Cagle World

At the beginning of the Senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Lindsay Graham observed that it was a great moment for young conservative women, because they finally had someone who they could look to as a role model on the highest court in the land.

Graham was on to something. Conservative women have been called “not the right kind of women” for years in the mainstream media and among those who always talk about “empowering” the sisters. Some have even questioned whether we even have the right to call ourselves women, while others have come right out and said we are traitors to the gender.

In my own district here in Pennsylvania, we have the opportunity to elect a woman to Congress who reflects many of the principles and ideals of women on the right side of the aisle. While the woman I have in mind intends to serve the interests of all of her future constituents, she reflects values, policies and principles that have been too long ignored among those who tout the power of our shared gender.

Dasha Yermakova Pruett, a child of Soviet refugees, is challenging incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon in the 5th Congressional District. Dasha is someone who appreciates what it means to live under a regime where the government rations out liberties and rights under the guise of protecting our welfare.

“I am having a flashback to my childhood, growing up under socialism. During this pandemic and watching the government overreach, the artificial food shortage because of the regulations on our farmers.” Dasha told me. “I’m alarmed at the threat to our 1st and 2nd Amendment rights, as well as every amendment related to voting. This is socialism. These are dangerous times, slippery slopes.”

Dasha is not alone in feeling this way, but there seems to be an attempt to create a narrative that women are “all in” for leaders who believe we can impose arbitrary restrictions and exert almost unchecked power during a public health crisis. They seem to think that we collectively favor “big government” because, well, that’s what progressives do. The idea that a woman could actually be a conservative rarely enters their minds, and when it does, we are usually viewed as being aberrational.

We are not aberrations. Donald Trump won the votes of white women in the last election, which is interesting considering that a white woman was running against him. But even if you take Trump out of the mix, there has been this effort on the part of mainstream pundits and party spokespersons to marginalize the voices and votes of conservative women, be they white, minority, young or old.

Kathy Barnette is a Black woman challenging Madeleine Dean in Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District, which includes large swaths of Montgomery County. I have met a slew of young women like Barnette who believe that life begins at conception. We are out here, all of us, and we are tired of being represented by those who do not reflect our concerns.

A woman who fought that stereotype of the liberal woman being the “only” sort of acceptable female was Phyllis Schlafly. I interviewed her daughter Anne Schlafly Cori a few months ago and asked her about how her mother was able to square her very public, independent profile with her embrace of traditional values such as motherhood and the family.

“My mother viewed the family as a pleasure, not a burden,” Cori said. “She felt that being at home gave herself enormous freedom to engage in the activities of her choice, because she did not have a boss. She objected to Betty Friedan calling the home ‘a comfortable concentration camp.’ Phyllis Schlafly’s message was one of optimism and opportunity for women.”

I don’t like identity politics. But ideology is something different from race, creed or gender. It is important to have diversity of thought in the public square, and Graham was right in noting that finally, young women will have a mirror which reflects their own ideological identities on the Supreme Court.

Hopefully, congressional districts, including our own, will have that same opportunity.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Last week I passed by a small group of people outside a Planned Parenthood building in Philadelphia praying in the rain, heads bowed and exposed to the fine mist from heaven.

Even though I was late to my appointment, I crossed the street to thank them. One woman, middle-aged, African American and leaning on a cane, thanked me for reaching out. “It doesn’t happen often. It means the world,” she said.

Regardless of your position on abortion, you cannot – if you are an honest person – deny that the vitriol is coming from one direction these days.

Kamala Harris, Dianne Feinstein, Amy Klobuchar, and Mazie Hirono are just a few of the senatorial sisters who have turned Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing into a referendum on Roe v. Wade. There are others, slightly less visible in the House, who are equally vocal about the so-called war on reproductive rights.

This column, in this local newspaper, will make about as much impact on the abortion controversy as the dent of a teaspoon in the vast ocean. I understand that opinions are hardened to the point that we hear the words “reproductive rights” and “unborn child” and immediately click to another channel, certain that the person speaking that way is not from our tribe, will not share our values and are therefore positioned far beyond our temporal reach. There is a spiritual Checkpoint Charlie that, unlike the real one that dissolved when the two Germanies reunited, still exists.

Kamala lives in one country, and I live in another, and there is no common ground to be had. That hope, one that seemed feasible in the past, has disappeared with the elimination of good faith bargaining. Now, the pro-choice/pro-abortion/anti-life camp refuses to even consider the possibility (which is actually scientific fact) that a child is a child regardless of location and regardless of gestation. Equally, the pro-life/anti-abortion/anti-choice camp thinks that they – that we – are being hounded into capitulation because a majority of Americans want to keep abortion legal. We must be silent, because we speak inconvenient truths.

