Reacting to the Reactions about Charlie Kirk's Assassination

A few quotations from the Dear Departed

Curmie was going to write about the assassination of Charlie Kirk as part of a larger discussion about the rule of law, also discussing things like the attack on that Venezuelan boat, the co-opting of the National Guard to <checks notes> spread mulch and pick up trash, and the absurd SCOTUS ruling allowing ICE and DHS to forgo anything in the same area code as obeying Fourth Amendment protections, enabling those assholes to engage in practices that far exceed mere racial profiling and would be called unconstitutional by anyone except a political hack supporting authoritarianism.

That essay may yet be written, but the response to the killing of Kirk has taken on a life of its own, both among the yammering politicians and the complacent media.  We haven’t seen this level of coverage since the murder of another loathsome rich guy, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson… and most of that was about how Luigi Mangione, the (technically still “alleged”) killer is a rather handsome young man.

Noteworthy in the previous paragraph is the fact that the intervening attacks on Minnesota legislators and their spouses, leaving two people and a family dog dead and two other people seriously injured, received far less coverage: some, but nowhere near as much.  Those murders were, of course, clearly politically motivated, and we knew that early on.  The relative lack of coverage is attributable at least in part to the fact that the victims weren’t obscenely wealthy.  However liberal the media are alleged to be, the fact is they’re all controlled by the uber-rich, and those folks think wealth translates into importance… and that killing a rich dude is far worse than killing a poor one.

Please note, Gentle Reader, that Curmie is in no way endorsing any of these murders.  He is not “celebrating” the death of Kirk, although he does believe the world to be a better place without his racism, misogyny, trans- and homophobia, Christian nationalism, mendacity, and general assholitude.  Well, at least until and unless the right-wing ideologues are successful in their attempt to make Kirk into a “moderate” and therefore even more of a martyr.  He was neither, of course.  His sole attribute was his ability to sell every conceivable variety of hatred as if it were a heavenly elixir.

Curmie and Beloved Spouse are fans of murder mysteries, and we not infrequently watch a film or a TV show in which the victim is a truly horrible person, thereby providing potential motives for a number of suspects.  When this occurs, one of us (usually Curmie) sometimes adopts an exaggerated Texas drawl and proclaims that the deceased “wanted killin.’”  But we’re well aware of the fictiveness of what we’re watching.  Real life is different, and no one, not even Charlie Kirk, deserves to be shot in cold blood.  There may be little in the way of mourning at Chez Curmie, but there is precisely zero celebration.

It now appears that the suspected shooter, Tyler Robinson, did have a political, or at least quasi-political, motive.  He disagreed with Kirk on some issues.  But no one knew that when the invective started to fly.  To be fair, it was a reasonable guess, but it didn’t at the time come close to a certainty.  Moreover, although Robinson is said to have become more political of late, he is not registered with a political party and has not voted recently.  He seems to have grown up around guns, and he comes from a Republican family.  [EDIT: It now appears that Robinson may have thought Kirk was insufficiently right-wing for Robinson’s taste.  Yes, the shooting could have been political, but not in the way it was described by Trump, et al.  Go figure, right?]

Curmie has long decried the media’s prioritization of getting the story first over getting it right.  One example was that attack at a cinema in Aurora, CO; another was the (perhaps staged) attempt in Butler, PA, about which Curmie suggested that the motive may never be known, but “perhaps there’s a latter-day Jodie Foster to impress out there somewhere.”  And, of course, DJT has always been quick to blame someone unlike himself, evidence be damned: witness his screed on New Year’s Day against “criminals coming in” when the New Orleans terrorist actually turned out to be a Texas-born Army vet.

Let’s take as given that Robinson was the shooter and that the reason for the attack was that he objected to Kirk’s politics.  That rationale would have been a reasonable, even probable, surmise before Robinson’s apprehension.  But it was certainly insufficient to claim as fact.  There was the possibility of a “false flag,” of an internal division in the right-wing power structure (Kirk had been accused of insufficient obeisance to Dear Leader, after all), or the gunman had some other motive altogether.  Curmie even saw a post that suggested that since it would take military-style training to be able to shoot that accurately, and since the military is comprised mostly of conservatives… well, you get the point, Gentle Reader.  Yes, that’s a rather strained argument, but until this morning it was at least possibly accurate.

Of course, the vituperation started emanating from the White House long before any real information became known.  Donald Trump, in his usual reckless manner, bypassed any attempt at national unity and blithely accused the “radical left political violence,” and deplored “demonizing those with whom you disagree.”  A more ironic and hypocritical utterance has seldom if ever occurred in all of human history.  Demonizing political opponents is, of course, Trump’s stock in trade, to the extent that when someone else does it, we’re surprised he doesn’t sue them for copyright infringement.

