hands of people who are not responsible gun owners?
Somerby never goes beyond pity.
Weirdly, Somerby seems to think that anyone has been saying that only college professors have empathy. Somerby makes that the strawman of the day and beats it down by showing us that a resident of Lewiston Maine can show love instead of hate too. But no one has ever claimed that you need a college degree to show empathy. Somerby invents that ludicrous idea in order to attack so-called college elites as disparaging the residents of Lewiston.
ReplyDeleteThis is incredibly silly, even for Somerby. And USING the death of a Lewiston bartender to make such an asinine point is NOT how those who died should be remembered.
Somerby assumes these people being interviewed in Lewiston are "the Other" (Somerby's name for right wingers), but are they? I don't see any mention of politics in the quoted excerpt and I see no reason to assume that about them. And the idea, ascribed to readers today, that we would feel differently about their loss if we knew they were red voters, is insulting to liberals (but what else is new?).
Then Somerby borrows MLK's words, applying them out of context, as he exhorted his followers to get involved. What MLK means about "serving" has little to do with what happened in Lewiston, nor with feeling empathy with the mentally ill, their families and victims (in this shooting).
And this anonymous Auburn Maine Resident is not the everyday shlub on the street grieving for a loss. He is also a city councilman who knows everyone in both towns. He says:
"We travel back and forth to all businesses. We make plans together. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And as a city councilor, I know a lot of their feelings and they know a lot of mine. The two cities try to make the cities the proudest place to be..."
He is what passes for elite in small Maine towns, and likely has a college degree, although that is not something we liberal readers of this blog care about when it comes to loss and grieving. That is Somerby's gripe today, since he himself seems to be having trouble knowing what to say about a mass shooting committed because a mentally ill person was able to get and use a gun.
Somerby could be talking about gun control but instead he suggests the left doesn't love enough and invents a strawman about only the elite feeling empathy. Only the empathetic feel empathy. We know who they are by their behavior, not their college degrees. We also know who they aren't by their behavior -- and I don't see an ounce of empathy for anyone in Somerby's essay today. Who uses such deaths to score political points against enemies? Someone who doesn't feel for the dead and their families and loved ones.
Weirdly, you seem to think that “Somerby seems to think that anyone has been saying that only college professors have empathy.”
DeletePlease read Somerby’s essay before commenting.
DeletePlease stop making shit up about what Somerby “seems to think.”
DeleteI've read Somerby. He has no real opinions on anything. He did suggest we listen to "the Others". I did, and boy are they ever bigots.
DeleteSo, every single one of the Others is a bigot - and you, a tolerant person, would never stereotype them!
DeleteDogface George,
DeleteNot the part about me being a tolerant person, but yes to the other two parts.
Everyone who isn't a bigot, or isn't perfectly fine with bigotry, left the Republican party almost two dozen years ago. Take Bob's advice and listen to them.
So you're an intolerant person who stereotypes millions of people. Sort of sounds like a "bigot" to me.
DeleteDogface George,
DeleteWhere did you get your license to judge people based-on their words and actions?
Asking for 3:02, who you called a bigot for doing so without a license.
Dogface just comes here to troll the commenters.
DeleteOnly those commenters who make shit up and lack basic reading and reasoning skills.
DeleteHo hum, more trolling…
DeleteDogface George,
DeleteDo you care to explain why people who have a problem with bigotry shouldn't leave the Republican Party?
"he made us think of Dr. King's not especially famous remark"
ReplyDeleteWho is this quote not famous among? Those who are denied the chance to learn about African American history in school. The rest of us knew it even before Somerby began dragging it out to serve his own purposes (which never seem to include racial justice).
I am sad that Matthew Perry died so young and had so many problems with substance abuse during his lifetime.
ReplyDeleteWhat does Somerby have against Matthew Perry that he would imply that Perry's death is trivial and nothing anyone should care about?
Given the popularity of the program he was on I would say the coverage afforded his passing was about right.
DeleteIf this woman's son had been armed with a gun instead of a knife, he would have shot the gunman and saved 18 lives.
ReplyDeleteThere were at least two people with guns in the audience at the Pulse Nightclub shooting who did nothing because they were worried about bystanders and because they didn't want arriving first-responders to mistake them for the actual shooter and kill or arrest them. And look at all those armed and trained law officers in Uvalde. How many lives did they save with their guns?
DeleteThis fantasy that good guys with guns can stop mass shootings doesn't work out the way gun owners seem to think it will. It is more often unarmed or unequally armed people who save lives in these situations.
The world needs armed bartenders.
DeleteAt one time they talked about arming teachers too. My colleagues said they would quit rather than have a gun in their classrooms.
DeleteI always pack a semi-pistol when I go bowling or join a cornhole tournament. You're a real brainiac, David.
DeleteMany Republicans want armed bar patrons.
Delete@12:49 PM - unfortunately many states do too by their legislation.
Delete@11:22 It is not a fantasy that good guys with guns can stop mass shootings. There are inde3ed many instances. Because of media bias on both sides, these instances get prominent coverage on conservative news organs and little or no coverage on liberal and mainstream media. You can easily find them via a search engine.
