In recent days, we've seen a disturbing increase in the volume of attacks on the students who spoke at the March For Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. The hate-the-victim narrative goes something like this: These kids are tools of the left-wing media and others with a left-wing agenda. They are professional actors enjoying their 15 minutes of fame. My favorite, straight from the National Review, is that David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting, is a "useful idiot."
These talking points drafted by the NRA and its friends are ill-informed, cynical and heartless. And guess who's repeating them? State Rep. Steve Smyk.
In a recent email exchange I had with Smyk, he wrote: "I hope you enjoyed your trip to DC with friends. They are certainly not wrong and are encouraged to organize and share their concerns, but you may have been one to have fallen for the rhetoric that events like this often find convenient to focus on a villain in an effort to bring people closer for future political issues. They may have issue with other policy, but they've led you astray if you believe this is one of them."
This callous statement is offensive for so many reasons, not least of which is its assault on the English language.
For the record, we did not "enjoy" our trip to D.C. How do you "enjoy" watching someone who was wounded in a school massacre become so overwrought in the retelling of her tragedy that she vomits, as she noted, in front of an international television audience?
Not my kind of entertainment.
Equally offensive is his condescending suggestion that naiveté is the reason why anyone would fall for the "rhetoric" of these manipulative schoolchildren with an agenda. Smyk is a stranger to me. But based on his sarcastic approach to constituent service, I am not impressed. It tells me this is an individual who totally lacks the qualities we expect from our government representatives: empathy, compassion, dignity, honesty and courage.
May I suggest this to Smyk. State your case but do so in a way that suggests you understand and empathize with school kids who will bear the scars of this trauma for the rest of their lives. Is that asking too much?
Gerry Cohen
Lewes
chair, Gun Regulation Committee, Progressive Democrats of Sussex County
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