Children, what doesn’t make sense in this excerpt from the New York Times?
Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican whip, told reporters that he had also been the subject of threats and that a shot was fired through a window of his campaign office in Richmond this week.
But he said he chose not to publicize the incident for fear of inciting more, and he said that Democrats were wrongly amplifying reports of vandalism and death threats made against lawmakers.
Now I wasn’t born in America, so maybe my English is a little rusty. But let’s break this down for a second. To publicize is to make public. One might make that public by informing others. In fact, over the course of history, the dissemination of information to the public has fallen on the shoulders of a profession of report-makers, reporters as we call them. When one wishes to make a piece of information public, to publicize it, that is, he often does so by telling reporters.
Therefore, when Eric Cantor told reporters that he was choosing not to publicize an incident that he then described, he may have actually created a small tear in the space-time continuum, not dissimilar to the one that the Large Hadron Collider could generate as it recreates the very beginnings of our universe.
As if it were not enough that Congress Cantor’s cognitive dissonance–that is a fancy way of saying “bald-faced hypocrisy”–is destabilizing the galaxy, let’s take a look at what else he had to say.
“It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain,” said Mr. Cantor, who delivered a stern-faced statement on the issue but did not take questions from reporters. “To use such threats as political weapons is reprehensible. By ratcheting up the rhetoric, some will only inflame these situations to dangerous levels. Enough is enough. It has to stop.”
Why would it be that a politician would attack his opponent? Perchance, to gain…politically? Might it be that the shot fired in Mr. Cantor’s office was, in fact, an incident. Could it be that citing it when attacking Democrats in the media was a vehicle for…wait for it now folks…political gain?! J’accuse!
Let me tell you what is reprehensible. Hurling racial epithets at civil rights heroes John Lewis and James Clyburn is reprehensible. “Ratcheting up the rhetoric” by calling Democratic attempts at healthcare reform socialist, Nazi, and totalitarian–that is reprehensible. Lying about this bill and everything else Democrats do in a desperate attempt to keep the government from doing anything is reprehensible. Doing all this as part of a strategy that courts people’s worst instincts and deepest fears on false premises–that, my friends, is reprehensible.
As for Eric Cantor’s unflappable unfamiliarity with irony. Well, that’s just laughable.
Oh, and the gunshot? It turns out it was from a random firing of the gun, not intended for the Congressman’s office at all. It’s still a big deal, people firing guns without knowing what they’re doing. I wonder if there is a way we could prevent that. You know, keep guns out of the hands of people who are not responsible enough to use them properly. Some sort of “control” of the use of guns to prevent unfortunate damages to health and property. Huh. I guess nothing really comes to mind.