Some of us choose not to be silent. I am one of them. I cannot understand how the same people who support my work on behalf of refugees, those who are vulnerable to the powerful forces of persecution, condemn my advocacy on behalf of the unborn.

Perhaps that’s not exactly true. I understand quite well why those who cling to abortion as a right and sacrament make distinctions between those who are born, and those who are reaching toward that light. They do so because their kindness and their compassion, real sentiments that they do harbor in their hearts, extend only to those who do not compromise their own autonomy, their own comfort, their own lives and what a friend persists in calling “my destiny.” It is easy to be generous with our good will, when it places no limitations on our liberty.

I would not be honest if I didn’t examine the other side of the coin, my sisters and brothers who oppose abortion but who have a problem with refugees and make sure to use the word “legal” whenever they speak of immigrants. They distinguish themselves from the hard hearted by waxing eloquent about welcoming immigrants who do it “the right way,” ignoring that there is no longer a “right” way given the shuttering of doors and windows by this administration. They are not of my own tribe, either.

But as between those with actual policy differences on immigration, and those who refuse to recognize the humanity of those points of light in utero, I choose to align myself with those who start from zero. Unless we fight to communicate that message, that abortion seals us off from our decency and our integrity and our nature as good humans, we have let the anger of the senatorial sisters and their own conscripted handmaidens win.

I may not win. That small and humble group, praying in the rain, may not win. Not in this moment. But evil has an expiration date, whether it be 4 years, 47 years, or a century. And the message of life has none. So they will pray, and I will speak, and the voiceless will be heard. Even if no one listens. They will be heard.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

When Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate back a couple of months ago, it was historic.

Third woman, first “woman of color” as we keep being reminded, first “child born of immigrants,” Harris was impressive if only because of her novelty. And some felt that she was impressive because of a lot of other factors, including her intelligence and resume.

I DVR’d last week’s vice presidential debate featuring Harris and Vice President Mike Pence so I could give it the attention it deserved, which translates into “freeze framing and rewinding” those moments of particular interest.

I had heard about the fly on Pence’s head, and wanted to see the little squatter for myself. I had heard about the eye rolling and grimaces from Harris and her almost “I’m With Stupid” mannerisms when the current vice president was talking. I already had experience with her whiny, nasal delivery, and as an aside, am considering elective ear drum removal if she does become veep. And I had also heard about how each candidate had expertly and consistently deflected questions like “will you support packing the Supreme Court” and “is climate change real?”

Everything I’d heard was confirmed by the DVR. Pence hit some birdies, and Harris made some cogent points.

But I had also heard that Harris was disrespected by Pence when he spoke over her or exceeded his time limits, and was astounded by the novel theory that she wasn’t as aggressive as she might have been because she didn’t want to come off looking like an “angry Black woman.” That was news to me, because while she didn’t look angry, she did look bemused, patronizing, supercilious and impatient in her smirking glory. The mere suggestion that she was reigning in her true nature is a little rich, because I think we all had an opportunity to see that nature on full, Technicolor display.

And guess what? That’s fine. Our president is a nasty little fellow when he wants to cut someone down, and has used insults and brutishness to make his points. Any supporter who denies that, or justifies that, is living in the Magic Kingdom. A lot of men emulate his attitude, and a lot of women, too. Nancy Pelosi has perfected the art of being offensive, and that’s equally fine. Politicians are not noted for their chivalry, decorum and downright decency these days.

But I am a little sick and tired of people trying to make excuses for Harris by saying that her mediocre debate performance (and Pence was by far the better debater, which was expected) was due to her fear of being viewed as a nasty woman. In other words, she toned it down because she knew that some critics would use misogynistic tropes to pan her “aggressiveness.”

I actually don’t think Harris felt that way. It’s her supporters, the same ones who defamed and slandered Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Michelle Bachman, Martha McSally, and most recently, Amy Coney Barrett, who are hypersensitive to any suggestion of being mean to a woman. That is laughable, if you think about their motley track record with women they don’t like.

After seeing how the wagons were circled around her after what really was a C+ to B- performance in the debate, I have to wonder if progressives aren’t guilty of the bigotry of “low expectations” when it comes to the women they like. Pointing out that she was rude, evasive, and not all that well-informed on the principles of religious liberty (she has yet to apologize to Catholics for that Knights of Columbus “cult” slander) is not misogyny.

