Former Rep. Gabby Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, with President Obama.
The word "mean" has a lot of meanings, but, in a story headlined
"Gabby Giffords gets mean," Politico is using one that's not in the dictionary. Apparently the Politico-endorsed meaning of "mean" is "tells uncomfortable, hard-to-answer truths."
Some of the toughest spots from Giffords’ newly formed pro-gun-control super PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, hammer Republican Martha McSally, a retired Air Force pilot who is running for the Arizona seat Giffords once held. One features a wrenching testimonial from a woman named Vicki who weeps and stumbles over her words as she recounts how her 19-year-old daughter was hunted down and murdered by an enraged ex-boyfriend.
“He had threatened her before. I knew. I just knew,” Vicki says. A narrator then declares that McSally “opposes making it harder for stalkers to get a gun.”
Apparently the emotion involved in testimony from a mother whose daughter was murdered is over the line—mean—even though there's nothing false in the ad. People die because of America's weak gun laws. McSally opposes tighter gun laws. The fact that the ad is effective doesn't make it "offensive, selfish, or unaccommodating; nasty; malicious" or "small-minded or ignoble"—actual
dictionary definitions of mean.
If Republicans want to simultaneously oppose gun laws that would make it even a little harder for stalkers and abusers to kill women, laws that are supported by a majority of voters, but also be immune from hard-hitting, effective criticism over their position ... well, Gabby Giffords is here to say no, you don't get to have it both ways. Lucky for Republicans, Politico is eager to get their backs by saying "but she's meeeaaan."