Senator Mallory McMorrow’s Vital Message: Indecency Will NOT Be Tolerated
On Tuesday, April 19, 2022, a largely unknown Democratic state senator from Michigan got up on the Senate floor of that great state and gave a passionate, outraged, spine-tingling speech that has now, as of this writing, been viewed almost 12 million times (click HERE to add to that total), making Senator Mallory McMorrow very well known by the end of that day.
Her fiery allocution was in response to a slanderous attack made by Senator Lana Theis, a right wing Republican from that same state, whose fundraising email of the prior day outrageously claimed that Democrats want to “groom and sexualize kindergartners,” specifically targeting “progressive social media trolls like Senator Mallory McMorrow (D-Snowflake) who are outraged that they can’t groom and sexualize kindergartners” or teach that “8-year-olds are responsible for slavery.”
As vile and unscrupulous as these statements are (though petulantly defended by her the next day), Senator Theis is marching in blind, obedient lockstep with her party, echoing what far too many Republicans have set as standard talking points, regardless of how indecent, incendiary, and just plain wrong they are. And beyond my standing ovation of Senator McMorrow’s brave and legacy-making speech, the point I want to make here is about indecency and its growing acceptance in the world of politics.
Politics has always been a dirty business. That’s understood. Politicians of every stripe have descended to such depths of bottom-feeding over time that their names live in infamy, from the very beginning of this Union to Senator Theis’s sleazy letter of this week… and something creepy has surely happened since. But as someone on Twitter rightly stated, Republicans of today, of this post-Trumpian era, are different. While there were fissures and bubbling hints of current amorality even before the bloated indifference and indecency of Trump slithered down that escalator, there is no denying the man brought his agenda of grievance politics and every “ism” one could think of to the fore, and, mixed with a staggering lack of honesty, conscience, or even good sense, he gleefully opened the floodgates to others who revel in the same hate, fear, isms, and, yes… indecency.
One need only watch Ron DeSantis (in his pretend role as King of Florida) as he denigrates and demeans high school kids in masks, attacks the intelligence and expertise of teachers, huffs and puffs to blow the Disney house down, to see another Trump-like narcissist use indecency as a cudgel. It’s everywhere these days. We see it with other red state governors (Greg Abbott and Kristi Noem come to mind), with Republican senators and congress people, with everyday red-hat-wearing people on the street, all of whom approach facts and reality as if they were multiple choice items.
They rush to defend Trump’s “Big Lie,” they attacked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson with such vigor her confirmation became a masterclass in bullying. Some behaved like tantrumming teens during the State of the Union. And, speaking of the Capitol, a new poll says a Majority of Republicans celebrate Capitol riots as “patriotism.” Which is insane… all one need do to determine just how much of that violent melee was patriotism and how much was sheer criminality is watch the New York Times piece, Inside the Capitol Riot: An Exclusive Video Investigation.
But that takes critical thinking, social and moral conscience; a willingness to face uncomfortable truths to assess people and events truthfully. Republicans don’t do that anymore. They don’t do truthful. They throw around words like “woke” as if being aware and compassionate is a bad thing. They attack cancel culture while being the biggest purveyors of that method of disagreement. They blithely accuse decent people of being “groomers” and “pedophiles” for simply, and humanely, wanting children to have safe spaces to be themselves, to learn, to grow; for wanting human rights as a foundation for all people, not just those who mirror the white, Christian, heterosexual model of the Republican Party.
And though we already knew it, there was something about Senator McMorrow’s speech that shone a brilliant, can’t-look-away light on just how uniquely indecent it is to attack, malign, and denigrate people simply for being decent.
Because, while indecency is bought and sold every single day on the Republican market as something normal, something acceptable, it’s not. Never has been. It’s an evil used to manipulate, disinform, and misguide their own followers. It’s poison bandied as a weapon to destroy their enemies (let’s see how far old Ron gets with Mickey Mouse!). It’s sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors, a toxic stew of words, insults, and ad hominem attacks that require no truth, no logic, no facts, just a willingness to be… indecent.
Which has become a form of political terrorism, a form of extortion. We hear that many Republican politicians hate Trump, hate what he’s done to their party, but they’re too terrified of being “ratioed,” of losing favor, of triggering the virulent cancel culture of the #MAGA crowd to speak up. We watch as Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger get vilified for being “traitors” by the very people who actually are traitors. We see Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski slimed as “groomers and pedophiles” (think Republicans have a fetish??) simply for voting for Judge Jackson. And on April 18th, Senator Lana Theis pulled out that handy Republican insult (the latest one, anyway) to slander Senator Mallory McMorrow as the same.
And with her speech of April 19th, Senator McMorrow changed the conversation.
She made clear that indecency will not be accepted. Will not be allowed or ignored. And with the fervor and righteousness of her speech she went viral, got the attention of national media; she even got under the skin of irascible old James Carville in an interview with The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent:
“She spoke English,” Carville told me. “She wasn’t defensive at all.” He noted that McMorrow personalized the issue, drew a sharp and legible contrast with Republicans, and even added in an argument about “roads and schools.”
“I’d show this clip as an instructional video,” Carville said. Asked if he’d advise other Democrats to talk this way, he said: “I would. I’m going to start talking that way.”
We all need to start talking that way, every politician, parent, teacher, person. Because there’s no time to waste in this urgent battle to hold America’s democracy, and there’s a profound need to get beyond lethargy, past apathy and fear, to energize ourselves and everyone who gives a damn to really grasp the bigger picture, the greatest good, to make sure we do not cede the democracy of this grand American experience to the Party that doesn’t think this country belongs, equally, to all of us.
It’s the only decent thing to do.
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