To paraphrase the president, it is what it is.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I know that social media is not the real world, just as Kim Kardashian is not your average working mother. But we have all started to spend parts of our days in the virtual world, and in the post-pandemic era, some of us spend the majority of our waking hours communicating with avatars, digital creations, and shadow-humans. So the things that are happening in that environment do have an impact on our emotional health, and the way we view the actual world.

After the news broke on Friday evening that President Trump and his wife Melania had tested positive for COVID-19, I held my breath. This had nothing to do with my fears for their safety and health, although I managed to get off a quick prayer to St. Jude. The reason my esophagus seized up was the thought of what was about to happen in that virtual world where so many of us manifest our real characters.

I don’t need to reproduce the comments here, for you. My Facebook friendship tally is close to the 5,000 limit, with a good mix of liberals and conservatives, white and minority, male and female (but no “questioning”) Christian, Muslim, Jew and atheist, college-educated and high school grads, native-born and immigrant, Eagles fans and (one) Dallas fan. It’s a good cross section of the country. To be honest, there are some Trump supporters who travel over to my page who I barely tolerate, and some Bernie supporters who are dearer to my heart than blood relations. I can deal with a lot, and I have.

Lately though, I have taken to blocking better than Chuck Bednarik on one of his better days, because people have simply lost their minds. The number of folks who have either wished death on the president or engaged in some sick sort of schadenfreud because he is now infected with a deadly virus is scarier than the virus itself. They are not the faceless shadows that populate the comments sections of some online newspapers. They are not folks who have used pseudonyms to create online personalities that bear no relation to their actual selves. They are people I have actually met, or at least, would have like to have met in kinder times.

You might argue, as some have, that social media is a distortion of the real world. I would have agreed before social media became the real world for so many people who were trapped in the fabricated amber of the COVID shutdowns. Classrooms have become virtual for many children. Good friends have been told that they will not be returning to their offices until at least the beginning of next year, so their kitchen tables and their laptops are now their conference rooms. Online shopping has bumped the thrill of walking through an aisle in a Hazmat suit to search out the perfect tomato.

Virtual is real, now. And even in the real world, you have Hollywood and political folks wishing ill on the president. One of Hillary Clinton’s campaign managers actually expressed a desire that Trump die of the virus. There have been smirky, smarmy attempts by cable news hosts to show how “evolved” they are in wishing the president who caused all of this by ridiculing masks a “swift recovery.” And Democrat-leaning pollsters are gleeful at the thought that the election is over.

Ironically, one of the few public figures who gave authentic wishes of hope, luck and recovery to the president and his wife was Joe Biden, who tweeted out his and Jill’s solidarity moments after the news became public. He also vowed to pull negative campaign ads. That shows class, decency, and humanity. It is a shame that so many of Joe’s supporters lack the qualities reflected in their candidate, in this troubled moment.

Right now, it is important to point out to all of those folks who say that hate has no home with them, that they need to check the front door: Hate left, so hypocrisy could take over the lease.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

I just signed up to be a mentor at my law school, and did something that is atypical for me: Display a preference for female law students. It even surprises me when I look at that sentence, since my entire career as a columnist has been dedicated to the proposition that gender, race, sexual orientation, religion and all of the other epidermal things that form our identity are less important than the intangibles of brain, values, heart and capacity for endurance.

But the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a compelling and transformational impact on me. So did the identity of her replacement, Amy Coney Barrett.

The people who were angry that Donald Trump would replace Ginsburg now tried to hide behind words like “hypocrisy” and “Merrick Garland” and “let the people choose,” but the truth is that they don’t want Trump making an even bigger impact on the court than he already has. Coney Barrett would do that. The truth is they don’t want the president appointing someone who might vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Coney Barrett might do that. The truth is that they are petrified of a Trumpian majority. Coney Barrett would increase that.

And that’s okay, because I was appalled at the choice of Sonya Sotomayor, felt betrayed by David Souter, thought William Brennan was a dangerous little leprechaun of Warren Court orthodoxy, cannot pronounce the name “Harry Blackmun” without nearly choking and thought that Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for rights I never asked for.

I kept hearing people praising this great defender of “women’s rights” and “civil rights” with the same tired language, the tropes of “reproductive freedom” and “choice” and to take a phrase from her own mouth, “taking [men’s] feet off of our necks.” And that annoyed me, because I felt that the man who slammed his foot with the most power and hostility on “our necks” was the man who wrote the opinion legalizing the destruction of 50% of our future population, women “in utero.”

Coney Barrett will oppose that.

I think that you can be pro-life, as I am, and admire the strength of a woman like Ginsburg, who really was the Thurgood Marshall of the women’s movement. However, there is a difference: Marshall was fighting mightily against the dehumanization of an entire race of people. Ginsburg was fighting in a sense for the dehumanization of what she considered “potential people” and what I consider women, inches away from having rights. And, as she herself once noted, Marshall risked being killed for his advocacy. Ginsburg just risked having nasty opeds like this one written about her.

And so I am one woman who, while acknowledging the exceptional role the late justice has played in our jurisprudence, does not welcome her doppelganger on the court. For that reason alone, I am overjoyed that the president has chosen Amy Coney Barrett, a fierce advocate for women’s rights. The women she advocates for are those who believe that dignity is inherent and innate, not conveyed by a society or a legal framework that is willing to ignore biology. We are here, alive, speaking for those who cannot.

And despite what some Ginsburg supporters think, we are also speaking out for many other women who have been dispossessed, immigrant women, victims of domestic violence, abandoned children. That is not just a “progressive” thing, and we do care about the lives of these women after they are born. Suggestions that we are simply “pro-birth” is-to paraphrase Shakespeare-sound and fury, signifying whining.

Coney Barrett has seven children, one who has Downs syndrome, two others who are international adoptees. She has a deep and unwavering attachment to her Catholic faith. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein helpfully noted a few years ago, the dogma lives “loudly” in her. She is universally considered to be brilliant, graduating first in her class at Notre Dame Law School. As an aside, how sublime would it be to finally have a non-Ivy elevated to the court?

And she is, quite obviously, a woman. Some would say she is not the right kind of woman. They are the same people who bent over in agony when the great “woman’s rights advocate” passed away last week. I honor their grief, and understand it. I am not her to mock or undermine their very sincere feelings of loss.

But when they take a momentary break from mourning, they should understand this: There are many ways to honor and fight for women. Confirming this scholar, jurist, mother, woman of faith and dedicated advocate for the “least of these” is one of them. Not only that, it’s necessary for the next generation of women who might not see themselves reflected in the mighty but controversial figure of RBG.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

By Christine Flowers

I do not believe that there are any undecided voters left in Pennsylvania. I say this after watching the recent Town Hall in Philadelphia, where some allegedly “undecided” voters gathered to ask questions of Donald Trump at the Constitution Center.

Most of those who were given an opportunity to seek answers from the president were polite, at the most epidermal level. That is, they did not scream at him or hold up signs depicting him as Hitler, or accusing him of killing people during the pandemic. They were nicer to Trump than their parents were to Santa Claus a generation ago (you know, the one who had to duck snowballs).

But clearly there was a sense among the questioners and “undecided” voters that this man had not served them well during the last four years, and their purpose in coming before the cameras was to make that obvious to a national audience.

There was the woman who said she’d been born with a pre-existing condition, who told the president to stop interrupting her and then, angered by what she saw as a non-responsive answer told reporters afterwards that she was voting for Joe Biden. As if that thought had inserted herself into her mind that evening.

There was the pastor who accused Trump of ignoring the plight of Black Americans, and making fun of his “Make America Great Again” slogan by saying, in response to the question as to when America had been good to minorities, “I don’t feel like he adequately answered [my question] but essentially in doing so, he actually did. America was never great for Black Americans in the ghetto.”

There was the man who said that he had voted for Trump in 2016 and who was suffering from the same sort of diabetes that killed my grandmother, who accused the president to his face of throwing people “like me under the bus,” and then concluded that Trump was “lying through his teeth.”

Yes, these really sound like undecided voters.

I honestly don’t have a problem with people asking tough questions of the men or women who run for public office, particularly this highest of public offices. In fact, it is malfeasance and malpractice on the part of U.S. citizens not to demand answers to our concerns, clarification of our doubts and ambiguity, appreciation of our priorities and an understanding of our hopes.

What I do have a problem with, a very big one, is when people who have already made up their minds about a candidate take up valuable space, under false pretenses and under the guise of being even handed. The people at that town hall were Biden voters, as clear and as obvious as the mediocrity of the Eagles last Sunday.

I don’t blame ABC for pretending that they were actually the type of voters who might actually be sitting on that razor thin fence we pretend still exists. The network needs ratings, after all, and presenting the president with a slew of people who came out and admitted they’d be voting against him would have been a bit of a yawnfest.

