David Hogg has been one of the most vocal activists out there after the Parkland shooting. He is the victim of a tragedy and deserves our sympathy for that. But living through a tragedy doesn’t make a person a constitutional scholar. There are almost half a dozen reasons why he and his media enablers are abusing that sympathy to the point that he is justifiably becoming one of the most annoying people in America, the most recent being his bullying of Fox News conservative analyst Laura Ingraham.
On top of introducing a slew of facile policy suggestions, Hogg has vomited inchoate anger at anybody and everybody who attempts to go against them. Hogg and others have attacked the NRA as a terrorist organization, saying that the Senators that take their money, such as Marco Rubio, killed the Parkland students. In profanity laced tirades, he argued that the NRA be regarded as a haven for “child murderers”; that Americans boycott Amazon, FedEx, and the state of Florida; and that Governor Rick Scott take responsibility for the failures of another elected official. He has also launched personal attacks against President Trump and several other government entities.
The students who are protesting with Hogg often have little knowledge about actual policy. For example, the assault weapons ban can be easily avoided by removing the plastic hand grip and selling it separately. Not to mention that many current laws aren’t even enforced, nor would they do much to stop lunatics and criminals who don’t follow laws to begin with.
After spewing this nonsense for weeks, Hogg complained last week that four of his select colleges didn’t accept him. Conservative commenter Laura Ingraham pointed out that failure, while calling him a whiner, and perhaps included a little bit of merriment at his misfortune. In a swift series of events Hogg fired back and called for advertisers to drop her show, which many did. Ingraham apologized, announced a vacation, and Hogg went on CNN to gloat.
David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018
This is where the bullying rhetoric comes in. Ingraham’s Twitter post wasn’t polite, but it was hardly a big deal, especially when Hogg inserted himself into the debate and made himself a public figure. Being criticized is never easy or nice, but his past tragedy doesn’t give him a free pass to saunter and insult with impunity throughout the public sphere. A little push-back is to be expected, especially when he has been so vicious in attacking his opponents.
He is a primadonna with a large social media following, who has CNN on speed dial, and has obtained the coveted status of a victim who hates conservative positions. As such, he inspired an online mob that scared advertisers away and damaged Ingraham’s career in a matter of days. After all of this anger and pressure from his side against his opponent, he goes on CNN to call her a bully.
That is the problem I have with bullying rhetoric. It is such a strong stigmatizing term that it becomes one more weapon in the arsenal of bullies to further intimidate and destroy their targets. At this point, the one tweet that called him a whiner seems far less egregious than inciting a mob and torpedoing an opponent’s career. It is dangerous for a democracy and the prospects of meaningful dialog between sides to have figures who are so popular, and yet so untouchable and unstable that they punish their political enemies while at the same time saying their target is a bully.
With all due respect to his recent tragedy, Hogg is little more than an annoying, loud mouth bully from the same generation that made the news for eating Tide pods the week before the Florida shooting. He seems to enjoy being angry and denounces those he hates, while resorting to fascist methods to do so. I strongly suggest he take a few deep breaths, stop talking from a place of hatred, and use calm and reasoned discussion to sway opinions and policy makers to his side.
The calm, reasoned, and educated citizens of America are getting sick of his shtick.
