Yesterday, Today and McMorrow
It’s likely that many here have seen excerpts of the powerful speech by State Senator Mallory McMorrow on the Michigan Senate floor on Tuesday. As she wrote later in a tweet, another state senator Lana Theis (R-22) had sent out a fundraising letter and accused McMorrow by name “of grooming and sexualizing children in an attempt to marginalize me for standing up against her marginalizing the LGBTQ community...in a fundraising email, for herself. Hate wins when people like me stand by and let it happen. I won't.”
Here's the full, impactful speech.
Sen. McMorrow’s speech has receive significant praise – not just for its words, but also for showing the path for how Democrats in general should respond to what is because the standard GOP attack against anyone who opposes them, charging being soft on pedophila or kiddie porn. We’ve begun to see this venal tactic increasing in the Republican Party, most notably during the Senate Supreme Court confirmation hearing of Judge Ketanji Jackson Brown, and only days ago when Ted Cruz (R-TX) suggested that Disney would be putting kiddie porn cartoons on the Disney Channel, including Mickey Mouse “going at it” with Goofy.
But for all the deserved praise for Sen. McMorrow, I have a problem with it. Not for what she said, to be very clear, but more for how the speech was covered, for all its praise, and what was ignored.
In her speech, Ms. McMorrow kept relentlessly referencing herself for being “a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom,” driving home the effective point of how she represents what is basically perceived as the foundation of what Republicans like consider the quintessential All American woman. That if Republicans attack her, they’ll attack anyone, attack whatever one thinks of as good in America. And she kept pounding the connection of Republicans attacking moms, drawing a connection between herself and all moms.
It was moving and effective. Very personal in her visceral anger, but also universal. But what I wanted to hear said in analysis of the speech was that it was lucky that this time “a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom” is who got smeared because she was able to defend herself for being “a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom.” But what if the attack hadn’t been against her, or if next time the person that Republicans tried to defame as a “groomer” for pedophilia was not “a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom”? What if the next time, the person who Republicans reprehensibly smear without any cause wasn’t white or Christian or a mom? Or, for the sake of argument a gay, black, Muslim, single, urban male who perhaps has an arrest record for selling drugs?
One shouldn’t have to be the All American Mom to get our outrage for a scurrilous, smarmy, sickening attack against her. Every such attack, whoever a person is, should evoke the exact same fury. You don’t have to be someone out of a Norman Rockwell painting to engender the same deep sympathy for being the victim of today’s odious and standard Republican Conspiratorial Smear Attack.
The issue isn’t that, “Oh, look – Republicans are now smearing a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom with a totally false and hateful charge of pedophilia.” It’s that oh, look, Republicans are once again trying to underhandedly smear a totally innocent person with a false and unsubstantiated charge of pedophilia – because Republicans have no agenda, nothing to talk about how they want to govern, enabled Trump, enabled an Insurrection to overthrow Democracy, enable an unprovable lie about the election and have become fascist, and so all they can do is repeatedly throw the same excrement at others to undermine opponents because that’s what fascists do.
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow made an impeccable speech responding to the craven Lana Theis – who, as far as I can tell, has not been criticized by any Republican in the Michigan Senate (or any elected Republican in Michigan…or anywhere – excoriating her on the Michigan Senate floor. And by association, excoriating every silent Republican there. But her speech shouldn’t be seen as just the Gold Standard, but starting point.
One thing I’d also be intrigued to hear is that the next time a Republican tries to smear a Democrat or anyone they don’t like with a false charge of pedophilia is for that person to challenge them. To say that if you believe this, if you are so certain that I am all that you claim and can prove it, then you should sue me for being a danger to society, take me to court, and prove it, get me on the stand under oath and prove it. Making your charge in court on the stand under oath, as well. Where you will be forced to defend yourself and show the evidence of your charge. And you will not be able to find one feather of evidence against me, none, if you dug to the center of the earth. But when I am found not guilty – as I will be found not guilty, because you are just pulling out made-up smears from your various orifices to hurt me and to raise money for yourself – know that I will sue you for defamation and take everything you own and make you destitute. But know, too, that if you don’t sue me, then you are telling your constituents and telling the world that you have zero evidence to support any of the lies you are wiping the bottom of your shoes with. And telling them that you are just a worthless piece of cowardly, craven dross, trying to pander to and scam them all.
By the way, I know that a person making such a speech, challenging to be sued, would not ever get sued, and for all I know the court system doesn’t even work that way. But that doesn’t matter, and it’s not the point. The point is to fight back as bluntly and aggressively as possible, to make as clear as you can in a way that everyone can understand without missing even a hiccup that you are not defending yourself, because you have nothing to defend, but are the one on the attack against all that is scurrilous, because you are on the side of right -- which ultimately is on the side of everyone, whatever their political belief, at least as long as they care about what is right, decent and honorable. And while you’re at it, putting the fear of God against anyone trying to make such an attack against you, or anything.
In lieu of that, Mallory McMorrow’s speech was magnificent and should be used as the template and starting point by Democrats, whoever they are – whether a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom…or anyone.
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