DeleteE.g.., see https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/09/29/mass-shooting-myth-n75455
https://www.iheart.com/content/2022-07-18-clay-travis-and-buck-sexton-good-guy-with-a-gun-prevented-indiana-mass-shooting-media-ignores-except-outkick/
I watched almost 10 minutes of a cop choking out George Floyd, and counted exactly zero good guys with guns.
DeleteIf there was such a thing as god guys with guns, no cop would ever be in a position to claim qualified immunity.
Delete"You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."
ReplyDeleteI'll remember this the next time I need heart surgery or someone to write a computer program for me.
Somerby quotes MLK about not needing credentials to "serve" but wouldn't his own students in Baltimore, those inner city black kids, have been better served if Somerby had had some teacher training beyond the 6-week Teach for America summer course, in which TFA mostly bashes traditional teacher education and criticizes public schools?
ReplyDeleteIf Somerby knew something about teaching of reading and math, perhaps he could have helped those kids improve their NAEP scores (and acquire basic literacy) in order to climb out of poverty and get better jobs down the road? What was he teaching when he showed his 5th grade class the film Forgotten Village (by his own admission)? Teacher training involves sharing best practices so that random teachers don't wind up experimenting on poor black children and wasting their classroom time, when they are already falling behind the middle class kids.
But Somerby is against knowledge, expertise, training, education, and thinks college isn't necessary, even though it will still substantially improve lifetime earnings for graduates (compared to high school graduation).
Look what it did for Lauren Boebert. She got her GED (after several tries) and became a House member! Or perhaps Somerby thinks everyone should just lie like George Santos and save themselves the money and effort. Somerby apparently learned very little in college, but that was his own doing. Lauren Boebert learned to appreciate the arts (Beetlejuice).
If we assert that more education is better, and Somerby frames that as prejudice against the Others, instead of a desire to help people have better lives, Somerby appears to be using an anti-intellectual cudgel to bludgeon the left at the expense of right wingers who might benefit from a less-defensive attitude about their own understanding of the world.
“Somerby is against knowledge” - Let’s just deal with this assertion. Care to provide a cite to substantiate it?
DeleteAside from that, why not comment on today’s essay?
DeleteI’ll take that as an admission that you made up your assertion that “Somerby is against knowledge.”
DeleteLet’s go down the line. “Somerby is against expertise.” Did you make that one up too, or can you provide substantiation?
There is no quote from Somerby admitting he is against knowledge, any more than there is a quote from Somerby admitting he's is a supporter of knowledge.
DeleteAs Vinny Gambini said, “I’ve got no more use for this guy!”
DeleteRead today’s essay. Somerby quotes MLK saying you don’t need college or expertise to serve. Serve how? Somerby leaves that part out because he means it literally. He has no use for college. And Dogface whines that he can’t find the quote!
DeleteSomerby quoting MLK as saying you don't need college to serve does not equal Somerby saying that he is against knowledge and expertise.
DeleteDo I really have to explain this?
Let’s just say that college professors, along with philosophers and logicians, are a favorite target of Somerby. He accuses them of being arrogant elitists and/or derelict in some supposed duty to our discourse. Now, he obviously doesn’t attack every professor, but he’s pretty down on philosophers as a group. His attacks often echo right wing attacks against “egghead” elitist (read:liberal) professors who are depicted as the enemy of the common salt of the earth working man.
DeleteTeaching, particularly college-level, is a battleground where right wingers seek to root out liberal professors and views. (David in Cal suggested the other day that leftist professors should be removed from college campuses.) Look at Florida to see what DeSantis is trying to do to higher education. What is Somerby’s reaction? He finds something that he thinks liberals should agree with about DeSantis’ stop Woke act, but never argues against his overall agenda. Somerby may not be “against knowledge”. On the other hand, he never really defends it.
Somerby is promising to write about the Clintons someday, but in the meantime, what does this mean?
ReplyDelete"CLINTONS AND OTHERS: "He would have been a loving person!"
Neither Clinton is in favor of mass shootings. The gun control measures that Bill Clinton enacted successfully reduced shooting deaths, which then went back up when his measures expired without being renewed by Congress (the Republicans).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control_policy_of_the_Bill_Clinton_administration
As far as I know, both Clintons were loving people. Why does Somerby imply otherwise?
DeleteIt’s a well-worn talking point at TDH. Bill liked visiting evangelical churches and hillary called half of trump voters deplorable.
DeleteAnonymouse 11:57am, perhaps Bob knows something you don’t know. He is friends with Pres. Clinton’s VP.
Delete12:51: Even today? At any rate, unless he tells us something other than what’s in the public record, his posts show no particular special knowledge.
Deletemh, 11:57am said “as far as I know…”. Indeed.
DeleteBob is in a position where he could know.
Bob voted on HRC, and would vote for her again if she were running, but otherwise, his attitude towards her may be an indication of insider info.
Gore didn’t socialize with Somerby after college.
DeleteThey weren’t roomates either. They shared an 8-person suite. Somerby has no inside info.