Of course, all this hand-wringing and pearl-clutching casually ignores the attacks on Paul Pelosi, Josh Shapiro, and Melissa Hortman, and the kidnapping plot aimed at Gretchen Whitmer.  But it’s only those on the left we need to worry about, correct?  What utter bullshit!  True, we expect this kind of crap from the usual suspects: Trump, Vance, Miller, Musk, Loomer, Mace, et al.  They are uniformly devoid of actual ideas (or at least good ones) and have nothing but rage and self-righteous hypocrisy to offer.  But it is terrifying that even once reasonable conservatives are buying into this nonsense.  (There’s a reason Curmie abandoned Ethics Alarms, for example.)

Name a nationally-known Democrat—Obama, Biden, Harris, Newsom, Whitmer, Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani, the list goes on and on—and you’ll find a message of sorrow, empathy, and sometimes outrage about the murder of Charlie Kirk.  Of course, some of them may have been pro forma or even insincere, but Curmie’s challenge on his Facebook page remains: name a prominent Republican who offered similar sentiments over the death of Melissa Hortman, who was an actual legislator as opposed to a talking head. 

One more thing crossed Curmie’s mind when he woke up in the middle of the night.  A little over 50 years ago, Curmie was a freshman in college, taking a course called “Political Ideals.”  One of the key differences identified in that course was the tendency of conservatives to think in terms of the individual and liberals to think of groups with something in common (race, gender, economic class, etc.).  It’s an over-simplification, but it isn’t, or at least wasn’t, inaccurate.

But when it comes to these attacks on politicians or quasi-politicians, those characterizations no longer hold.  There is little if any attempt by liberals to blame all conservatives for the deaths of Hortman or the torching of Shapiro’s home, but all of a sudden all liberals are responsible for Kirk’s death.  There are even insane, and yes, Curmie does mean that term literally, rantings from the likes of Congresscritter Clay Higgins, who wants to violate the First Amendment and censor both individuals and corporations because some people think Charlie Kirk wasn’t all that great a guy, after all. 

We’re already seeing a variation on the theme, as the list of people—teachers, state university administrators, restaurant employees, writers, coaches, even firefighters— fired or suspended for what clearly should be protected speech is long and growing.  FIRE, which Curmie criticized only yesterday, is actually all over this one: here’s a list of literally dozens of incidents, already (!).  This is, as FIRE’s headline rightly points out, the embodiment of “cancel culture”: you know, Gentle Reader, that horrible plague the right always complains about… except, of course, when they’re the ones doing it.

But we aren’t talking about the jobs report, or Russia attacking Poland on Trump’s watch, or the Epstein files, so at least there’s that.

There are problems here, and the solutions aren’t easy.  The political right will cheerfully abandon the 1st and 4th Amendments to bolster the 2nd, but the kind of gun control labelled by liberals as “common sense” wouldn’t have saved Charlie Kirk, at least if, as seems likely, Tyler Robinson was indeed the perpetrator.  He had no record of mental illness or criminality, and the weapon was neither a handgun nor a semi-automatic rifle. 

It is sadly ironic that one of Charlie Kirk’s most famous lines was “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”  But even calling attention to that quote is seen by some of the more fragile snowflakes of the right as a firing offense.  Yet another reason Curmie is glad he’s retired.

Note: one particularly unfortunate outcome here is that the Tyler Robinson Foundation, named for a different young man, will probably take a hit because of this because, in the words of a beloved former student, “people are stupid, y’all.”  The TRF is a charity offering support to families dealing with pediatric cancer.  Seems like a great cause, especially if you’re also a fan of the band Imagine Dragons, who have been involved with the foundation since its inception. Maybe send them a few bucks if you’ve got some to spare, Gentle Reader?

Of Assholes, Social Media, Idiot University Administrators [apologies for redundancy], and Victims

Curmie is a little late to the party—but not as late as is his wont—regarding the escapades of one Jimmy Galligan. Curmie first heard the name when a former student—a Social Justice Warrior as only a middle-class het white Christian male can be—applauded Galligan in a Facebook post. So Curmie broke out the Google machine and learned about the case. Turns out that Galligan is … what’s that word, again? An asshole. Yeah, that’s it.

Mimi Groves: because she’s the victim here

OK: here’s the story. Four years ago, then 15-year-old Mimi Groves got her learner’s permit and posted a three-second video to a friend via Snapchat: “I can drive, niggers!,” echoing language she had heard repeatedly in music she liked. Three years go by, and we come to the quite legitimate furor over the killing of George Floyd. Groves posted on Instagram that people should “protest, donate, sign a petition, rally, do something” in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Ironically, it was this gesture of support for BLM that may have catalyzed her being labelled a racist. 

Someone she didn’t know responded to her post with “You have the audacity to post this, after saying the N-word.” Somewhere along the line someone had sent the Instagram post to Galligan, who then—get this—waited to post it publicly until Groves had been accepted onto the cheerleading squad at the University of Tennessee, her “dream school,” so he could “get her where she would understand the severity of that word”: in other words, when he could do the most damage to her reputation, and get the most publicity for himself.

Galligan claims he initially brought the video to the attention of school officials “without gaining any response.” Does Curmie believe this is a complete and accurate description of what happened? Well, his response starts with “n,” and isn’t the word that got Groves into trouble. But even if this claim is true, and even if Galligan had been subjected to racial slurs directed at him by other students (a plausible enough allegation), why lash out so viciously against someone who hadn’t done that?  The only plausible answer is that he could.

Social media having long since displaced quicksand pits and piranha pools as the most dangerous place to hang out, Snapchat, TikTok, and Twitter were soon abuzz, complete with links to UT’s cheer team and admissions pages. 

Groves was immediately dropped from the cheer team and pressured to withdraw from the university. Whereas Curmie believes she is better off not subject to the whim of an athletics department and an admissions office (and, no doubt, an administration) more concerned with kneejerk virtue signaling than with intent, context, or proportion—the very essence of a university education—she understandably does not agree. 

Points to consider: 

Groves was 15 when she said the word, once. She was a kid. No one, and Curmie does mean literally no one, should be judged based on a single, frankly rather minor, lapse of judgment at age 15. Hell, Curmie did some remarkably stupid stuff when he was considerably older than that, and he’s betting you did, too, Gentle Reader. Much as Curmie thinks the term “cancel culture” is over-used, the concept does exist, and this is a prime example. 

The University of Tennessee behaved appallingly, their absurd over-reaction probably a function of trying to divert attention away from real incidents of racist activity by their already-enrolled students. If Groves had applied the epithet to Galligan (or anyone else) in her senior year, or used an equivalent term towards the LGBTQ+ community, or to members of a different religion, then withdrawing her admission might be appropriate. 

But it’s clear that she has grown up considerably in the last four years. If only the same could be said for UT’s cheerleading coach, athletics director, and director of admissions. A competent person in any of those positions would say to the screeching mob: “This young woman made a mistake when she was 15. If you say you didn’t, too, you’re either a saint or a liar, and we’re betting it’s not the former.” Instead, they adopted an especially perverse variant of the heckler’s veto in a gesture of appeasement that will become the new normal for them. 

Groves’s lawyer says, the “University of Tennessee caved in—in a panic, to a lot of hysteria, a lot of social media going on—and they didn't give her a meaningful investigation—which would have revealed that this happened years ago, and would have revealed the context of it.” Yeah, that’s about right. 

None of this, alas, is terribly surprising. Curmie’s politics are to the left of 85% of the US population, 95% of Texans, and 98% of the congressional district that re-elected Loony Louie Gohmert by a landslide. But he’s well aware that the biggest threat to his speaking his mind comes from that sliver to his left… well, them and the hand-wringing invertebrates (yes, Curmie knows that’s not good zoology) who make up the majority of university administrators. 

It’s extremely important to recognize that Groves did not (apparently ever) direct the term at an individual, nor use it as a term of disparagement at all, but rather she repeated an expression she had heard in her music. She is openly supportive of the BLM movement, and seems genuinely contrite at her past actions, not merely, à la a long list of politicians (for example), that she got caught. This is not the right scapegoat to choose. 

But Galligan doesn’t care: he got written up in the New York Times and had his 15 minutes of fame notoriety. Karma will return, however, as no responsible employer is going to trust him not to pull a similar stunt—and Curmie chooses that word carefully—in the future. Well, not unless he takes responsibilities for his actions. 

Moreover, “a few years ago,” Galligan’s own father, who is white, used the “n-word,” which he had heard his black in-laws use repeatedly, “prompting Galligan and his sister to quietly take him aside and explain that it was unacceptable, even when joking around.” A grown man can be “quietly taken aside”; a 15-year-old girl needs to be publicly humiliated years after the fact. And we need to wait until just the right moment, to maximize the damage. Even more problematic: Galligan is proud of the destruction he has wrought. 

Ergo: Jimmy Galligan is an asshole, and he will remain so in Curmie’s books until he expresses genuine remorse for his reckless, cruel, and unwarranted behavior. Curmie was about to say that whereas Mimi Groves is welcome in his classroom at any time, Jimmy Galligan is not. But that isn’t true. The teaching profession is one in which you play the cards you’re dealt, and Jimmy Galligan isn’t an unfamiliar figure. 

Curmie has known literally thousands of post-adolescents over his lifetime; he has been a student or a faculty member at a college or university for 93 of the last 95 semesters, and is about to start on semester 94. A lot of 19-year-olds have been part of that universe, and a lot of them turned out to be a lot better people as adults than they were as post-adolescents. It’s called growing up. Jimmy Galligan, like Mimi Groves, deserves the chance to do that. That doesn’t mean he isn’t an asshole right now.