Earl Ofari Hutchinson
No one was more enraged or outraged than I was at Charlie Kirk’s knock of Dr King as a bad person. His put down of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. His slur of Black women as less than brain worthy. And his digs at gays, Muslims, and of course the perennial whipping boy, the radical left. I and other roundly hit back and hit back hard at his assault. I, and many others, were some of his bitterest political enemies. Yet we quickly and forthrightly condemned his killing.
However, this is not why I say remember Kirk. He did something that had flown far far under the media and public radar scope. He drew lots of attention to the often-glaring double standard in how the killings of those on the left or liberals, or just victims of mindless violence in general, are treated when it comes to much of the media and public officials attention-or lack thereof.
There were the slaying of the Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home in Minnesota, the deaths of a Black man in Mississippi under questionable circumstances, and the shooting of children at a Colorado school. I could cite others. But these three occurred either close to Kirk’s slaying or in the case of the Minnesota Democratic Party couple several months earlier. Close enough.
The non-stop Trump blasts, and equally non-stop media coverage, and much of the public rivet on Kirk’s killing forced some in the media and many critics to pirouette for a moment from Kirk. They revisited the reportage on the Minnesota killing, and the ran stories on the other killings. Some critics did more than remind the public that they begged for attention too. They demanded that Trump, the Gop, and rightist bloggers, writers and pundits, make public utterances about these tragedies too.
The slaying of Hortmon by an avowed right-wing hate monger was a near textbook example of the dual standard in another way. Every Democratic official denounced the two assassination attempts on Trump. Nearly one hundred House Democrats voted for a Kirk Day of Remembrance.
Yet Trump did not return the political favor. He did not issue a full-throated condemnation of her killing nor did few other GOP public officials.
Hortmann’s killing and the other killings did get much media coverage. But it didn’t’ last. There are no days of remembrance called for in memory of their deaths or those of others.
It took the Kirk killing to remind many that violence doesn’t’ just stop at the doorstep of innocents or liberal Democrats. So, there is another reason to remember Kirk not just because of the horror of assassination. But for his drawing some media and public attention to all senseless violence and that certainly includes those who don’t hold Kirk’s view.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book is Trump for Sale (Middle Passage Press) He is the publisher of thehutchinsonreport.net