April 9, 2013 by David K. Sutton
Melissa Harris-Perry Responds To ‘Hateful’ And ‘Vitriolic’ Conservatives
Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and other conservatives just couldn’t believe their ears when they heard Melissa Harris-Perry say, “kids belong to whole communities,” in a recent MSNBC “Lean Forward” advertisement. The fake outrage by these prominent conservatives caused the predictable: their minions sent Harris-Perry countless “hateful, personal attacks” to her inbox.
Now Harris-Perry has responded by reiterating and expanding her original message with, “Why caring for children is not just a parent’s job.”
What I thought was an uncontroversial comment on my desire for Americans to see children as everyone’s responsibility has created a bit of a tempest in the right’s teapot. Allow me to double down.
One thing is for sure: I have no intention of apologizing for saying that our children, all of our children, are part of more than our households, they are part of our communities and deserve to have the care, attention, resources, respect and opportunities of those communities.
Conservatives have a way of turning uncontroversial comments into the worst thing said by any human being — EVER! It’s not enough to disagree, they must vehemently denounce and condemn, unleashing a torrent of vitriolic nonsense.
Harris-Perry lists all the ways she learned about “collective responsibility,” including her mother, her father, her third-grade teacher, and her elderly neighbors who dutifully pay their property taxes without complaint even though they have no children in school today. She even mentions former President George W. Bush, and the idea that no child be left behind.
And I have learned it from other, more surprising sources as well. I find very little common ground with former President George W. Bush, but I certainly agree that no child should be left behind. And while I disagree with the policies he implemented under that banner, I wholeheartedly support his belief that we have a collective national interest in all children doing well.
On their path of destruction; on their mission to destroy liberals; these conservatives have decoupled from reality and lost sight of what’s important.