DeleteAnonymouse 7:47, were you one of those eight people? Otherwise, how do you know how close Gore was to Somerby, and how much do you know about your all your coworkers, let alone one of eight people with whom you shared a suite?
DeleteYou make shit up and expect us to disprove it. The burden of proof is on you. Somerby and Gore were not bffs and Somerby has no inside info about Hillary because he has no ongoing relationship with Gore. If you say he does, then prove it.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAnonymouse 9:59pm, maybe you have said that then to the news outlets that had Somerby on in order for him to defend your candidate Gore, as they were kicking him.
DeleteMaybe you should have said that to yourselves as you were supporting Bob then, before he pulled a fast one on you by daring to go after your media idols.
You haven’t proved what you said about Somerby’s inside info. You are changing the subject.
DeleteThe media proved it. They didn’t invite you on to vouch for Gore, and according to your own assertions , you weren’t dissing Somerby then.
DeleteNot cute — put up or shut up.
DeleteAnonymouse 10:51pm put up or what?
DeleteI put up the fact that anonymices loved Somerby when he was invited by the media to defend Al Gore and his wife (who didn’t appreciate that music calling women whores was being marketed to teenagers).
After Gore lost, these same liberals abandoned Bob when he had the temerity to continue going after that same media when Pres. Bush got into office and the media were going after him.
That sort of consistency about the media and the body politic is not at all admirable to apparatchik anonymices.
Wrong, Cecelia. Somerby turned against liberals too. He didn’t just continue attacking the media. But it’s convenient for you to overlook that little fact.
DeleteAnonymouse 1:13am, you’re honest in calling the media liberals.
DeleteCecelia,
DeleteI'm not so sure the media are liberals. Perhaps, it just seems like the media are liberals, because the media is owned by corporations, and the Right has proven over and over again, they know absolutely nothing about economics.
That seems like a more reasonable explanation.
“I can't hate this person. I've been taught different than that…
ReplyDeleteYou can't run around this world hating people.”
You hear this from a lot of religious people. But if they vote for trump, they are voting for someone who runs around the world hating people.
It’s also quite possible that, had the shooter survived, this man’s lack of hate would not have translated into sparing the shooter the death penalty. Religious people who express views like [Name withheld] often believe in just punishment, despite or even because of their belief about loving sinners. Conservative Christians often support the death penalty. And in general, conservatives don’t support stricter gun laws which might prevent occurrences like this one.
“We recalled the way some families responded to the June 2015 mass killing in Charleston—“
And it’s a good bet that they were all Democrats, and Biden voters, who expressed the same sentiments about the murderer as [name withheld]. But it didn’t mean they didn’t want him punished.
Love is good, but allowing potentially preventable tragedies to go on occurring almost makes the love/pity seem like virtue signaling.
Give it up
ReplyDeleteTo serve “You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” The grace and love were needed to serve. MLK gave examples of serving in that same sermon:
ReplyDelete“I'd like somebody to mention that day [his funeral] that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody.
I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen)
I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes)
And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked.(Yes) I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord)
I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)”
https://bethlehemfarm.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/DrumMajorInstinct.pdf
The above was my comment.
DeleteI wouldn’t ask Bob to react with love to Nichole Wallace. I would ask, if he is going to bring up her show, he react to the arguments presented with common curtesy and respect, not like a know nothing dunce (Trump Trump Trump). He could lose the mean spirited insults too.
DeleteAnonymouse 12:57pm, Somerby merely reported that Bill O’Reilly had given VP Gore a fair shake and was promptly linked to Putin.
DeleteAs far as I know, Bob is not a Republican Congressperson.
DeleteAnonymouse 1:43pm, that hasn’t stopped you from calling him a traitor.
Delete9:31,
DeleteYou're being honest by calling Republican Congresspeople "traitors".
Speaker of the house Johnson, being a self-professed devout Christian, loves gay people so much that he wants to put them in jail as deviants.
ReplyDeleteI don't have any quarrel with this resident not hating the killer; but I can understand that one might "hate" a person who killed their child or other loved one even though the killer was deranged. I understand the deranged shooter was sane enough to plan the murders, and to escape from the scene. I am pretty sure that if he hadn't done himself in, he wouldn't succeed on an insanity defense. TDH is very soft hearted, which I don't think is bad; there are all kinds.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, the resident in question indicates he was religious, that's the basis for his generous forgiveness, and he might very well believe that his son has gone to heaven; a lot of people seem to believe that heaven is a reward after people , or certain people, die. If, say, this kind-hearted resident did believe his son has gone to heaven, there is no rational reason for the resident to be in grief. Life on earth is but a blink of an eye compared to eternity. Though I realize rationality doesn't enter into it (otherwise wouldn't believe in heaven).
Jeez - all that for a banal denigration of religion? BORING.
DeleteAnonymouse 6:38pm, yeah.
DeleteGod is a figment of dim-witted imaginations.
DeleteAnonymouse flying monkey 9:22am, God doesn’t believe in you either.
Delete9:51,
DeleteWe, equally, created the Universe.