But just as that fellow with diabetes said that Trump had lied to him through his teeth, I personally don’t like being lied to by a network that used to field great journalists like Howard K. Smith, Frank Reynolds, Ted Koppel and Peter Jennings. There was nothing “undecided” in either the questions or demeanor of those Pennsylvanians, despite what I was snookered into believing.

There might be one or two people out there in the hinterlands who at this juncture still don’t know who they are going to vote for. But do not tell me that a group of hostile Philadelphians gathered at the Constitution Center declaring their vote for Biden and that Trump is a liar constitutes a legitimate crowd of people with open minds.

To paraphrase Kamala Harris, that little girl who was told by her father not to swallow manure and pretend it was chocolate? That little girl, Mr. Stephanopoulos, was me.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

One of the fondest memories I have is of spending Sunday afternoons with my father, either sitting in Section 633 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, or at the kitchen table in Havertown, watching the Eagles work their magic.

You might have noticed that I am using the past tense. That is because I no longer consider myself an Eagles fan. In fact, I no longer consider myself a fan of the NFL. I am done.

This is bigger than when I broke up with my fiance. This is bigger than when I said I wouldn’t watch the Sixers anymore after they honored convicted felon Meek Mill, because despite my love for Dr. J, I’m not that interested in basketball. This is even bigger than when I was rooting against the Flyers after they disrespected Kate Smith by removing her statue. That last one was hard, because next to football, hockey is the sport that had the strongest hold on my heart. But rooting for the Jersey Devils and the Pittsburgh Penguins has made things a little easier to bear.

Football, though, is different. Football is family, faith, the sinew of my body and the palace of my memories. It is one of the things that ties me to my father, gone now almost four decades. It is something that my mother, with him in Heaven, loved as much if not more than her husband and sons.

On game days, she wore green, bled green, and fed us things that she colored green. Football was poetry, and drama, and struggle, and autumn, and as I said before, magic. I cried more at Brian’s Song than I did at my father’s funeral. I am “that woman” who really did know as much about football as any man.

And with one act, the Eagles stole it from me. I should say, with one omission, they took away my passion. When the team from Philadelphia met with the team from Washington on Sunday in that show of racial unity, that was a nice gesture. It was expected, planned, staged, necessary, helpful, yadda yadda, let’s move on with the game.

But when the Eagles went back into the locker room as the National Anthem was played, my heart froze in my chest. I thought that it was a momentary mistake, that the team had forgotten to remain on the field and would sheepishly troop out before the last note of the “Star Spangled Banner” echoed through the empty stadium. But they didn’t. They stayed in the locker room.

And that, as they say, was that.

This was the weekend that we commemorated the deaths of 3,000 Americans, murdered in cold blood by people who hated the United States and the flag and anthem that symbolize her spirit. This was a weekend when two police officers had been ambushed, shot in the head by someone who hated law enforcement. This was the weekend that we were supposed to be about national unity.

And the Philadelphia Eagles, the team that represents the city where this country was born in fire and freedom, stayed in the locker room while the anthem was played.

Personally, I don’t think that players should involve themselves in politics, since the people who gather to cheer them on come to celebrate something that is neither red, nor blue. I understand that some people will disagree, and feel that athletes have always had an obligation to use their bully pulpits to advocate for their version of justice. That’s fine, it’s a reasonable difference of opinion.

But what is not fine is the defiant display of disrespect shown to the anthem, to those who died because someone hated that anthem, to those who put themselves on the line for the country defined by that anthem, and that this display was made on this particular weekend, on that particular Sunday.

And so, I am finished. And it breaks my heart. But better to be heartbroken and standing, than comforted by a team that wants to force me to kneel to their misbegotten version of virtue.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Cancel culture and cancer both begin with the letter “C,” which is not a coincidence.

The urge to obliterate, annul, remove, censor and excise from our collective social conscience is akin to what a surgeon does when he approaches a toxic tumor: Cuts it out. We no longer have a tolerance for anything that annoys. If someone has said something offensive, or if we have evidence that their thoughts are improvident or less-than-evolved, that person must be neutralized as a viable member of society.

We’ve seen it happen over and over again, and not just in the post-George Floyd/Black Lives Matter era. It started in earnest with the #Metoo movement, when any man who ever said anything that could v vaguely be considered offensive was shut down, shut up, and shut away (think Bill Cosby). It’s no coincidence that this month marks the second anniversary of the witch hunt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a man who was accused of being naughty at a party in the Jurassic period of his youth.

