Commentary
By Gary Kopycinski
Park Forest, IL-(ENEWSPF)- David Hogg is mad as hell, and none of us have the right to tell him how to speak or what he says. No adult has the right to tell David Hogg he should be more polite, label him profane, tell him to sit down, let the adults take care of things now.
David survived the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He videoed an active shooting inside his school. And he and his
So it was telling to watch National Rifle Association spokeswoman Dana Loesch repeatedly tell the audience at the CNN town hall on Wednesday, February 21, following the Parkland school shooting to quiet down. There, student shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez pressed Loesch on the NRA’s stance on banning the purchase of semi-automatic and fully automatic weapons. Dana Loesch admonished those in the audience, danced around direct questions, and pretended to be the adult in the room.
But she was not.
Emma Gonzalez and those from Stoneman Douglas were the adults in the room that evening.
David Hogg gave a testy, powerful, and direct interview with The Outline, and during that interview he threw in quite a few “F-bombs.” This 17-year-old speaks his mind without apology, addressing politicians directly during the interview. To Florida Governor Rick Scott, “You’re kind of like Voldemort at this point. You should just retire, because you aren’t going to get elected to Senate.” And more on Scott, “He does not give a fuck about these kids’ lives at all. He only cares about his re-election. That’s why this stuff is being implemented in a year, not today.” To those who call him a crisis actor? “I would love to meet them,” then, to the camera, “Hey, if you’re out there, fuck you.”
Mr. Hogg sets his sights primarily on the NRA and pro-gun pols, “It just makes me think what sick fuckers out there want to continue to sell more guns, murder more children, and honestly just get reelected,” he said. “What type of shitty person does that? They could have blood from children splattered all over their faces and they wouldn’t take action, because they all still see these dollar signs.”
The “adults in the room” who are critical of Mr. Hogg’s direct approach, his pointed criticisms of how adults have failed, we adults don’t have the right to tell him that he is impolite, that he should temper his language, and join the long, slow, moderated, dare I say “well regulated” discussion on the hallowed Second Amendment. And when he learns, finally, to go back to sleep, quiet down, tame his rhetoric, then the “adults in the room” will arise again at the next school shooting, work to put that discussion back into the neat package that is more amenable to Dana Loesch and the board of the NRA.
Not this time.
Not this time at all.
Either David Hogg and the other survivors from Parkland don’t know the “rules” for public discourse, or they are quite aware of the “rules” and they just don’t care.
They’re writing their own rules, teaching us “how to use a fucking democracy,” as Hogg says in The Outline interview.
David Hogg is right to be “mad as hell.” And Mr. Hogg is correct to blame adults, all of us, for our unsuccessful efforts to pass common sense gun reform.
Why should David Hogg have to lead the charge? “I shouldn’t have to! I’m 17,” he said in the interview with The Outline. “When your old-ass parent is like, ‘I don’t know how to send an iMessage,’ and you’re just like, ‘Give me the fucking phone and let me handle it.’ Sadly, that’s what we have to do with our government; our parents don’t know how to use a fucking democracy, so we have to.”
Dan Rather likens this moment, these young movers, to the “thousands of young people who participated in a series of non-violent demonstrations known as the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, during the first week of May 1963.”
David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez, and the other survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, are only beginning to speak, to shape the gun debate, and we, the “adults in the room,” should follow their lead.
Video includes direct, graphic language and footage:
Video from CNN with Dan Rather: