This article contains news and liberal commentary.
The rightwing blogosphere lit up like a Christmas ship on Saturday, October 25, 2020, when Joe Biden told his campaign rally in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the Trump supporters gathered outside the event honking horns, waving flags, and yelling (photo, left) are “chumps.”
“By the way, we don’t do things like those chumps out there with the microphone are doing, the Trump guys,” Biden said. “It’s about decency. Look, we’ve got to come together.” Read story here and watch a video here.
Actually, people have been doing these things forever. I did it when I was a teenager, with an organized group of Goldwater supporters at an LBJ rally in 1964. All we did was chant, “We want Barry!” but that was enough to provoke President Johnson to glare at us and snarl, “They’re paid to do this.” If only we were; I could’ve used spending money.
It’s just free speech, that’s all, and that’s not why they’re chumps; Biden got that part wrong, and he shouldn’t have taken the bait, because it serves no usful purpose for his campaign. But it’s no big deal; politicians have been bristling at hecklers forever, too. The British, most famously Benjamin Disraeli (photo, right), elevated it to a high art, including this famous example:
“A member of Parliament to Disraeli: ‘Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease.’ That depends, Sir,’ said Disraeli, ‘whether I embrace your policies or your mistress.'”
(See other examples here.) Heckling is an opportunity to respond wittily, and make the audience laugh (at the hecklers), which is what Biden should have done (if he has it in him). It was a missed opportunity.
But he’s right about Trump supporters — not just these — being chumps. They’re chumps because they support a miserable failure of a corrupt, lying, and immoral con man who presents the greatest threat to America’s democratic institutions and processes in modern times. They’re chumps because they refuse to comply with sound, sensible, simple, reasonable, and minimally burdensome health rules intended to keep them safe during the deadliest pandemic in a century. They’re chumps because they believe nonsensical conspiracy theories while rejecting science and sound medical advice. They’re chumps because they threaten journalists, brandish guns instead of reasoned arguments, and they’re chumps because if Biden supporters did this at a Trump rally they get violent.
Obviously, there are Biden supporters in Bucks County, which isn’t surprising, because it’s a Philadelphia suburban area. I know about Bucks County as the site of one of the last remaining live pigeon shoots in the United States, through the videos of animal rights activist Steve Hindi (bio here), although the video below isn’t one of Hindi’s (you can find those on YouTube), but rather from the Humane Society. Of course, the few dozen “sportsmen” (???) patronizing these events, many from out of state, aren’t representative of Bucks County or the more than 600,000 decent people who live there.
Biden called suggested his rather mild heckling by Trump supporters was indecent, but something far more indecent than that goes on in Bucks County with the connivance of local authorities. Pennsylvania’s GOP-controlled legislature has repeatedly refused to outlaw this hideous “sport,” while nearly all other jurisdictions already have. Of the 5 remaining live pigeon shooting sites in the U.S., 4 are in Pennsylvania, the other in Maryland.
Photo: Trump supporters outside Biden’s Bucks County rally
The problem for Joe is when there are more hecklers than supporters.
The US Department of Agriculture euthanizes 60,000 pigeons a year. The purses at the events can be up to $50,000 and there could be a bit of envy since the sport is one for the rich leisurely class.
Steve Hindi is a wealthy businessman who has no reason to be envious of “the rich leisurely class,” of which he is a member, and he has spent far more than $50,000 on his animal protection campaigns. Maybe you should consider the possibility that some people are disturbed by animal cruelty and want it to stop.