“Senator Kirk has consistently called Rep. Duckworth a war hero and honors her family’s service to this country,” Kirk spokesperson Eleni Demertzis said. “But that’s not what this debate was about.”
Correct, Eleni! Because Sen. Kirk just made the debate entirely about his racist comment.
I didn’t realize Kirk was such an asshole. He has illuminated me.
Senator (soon to be former Senator) Kirk:
First, don’t make jokes about a military family whose service goes back to the Revolutionary War.
Second, don’t make jokes about a vet who lost both legs in a war you lie about being in.
Third, if you make a joke be sure it’s actually a joke and that it’s funny.
Fourth, go fuck yourself.
I think a lot of them do know and just dont care. Donald Trump went to a Military High School and claims it as a military credential in his current pursuit of on the job training in the country’s most important public office. Many military active and retired support him because they hate the Liberals and any politician who cares about Civil Rights, in their world view. They all voted for GWB over Gore and Kerry. They all voted for tickets containing well documented chicken hawks Dan Quayle and Dick Cheney. Lindsay Graham who is deemed an expert on national defense because South Carolina’s National Guard made him a Colonel. I will say this for Al Gore and John Kerry, they were both sons of influential families who could have pulled strings to preserve their Ivy League futures. They both served in combat. And still the right wingers that overpopulate our military voted for draft evader Chickenhawks.
Mark Kirk has as much chance of being re-elected to the US Senate as Captain James T. Kirk would.
For a guy who has gone out of his way to distance himself from Trump, that was a very Trumpian response and damage control.
Are all Republican congress-critters this dimwitted and repugnant or does it just seem that way?!
Oh, I have no doubt he was an ass before the stroke. I merely think that his stroke has messed with his ability to think about the consequences of what he’s saying. Which is not a good quality in a US Senator.
Tangential, but let me add that while the the criteria for what qualifies one for a particular combat award remain constant, how those criteria get applied will change from war to war, as the standard for what constitutes doing one’s duty and exceeding it change.
This is in no way intended to denigrate the recipients of a combat award in any war or to suggest that there’s some kind of cynical inflation that occurs. It’s just that, as a matter of the instant culture created among the people fighting it, the weaponry and technology available, the tactics dictated by The Book and by the weapons and tech and, frankly, the number of combat situations that occur given the numbers of combatants involved.
Just to give a gross example, during the Civil War, when there was no DSM, DSC, Silver Star, or Bronze Star, and the Medal of Honor was not yet subject to the extremely stringent criteria of today, men were expected to form line, right out in the open, and endure murderously accurate aimed fire from weaponry that had rendered tactics designed for smooth bore muskets a recipe for mass slaughter and, increasingly, that fire tended to come from people on the other side who had dug in or taken cover. No one got a medal for that inconceivable heroism. Your reward was not being shot for cowardice.
Half a century later, over the top and into the machine guns was the minimum required of a soldier. By the time we got to the trenches, a few lessons–but most of them wrong–had been learned about the folly of charging trenches across open ground, but the minimum requirements of duty in World War I were almost more than any human could be expected to bear, as the mass mutinies that began breaking out among all the original combatants starting in 1916 will attest. No one got a medal for going over the top and charging into the machine guns with the rest of the unit. It took a lot more to get a combat award.
And my point here is that, without any disrespect intended or directed to the veterans of later wars, what you had to do to get a Silver Star–the third highest combat decoration–in World War II, particularly in the Pacific Theater, is beyond our imagination today. I realized all of this, and then had it explained to me by a West Point grad, when I came across a copy of my Dad’s Bronze Star citation during the Iraq War. I read it and said, “holy crap, you only got a Bronze Star for doing something that recklessly insane in in World War II?”
I don’t know what Tammy’s father did to earn that Silver Star. But I know whatever it was would be so far beyond anything Mark Kirk could ever have imagined doing in his largely imaginary military career it would probably be traumatic just to read the citation for it.
It’s understandable. Many of Kirk’s generation grew up with the usual baggage of Asian-American stereotypes, and someone like Duckworth not bussing tables or behind a laundry counter still gives them the willies. Whereas most people in their 40’s and under grew up going to school with mixed race classmates–they’re about as unusual as redheads.
The GOP: The COZI TV Party.
And this is supposed to be the principled moderate republican?
See if I understand this. Duckworth’s mother is from Thailand, but her father is a former marine whose ancestors served in the Revolution. Cool, Kirk make fun of Tammy.
It turns out implicit bias studies show no differences in racial bias by age.
As for Kirk, remember his “bro with no ho” statement? It’s not just Asian-Americans he’s disrespected.
There are only two things conservatives really care about.
OK. I thought you were excusing his remark because his stroke harmed his impulse control. My thought was that problem did not explain why he did not apologize after having had time to reflect. He has a long history of being an unrepentant liar.
Kirk graduated with honors from the School of Advanced Diplomacy of Trump University.
This is a pattern with Mark Kirk that predates his health problems. His clever quips just happen to exhibit ugly racial bias with a high degree of frequency. Such as, having a Thai mother obliterates any trace of any other heritage such that it’s impossible to believe that Duckworth could be descended from people who fought in the Revolutionary War. And I mean, that’s the nice interpretation. The even uglier interpretation is that Kirk was using his “wit” to point out to his constituents that Duckworth isn’t “really” white.
Is there any interpretation of the Mark Kirk quote in which he’s not being racist?
Yes. That would be the interpretation that he was simply being an asshole.
3 - Who to envy.
They don’t give a damn about anyone else, including those who share their own stature, oddly enough.
Is Kirk that stupid or is his judgment impaired?
Everyone keeps referring to Tammy Duckworth’s father as a former Marine, but a little research shows that he was a Captain in the US Army.
I was curious because the fourth medal in his picture appears to be an Army Commendation Medal, something that a Marine would be unlikely to be awarded. Nothing against the Marines, but he deserves to be remembered correctly.