The Wrongologist

The Daily Escape:

Curtis Island Lighthouse, Camden, ME – May 2022 photo by Daniel F. Dishner

Wrongo and Ms. Right are in Pennsylvania for the weekend. A highlight of this trip will be a visit to Longwood Gardens, after which we’ll return home and berate our gardens for their unworthiness. But since we’re in PA, let’s spend a few minutes on their Republican Senatorial primary.

The two leading Republican candidates are using the current debate on gun control as campaign fodder. Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick can be seen in this campaign video shooting a hunting rifle he says he used as a teenager. Next, he picks up a rifle he says he used at the US Military Academy and fires. Then he shoots a semiautomatic assault rifle similar to one he says he used in Iraq.

His competition in the Senate primary, television personality and surgeon Mehmet Oz, has a gun video too. He loads a shotgun and shoots. Then he shoots a semi-automatic pistol. He closes with an AR-15 style rifle. During the clip, he says:

“When people say I don’t support guns? They’re dead wrong,”

These guys have spent millions and months trying to showcase their conservative bona fides to PA’s GOP base voters while attempting to head off skepticism about their elite backgrounds on Wall Street and in Media, respectively. Part of their strategies involved commercials showing them shooting guns. Basically, they are saying to PA voters:

“Hey everyone, I can shoot a gun! Vote for me because I will do nothing to help you in Washington!”

Since we are already reeling from the ongoing and deadly mass shootings, should Republicans glorify the use and ownership of firearms that are weapons of war?

Let’s spend a minute on the current gun culture in America. Despite what Republican politicians say, guns are not a passive defensive tool like a bullet proof vest. They won’t stop a bullet coming at you. Guns are an active, offensive weapon. This active, offensive role of the “virtuous person with a gun” appeals to Republican men who say real men want to actively respond to threats to their property and their families.

The Republicans are pushing to get more guns in schools following the Uvalde shooting. This is the only kind of “do something” action that the Republicans can get behind. It follows the premise that people with guns in school will be able to put down active shooters before they kill kids.

This flies in the face of the facts. That didn’t happen in Uvalde, or in Parkland Memorial in Florida, or in many other places. In the majority of school shootings, the incident ends with unarmed people tackling the shooter. But Republicans will keep saying that armed guards are “deterrents,” even though this isn’t supported by facts. Candidates in both parties have used guns as a campaign prop, but lately, the images have become intentionally provocative in Republican advertising. Their messages convey a cultural and political solidarity more powerfully than most anything else, according to Republican strategists.

Wrongo knows it’s Saturday, our time to chill, but today, it’s time to wake up America! These ads create a dangerous impression that assault-style firearms are casual tools rather than dangerous weapons. They shouldn’t be used to grandstand at Starbucks on the  weekend.

To help you wake up, spend a few minutes celebrating the life of Ronnie Hawkins, a rockabilly singer who helped create and launch The Band. He died this week. From Robbie Robertson:

“Ronnie Hawkins brought me down from Canada to the Mississippi delta when I was 16. He recorded two songs I’d written and thought I might be talented….Ron prided himself in always having top notch players in his group. Levon Helm was his drummer in the Hawks and I talked Ron into hiring Rick Danko on bass and vocals, Richard Manuel on piano and vocals and Garth Hudson on organ and sax. Along with Levon and me this became the magic combination.

Ronnie was the godfather. The one who made this all happen. After the Hawks left Ron and went out on our own, we joined up with Bob Dylan. Next the Hawks became “The Band” and the rest is history….All starting out with Ronnie Hawkins.”

There are tons of Ronnie Hawkins videos out there. Here’s one from the 1978 epic “The Last Waltz” a documentary film by Martin Scorsese, capturing The Band’s last performance. Ronnie Hawkins was invited back to participate in covering Bo Diddley’s tune “Who Do You Love?”:

Ronnie Hawkins has the greatest rock & roll quote ever:

“90% of all the money I’ve ever had in my life I spent on women, booze and drugs. The other 10% I just blew.”