FFS.
President Obama had a perfectly understandable human response regarding the Sandy Hook massacre victims—anger-and-grief-induced tears—while announcing his modest gun-related executive orders Tuesday. Next thing you know, a bunch of wacko politicians cranked up their wacko-ness a few more notches. You’ve no doubt heard the general take so far: The president faked those tears or, if they weren’t fake, he should have cried about something else, like ISIS beheadings.
The message seems to be: You’ll never catch us getting all emo about a bunch of murdered 1st graders.
My colleague Laura Clawson introduced us early Thursday to U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan displaying his own sickening mewlings about the president’s tears.
The Republican in my headline—Colorado state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg—represents Senate District 1. That’s the flat, agriculturally rich northeast section of the state that some wags have long called the Kansas part of Colorado.
Five of the 11 counties Sonnenberg serves voted to secede in November 2013 and form the state of Northern Colorado. The state those counties have been part of since 1876 has become just too liberal for them. It would surprise nobody if the majority of denizens there also think it would be a good idea to secede from the United States.
That being so, Sonnenberg’s rancid tweet won’t likely raise many hackles among his constituents.
As a member of the ColoradoPols blog wrote about Sonnenberg Thursday night:
[A] sitting Republican lawmaker responding so crassly to the President’s sympathy for gun violence victims, which we are inclined to believe is genuinely expressed, quite possibly sounds a new bottom in an already acrimonious debate.
We apologize on behalf of any and all decent people he represents.
It would be encouraging if “any and all decent” constituents of this pathetic excuse for a senator looked him in the eye the next time he shows up on their turf and asked him if he really meant to make a fucking joke out of lubricating an assault rifle with tears induced by pondering the slaughter of 6- and 7-year-olds.
As for those who believe the president manufactured tears to manipulate his audience, perhaps a few of them could be rehabilitated if they read what Joshua Dubois wrote in The President’s Devotional two years ago about Obama’s visit to Sandy Hook just two days after the slayings there left that community raw.
I went downstairs to greet President Obama when he arrived, and I provided an overview of the situation. “Two families per classroom ... The first is ... and their child was ... The second is ... and their child was ... We’ll tell you the rest as you go.”
The president took a deep breath and steeled himself, and went into the first classroom. And what happened next I’ll never forget.
Person after person received an engulfing hug from our commander in chief. He’d say, “Tell me about your son. ... Tell me about your daughter,” and then hold pictures of the lost beloved as their parents described favorite foods, television shows, and the sound of their laughter. For the younger siblings of those who had passed away—many of them two, three, or four years old, too young to understand it all—the president would grab them and toss them, laughing, up into the air, and then hand them a box of White House M&M’s, which were always kept close at hand. In each room, I saw his eyes water, but he did not break.
And then the entire scene would repeat—for hours. Over and over and over again, through well over a hundred relatives of the fallen, each one equally broken, wrecked by the loss. After each classroom, we would go back into those fluorescent hallways and walk through the names of the coming families, and then the president would dive back in, like a soldier returning to a tour of duty in a worthy but wearing war. We spent what felt like a lifetime in those classrooms, and every single person received the same tender treatment. The same hugs. The same looks, directly in their eyes. The same sincere offer of support and prayer.
The staff did the preparation work, but the comfort and healing were all on President Obama. I remember worrying about the toll it was taking on him. And of course, even a president’s comfort was woefully inadequate for these families in the face of this particularly unspeakable loss. But it became some small measure of love, on a weekend when evil reigned.
Whatever one thinks of the president’s policies, it takes a ferociousness of conscience to believe even for one second that he made up those tears.
What should have us all weeping is the fact our beleaguered nation is populated with so many elected officials like Paul Ryan and Jerry Sonnenberg with hearts hardened and twisted by hateful ideology.
•••
UPDATE
Hat-tip to Colorado Pols for this statement from Progress Now Colorado:
“The right wing’s all-consuming hatred for President Obama is well known, but Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg has taken disrespect for the President too far this time,” said ProgressNow Colorado executive director Amy Runyon-Harms. “During President Obama’s term in office, our nation has been rocked by horrific mass shootings including the Aurora theater massacre. President Obama has personally met the survivors and victim’s families of Aurora, Newtown, Roseburg, San Bernardino, and other senseless acts of gun violence. I too have met with some of them. The stories of their pain and suffering will bring any decent person to tears.”
“President Obama’s tears for the victims of gun violence in America, including right here in Colorado, are very real, and I’m proud to support a president unafraid of compassion,” said Runyon-Harms. “Thanks to Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg, the right wing’s boundless contempt for the President is now an insult to the victims he wept for.”
“Sen. Sonnenberg is a disgrace to the Colorado Senate, and to the victims and survivors of mass shootings that have occurred in our state,” said Runyon-Harms. “We want President Obama and all victims of gun violence to know that Jerry Sonnenberg does not speak for Colorado.”