Words matter. The choice of words matters.
The Los Angeles Times ran an article today. It’s opened with the following:
Matthew Dowd's firing has opened a floodgate.
The MSNBC political analyst, who lost his job shortly after on-air comments about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk, was the first of many figures to face consequences Thursday for public statements or actions about the shooting.
To be clear, the word “assassinated” was used in the article as a quote from someone offended by Dowd’s stupidity.
Six people were involved in compiling that article. A draft of the article would then pass through editors, at least one and likely two. Thus, seven or eight people failed to use either “murder” or “assassination” to describe Kirk’s brutal political assassination. The omissions were intentional. The thrust of the article is about people facing consequences for being awful in light of Kirk’s murder.
The article also mentions that a journalist named A.G. Gancarski was suspended for an ignorant and ill-timed question. Gancarski sent a text to a Florida Congressman following Kirk’s murder. Gancarski’s text was sent 23 minutes after Kirk was shot. It asked:
“was wondering if Charlie Kirk getting shot affects your position on campus carry? If gun control had been in play could the tragedy have been avoided?”
Beyond the question being poorly framed, the question might have had some relevance, perhaps a week after Kirk’s assassination, if, and only if, the facts of the assassination were impacted by Utah’s “carry” laws. But none of those things were true. It was remarkably ill-timed and, from a factual standpoint, utterly irrelevant.
Leftists seem to have cornered the market on bad timing and nastiness.
Besides the massive amount of bile being poured out online by trolls, talking heads, and nose-ringed nobodies looking for attention, there are high-profile leftists also seeking the limelight. They seek attention and throw any sense of timing out the window. One such person is David Hogg. Hogg is a Harvard graduate – a fact that is both amazing and absurd.
Hoggsims are infamous. His X posts can be unhinged and wild. I often squint at them and wonder if his next statement could top the previous one. Here are a few:
The NRA needs to be designated a terrorist organization for the role their supporters played in staging and insurrectionist coup.
— David Hogg 🟧 (@davidhogg111) January 8, 2021
and
If you need a license to kill deer why don’t you need one to kill humans?
— David Hogg 🟧 (@davidhogg111) April 2, 2022
Hogg has a gift for poor timing and attention-seeking. Three days after Charlie Kirk’s murder, Hogg couldn’t stand by without standing on a kitchen table and demanding that we pay attention to him. In the wildest “what about me” posts, Hogg was demanding that we recognize him as a voice equal to Charlie Kirk and that he, David Hogg, Harvard grad and general loudmouth, might be in the crosshairs.
If I ever get killed by one of these right wingers politicize the fuck out of my death immediately (I’m talking before my blood runs cold) and use it to pass as many gun laws as possible and raise as much money as you can to primary Dems who refuse to support gun laws.
— David Hogg 🟧 (@davidhogg111) September 13, 2025
No, David – you are just a loudmouth. Kirk was a target of your ilk because he made sense and argued effectively. You’re like a 5-year-old screaming for attention. No one is going after you, David. You are not a target. You’re an annoyance. A man-child seeking attention, nothing more. Yes, we are tired of your screeching, but you are no more a threat than you are threatened.
The left has made clear that, as a group, they wanted to shut Charlie Kirk up because he was effective. He was winning hearts and minds. We, as conservatives, find Hogg annoying, but no one wants to shout him down or shut him up.
Sometimes the best way to win an argument is to allow an attention Hogg to speak.
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