1. On July 31 of this year, a young staffer stood outside a House Republican meeting room. The staffer's job that day was to stop anyone from entering the meeting through that particular door and to direct them to the correct entrance. This unfortunate staffer encountered Representative Don Young (R-Alaska) who objected to being stopped by twisting the young man's arm and asking him "Do you know who I am?" He then proceeded to enter through the blocked doorway. The whole episode was caught on camera.
Representative Young (right) with Republican staffer on July 31 as recorded by NBC News
He later explained that he is a trained military veteran, (he served during the Korean War--55 years ago). "Don't touch me unexpectedly. Don't do that. He did. He won't again."
2. Earlier this year, he sat next to Representative Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina) as Mr. Meadows proposed re-naming a post office building for a soldier recently killed in Afghanistan. During Mr. Meadows' speech, Mr. Young was once again caught on camera, this time making funny faces and sticking his fingers in his ears. (I guess that's what he believes trained military veterans do when a soldier dies.)
3. In an interview last year, he referred to Mexican farm workers using the racial slur "wetbacks." When his use of the slur was questioned, he said he didn't know "this term is not used in the same way nowadays."
4. Earlier this month, Mr. Young debated his Democratic challenger Forrest Dunbar. Backstage he told Mr. Dunbar, (who was born in Alaska's interior, moved to Cordova, Alaska with his family when he was a child and currently resides in Anchorage), that he wasn't really from Cordova. "I had you looked up."
A witness to the confrontation said, Mr. Dunbar appeared confused and placed his hand on the Mr. Young's elbow and asked "What are you talking about?" Mr. Young responded angrily, "Don't you ever touch me. Don't ever touch me. The last guy who touched me ended up on the ground dead."
5. In these last days before the election, Mr. Young continues to offend.
Referring to a student at the school who had recently committed suicide, he said the boy must have lacked support from his friends and family.
A friend of the victim responded that he had both friends and support and that "it's depression--you know, a mental illness." To which Mr. Young said, "Well, what do you just go to the doctor and get diagnosed with suicide?"
Principal Amy Spargo was appalled. "We really spend a lot of time at our school talking about how we treat each other. We just don't talk to people that way...All of us first hand have been sitting with crying kids and we've been talking to these families and we know how much these students are loved and supported and it just felt cruel to imply that there's more the people who are left could have done. The comments certainly took our breath away."
Mr. Young had the gall to complain to Ms. Spargo that he thought the student who had spoken to him was disrespectful.
6. On Wednesday, he spoke to a group at the Palmer Senior Center and, when asked about his "lack of support" comment, dug himself a bit deeper. He told the group that suicide didn't exist in Alaska before "government largesse" gave residents an entitlement mentality. (Alaska has the highest suicide rate among the fifty states.)
"When people had to work and had to provide and had to keep warm by putting participation in cutting wood and catching the fish and killing the animals, we didn't have the suicide problem."
Matt Shuckerow, a spokesman for Mr. Young, attempted to quiet the controversy in an e-mail to the Alaska Dispatch News saying that the congressman did not "mean to upset anyone with his well-intentioned message."
If that is Representative Young's idea of "well-intentioned," then I'm putting my check mark next to "Mentally Ill" with a secondary diagnosis of extreme tastelessness exacerbated by a total lack of empathy and fed by an over-active ego.
No comments:
Post a Comment