Ah, how quickly the “non-judgmental” left passes judgment on stuff they don’t understand. Two examples come to mind.

First, this post from Atrios, which openly mocks Sen. Rick Santorum for the way he handled the prenatal death of one of his children (note, the post has since been amended to include discussion about Karen Santorum possibly having an abortion — a somewhat more pertinent discussion, though still an ad hominem line of attack. The original post only expressed disgust at how the Santorum’s grieved for the lost pregnancy).

Look, there’s lots I don’t like about Santorum. But Jesus. The guy lost a child in-utero. Most of us (fortunately) have no idea how that must feel. Why is the way Santorum and his family dealt with their grief fair game for scorn and ridicule? And how exactly does ridiculing him for it fit with leftist notions of privacy and open-mindedness?

I’m sure Atrios and his commenters will justify mocking a grieving family the same way the way they out gay Republicans. And that is, individual privacy, non-judgmentalism, and the like are reserved for public figures who take positions they happen to agree with. I suppose they’ll say something to the effect of, “Santorum’s politics are so offensive, he deserves to be mocked for the way he grieved over his dead son.” I can’t agree.

The second example came in a recent episode of the HBO series Real Sports. Bernard Goldberg did a piece on NBA player Doug Christie and his wife, who take the notion of “whipped” to new heights. I’m okay with the prodding the Christies get from the media and other NBA players. They seem to enjoy it. And given how they flaunt their devotion to one another, they bring much of the ridicule on themselves. He flashes her the “I love you sign” literally hundreds of times during a baksetball game. On road trips, he sits in the back of the team bus. She follows close behind in a car, and they talk on their cell phones. Yeah, it’s nauseating.

Goldberg’s piece was fairly probing, interesting, pretty balanced, and asked some tough questions of the couple, particularly about her allegedly banning him from giving interviews to female reporters (they said it isn’t true).

But after the package, the show cut to the studio, where host Bryant Gumbel usually asks reporters some follow-up questions. The odd thing is that Gumbel was openly contemptuous of the Christies. He wasn’t amused by them, he seemed geinuinely pissed off that two people could be that devoted to one another. Goldberg was obviously taken aback at Gumbel’s animus and tried to say taht while the Christies are unusual, basically, “to each his own.” But Gumbel persisted, and insisted there must be something pernicious going on, that NBA players just don’t stay devoted to their wives the way Christie does. It was really odd. The idea of a committed NBA marriage really seemed to make Gumbel angry.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 18th, 2005 at 10:50 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.