Maybe...
Anyway, this is the way things should turn out.
A Minnesota Republican State Rep from the suburbs had ventured into an alien district -- on the other side of the tracks -- on a sort of listening tour. Mostly he heard things like this, from a little girl: "I’m tired of seeing my friends get shot."
The Rep. was handing out wooden nickels as he passed among the walking wounded, and at some point he said something like, "Here, use these to plug up your bullet holes."
... But, as my colleague from The Minnesota Independent Paul Schmelzer said when he reported the piece, the story seems to have had a happy ending.
While many in the crowd were understandably outraged, the Rep. was immediately and sincerely contrite, and some in the crowd took the long view.
PEACE Foundation President Sondra Samuels, who was there to oppose gun violence, saw the gaff as an opportunity to sensitize a legislator to the real life needs of local residents. "We have to assume that caring, decent people who are making the laws don’t know" first-hand what problems northsiders face, Samuels said. "Just to be fair, if you’re not around it, if it’s not your world, how would you know?"
I thought that was pretty cool.