(And you thought it was just their fashion advice that was bad.)
Back in 2004, Charles Pierce, then with the Boston Globe, won the “Quote of the Year” award during the Media Research Center’s annual Dishonors Awards, for this legendary formulation:
“If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age.”
— Charles Pierce in a January 5, 2003 Boston Globe Magazine article. Kopechne drowned while trapped in Kennedy’s submerged car off Chappaquiddick Island in July 1969, an accident Kennedy did not report for several hours.
Obviously, he’s an easy target for Ann Althouse today, who catches Pierce writing the following in Esquire:
“John Lewis tells you something about voting rights and you say, yes, sir, and you shut the fk up.”
Charles Pierce pithily dictates the sole method of showing respect.
But actually, ironically, that kind of respect entails massive disrespect. You say yes and you shut the fuck up in his presence, and that means the only way people can have a serious back-and-forth debate on the subject is if they exclude John Lewis.
Does it really matter what you do in Lewis’s presence? It’s not like we can trust that he’ll report it accurately afterwards.
And incidentally, why does it invariably come down to “just shut up” when liberals proffer advice?
(Read the rest of Althouse’s post for the punchline, involving another quote on Pierce’s blog.)
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