Baltimore kids shamed city in attacks on Melania
I was born in Baltimore, exactly 58 years ago this Wednesday. While most of those 58 years have been spent in the Philadelphia area, and while I say “yo” more often than I say “hon,” and while I root for the Eagles and not the Ravens (although I have an abiding love for the Johnny Unitas Colts) my biography will always read as “she was born in Baltimore.” For that reason, I have a deep and abiding love for the place of my birth.
I do not love what happened there last week, however, when First Lady Melania Trump went to a school to discuss the opioid crisis. She was booed. By middle schoolers. By kids who are not yet able to vote, but whose parents most likely did not vote for the First Lady’s husband.
It was a disgrace, and on behalf of my birth city, I apologize to Mrs. Trump. She deserved better from them, and from the adults who have been cheering the disrespectful little brats.
Those of you who didn’t like my column about the mistreatment conservative women regularly receive from “progressives” made sure to let me know that I was missing a crucial point, namely, that conservative women do not deserve respect. One reader named Michelle wrote the following:
“The point you seem to be avoiding in this is that while liberals will staunchly support their sisters, conservatives do not. You have elected a leader whose platform is “grab ‘em by the p—— .” The fact that conservative women can support this appalling behavior, demonstrates that conservative women do not respect or support themselves or each other. When that changes, I believe you would be justified in expecting the respect from others. Right now, it’s not deserved.”
When I responded to Michelle that liberal women did not support Juanita Brodderick, who had made credible claims of rape against Bill Clinton; or Paula Jones, who made credible claims of sexual harassment against him; or Kathleen Willey, who also made credible claims of sexual harassment; not to mention Monica Lewinsky, who was the original #Metoo lady, she called me an idiot and said this all happened “20 years ago.” When I mentioned the fact that no conservative man had let a woman drown in dark water because he was drunk and immoral, she said that happened “over 50 years ago.”
Funny, but I didn’t know respect and decency had a statute of limitations.
The reaction to that last column from men and women did not actually surprise me, because people usually have a blind spot when it comes to their own tribe’s misconduct, and that’s OK because conservatives do it, too. The difference is that conservative children never heckled Michelle Obama at school events, and you can try and Google it and you will not find anything approaching the attacks that Melania has received.
I think that this is because progressives have now decided that this is war, and it’s perfectly OK to turn their children into child soldiers. As an immigration attorney, I have had some experience with children who have been weaponized by adults, who have been turned into fighting machines with a complete disregard for their welfare. I once met a man who had been a child soldier in Liberia, and his story was devastating. The psychological scars will remain with him forever.
Of course we don’t approach that same level of malice and hostility in the United States, mostly because we don’t put weapons in the hands of our children and give them marching orders to kill.
But we do something that is, in its own way, quite toxic. We expose our children to the unsavory idea that the president of the United States and his family are evil people who hate them, and hate this country.
How else to explain the boos directed toward Melania Trump? Kids in Baltimore have to deal with poverty, crime and the lawlessness of their neighbors, and I very much doubt that the lovely first lady is much on their minds. It is likely that the parents of these kids, egged on by the progressive prognosticators and #Resistance workers taught their little ones to look upon Mrs. Trump as Madame Mao, the female consort of a brutal dictator. They probably heard momma and poppa say that this lady’s husband described their city as “ratfilled,” and made other uncomplimentary comments about them.
And in doing so, they gave those children license to hate a woman who came, with great dignity, to speak to them about kindness and empathy. They should have treated her with the respect her office commanded. They should have pretended she was Mama Michelle with her garden fresh recipes and her dance moves honed on ICarly and her cool social media presence with the useless shots of her holding signs saying things like “#Bringthemhome,” referencing the girls kidnapped in Nigeria.
But they did not, quite likely because their parents taught them grievance, anger and hostility.
Charm City lost a good bit of its charm this week. Shame on my hometown.