Tag Archives: David Hogg

What is wrong with these people…?

Over at HuffingtonPost.com there’s a report by Mary Papenfuss regarding…

Florida Cop in trouble after wishing car accident on gun violence protest

Essentially, a Florida policeman decided it would be clever to slam school shooting survivor David Hogg, who was behind a “die in” event at the Publix groceries due to the fact that the company was giving money to a pro-gun candidate (they have since stopped) and posted the following:

I hope some old lady loses control of her car in that lot. Jus sayin …

First: David Hogg has become something of a boogeyman to the NRA.  Why?  Because he has them scared.  He -and a few others- are the face of a movement that may be hard to slow, that of young people who are fed up with the many school shootings and idiotic (at best) “responses” from the politician regarding these tragedies.  They demand legislation to rein in the too-many and too-powerful weapons out there and the noise they’ve made is being heard.

Second: Even if you are a rabid 2nd Amendment type, this is the essence of free speech and, yes, democracy: You protest peacefully and you make yourself heard.  You do this because you strive for change.  In the case of Mr. Hogg and others like him, you do this because you don’t want to see any more young people like him die senselessly in another school shooting tragedy.

Let me repeat this: He doesn’t want there to be more school shootings.  He doesn’t want there to be more senseless deaths.  And what he’s doing, whether you like it or not, is not resulting in anyone getting hurt.  Indeed, the only thing that seems to be hurt are some people’s egos.

Such as, I suppose the policeman who posted that tweet.

 

Hit ’em where it hurts…

Laura Ingraham, a host of one of the many highly opinionated right wing shows over at Fox “News”, got into it with Parkland survivor David Hogg.  She took a dig at him via twitter, writing:

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it

This… did not go well for her.

Over at cnn.com, Tom Kludt writes about the after effects of this ill-advised twitter statement:

Laura Ingraham apologizes for mocking David Hogg

What happened, in a nutshell, is that the Parkland students, including Mr. Hogg, hit back at Ingraham.

Hard.

It started with some of them shaming her but then moved on to pointing out her advertisers.

And her advertisers took note and, at least in a couple of cases, decided Ms. Ingraham had crossed the proverbial bridge too far.

So, facing a possible flight of advertisers (and, thus, revenue to her program), Ms. Ingraham offered this apology via twitter:

On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how ‘poised’ he was given the tragedy. As always he’s welcome to return to the show anytime for a productive discussion.

Ho boy.

Look, I guess she’s trying to show genuine contrition, but for crying out loud, why start with this “in the spirit of Holy Week” crap?!

She is, rightfully IMHO, getting raked over the coals for this opening line.  Some have wondered if she is somehow implying that had it not been Holy Week, then the remarks made would be perfectly acceptable?!

Of course not.

However, if you remove those six words from the rest of her apology, even someone as turned off by the likes of Ms. Ingraham and her type of opinion hit pieces will recognize it is a refreshingly direct apology (no “if my words offended anyone” type garbage).

At least an attempt was made to offer a genuine apology, flawed as it was in its opening.