Earlier this month on Saturday Night Live, comedian Pete Davidson mocked the appearance of wounded Navy SEAL and Texas Republican congressional candidate Dan Crenshaw with a flippant remark about Crenshaw’s eye patch. Crenshaw lost his right eye in an IED explosion in Afghanistan.
Davidson’s comment produced a national controversy that led to an appearance by Crenshaw on the following week’s SNL, where Davidson apologized and Crenshaw poked fun at Davidson’s appearance. Both Crenshaw and Davidson were praised for resolving a controversy while agreeing that making fun of a veteran’s war wounds are off limits.
There was, however, considerably less attention to a thoughtful commentary in the Washington Post by Crenshaw after the controversy, where the veteran addressed the issue of our current culture of outrage.
“It seems that every not-so-carefully-worded public misstep must be punished to the fullest extent, replete with soapbox lectures and demands for apologies,” he said. “Anyone who doesn’t show the expected level of outrage will be labeled a coward or an apologist for bad behavior. I get the feeling that regular, hard-working, generally unoffended Americans sigh with exhaustion—daily.”
He’s right. Because of the 24/7 news cycle and the second-by-second deluge via social media, we are constantly bombarded with varying degrees of insensitive comments, slights, outrageous behavior, insults and simple missteps. It is exhausting, and it contributes to a culture that’s constantly ready to pounce on the next unfortunate choice of words.
Notably, Crenshaw said he did believe that Davidson’s comment was over the line, but he was not personally offended, nor was he outraged. “I have been literally shot at before, and I wasn’t outraged,” he said. “Why start now?”
That’s a great point!
Crenshaw is not naïve. Of course the left and the right have different philosophies and approaches to governance, he wrote, but it’s the ideas that should be fair game, not the individual.
“If you think my idea is awful, you should say as much,” he said. “But there is a difference between attacking an idea and attacking the person behind the idea.” Personal attacks are, “Generally a good indication that the attacker doesn’t have a solid argument and needs a way to end the debate before it has even begun.”
I would like to think that Crenshaw’s idea will catch on. It’s neither new nor novel, but it is particularly meaningful because it comes from someone who, in today’s environment, had every opportunity to play the aggrieved victim role.
Only a soldier who has been seriously wounded could provide proper perspective to the SNL insult. The rest of us who joined in the fray simply don’t have the same standing as Crenshaw.
If we want to show our support of veterans, especially those who have sacrificed so much, we don’t have to express outrage on Crenshaw’s behalf. What we should do is follow his wise lead on how to return civility to our public discourse.