Something happened more recently that highlighted the hypocrisy in the cancel culture movement. In my own backyard in the Philadelphia suburbs, Darby Township Commissioner Marvin Smith posted a meme on his social media page that depicted a white police officer trapped between two Black men. The Black men held pistols to his head. The caption read: “Does it have to come to this to make them stop murdering and terrorizing us?”

Until last week, Smith was the township’s police commissioner. After many outraged members of the community made their voices heard and their anger felt, he was removed from that position by the board. That’s a start.

No one should be surprised at the outrage that was triggered when the post became public. Many people, including myself, reposted it and demanded that the commissioners issue a response. Many people, also including myself, went a step further and demanded that Smith resign. It seemed then, and still seems now, that a police commissioner who finds it appropriate to post a meme that glorifies the murder of a police officer is unfit for his position. So at the very least, he should have lost his official title. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still an elected official in a position of authority.

When I reached out to the commissioners, they responded with the communique issued last week, part of which includes this statement: “We condemn all act [sic] of violence and intimidation of violence against the police and citizens.” That’s nice, as far as it goes, but the addition of “and citizens” clearly dilutes the impact of a statement in support of the police. After all, Smith didn’t post a meme where “and citizens” were being targeted with having their brains blown out. It was one, white, police officer.

Furthermore, the commissioners stated that they did not have the authority to remove Smith, which is correct. That can only be done through impeachment, or conviction. There is another way he could be removed. He could remove himself. He could, in fact, resign.

As of this writing, he has not done that. What he has done is issue a smarmy apology that reeks of, “I have to write something to get them off my back! I remember what they did to that school board member and I want to keep this job.” Smith’s statement read in part as follows: “There have been some people that have taken offense to the meme.” Ya think, commissioner? How about anyone who knows how difficult it is for a police officer to walk out the door these days?

To make matters worse, some community members actually think Smith has nothing to apologize for. A story on Friday quoted someone as posting ““Actually you shouldn’t have (to) apologize, you stated truth and if that hurt some people then they need to get over it,” said another. “Police wouldn’t have to be offended if they did their f—— jobs right.” Imagine the response if, after George Floyd was killed, a police officer had commented that, “Well, maybe he shouldn’t have gotten himself arrested.” Yes, I’m sure you can.

As I write this, I know that the likelihood of Smith’s removal is as low as that threshold I referenced before. This will likely blow over, and we will all pat ourselves on the back for that warm and welcome “teaching moment” about how we need to empathize with the “frustration” of the “communities of color” and their allies.

But I will remember that a man was able to post a meme about the murder of a police officer, and that many of us just shrugged our shoulders, and waited for the next opportunity to demand the resignation of someone who offended the sensitivities of those who are very selective about the lives they think matter.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

Before I decided to tackle this topic, I had a moment’s hesitation. Is the fact that Nancy Pelosi decided to get her hair done really an issue of national importance?

And of course, I concluded that it is.

Pelosi had every right to get her hair done last week, even though she was violating the regulations she herself championed to restrict the spread of the coronavirus.

As the first and only female Speaker of the House of Representatives (so far,) Pelosi is one of the most visible women in the world, and she has to look her best while adoring and hostile eyes turn their gaze upon her.

I don’t even have much of a problem with the fact that she didn’t wear a mask during the entire Wash-Trim-Blow Dry. While I kept my mask on my face during every stage of my most recent salon visit, I would have preferred to take it off. A breathing human with bad hair is often preferable to a perfectly-coiffed-corpse.

But Nancy pushed for the regulations that we all wear masks, everywhere, including while we shower. She’s a big fan of wearing masks that virtue signal her virtue, and supports California Gov. Gavin Newsome’s draconian decision to shut down or severely restrict salon services during the pandemic.

So a little thing like hypocrisy, as in “Rules for Thee but Not for Me” wrankles.

But it’s more than just mere hypocrisy on Nancy’s part.

When Mayor Jim Kenney traveled down to a Maryland restaurant to have some crabcakes and some respite while indoor dining remained banned in Philadelphia, I was annoyed at the garden variety hypocrisy. And he did apologize, albeit belatedly. But it was an apology.

Far from seeking forgiveness, or even acknowledging that she had done anything wrong, the Speaker of the House offered this gem: “I take responsibility for trusting the word of the neighborhood salon that I’ve been to…many times. It was as set up, and I take responsibility for falling for a set up.”

And then, if this weren’t enough of a study in California Chutzpah she added: “I think that this salon owes me an apology, for setting me up.”

Digest that for a moment. Nancy, who violated her own deeply-held principles on pandemic shutdowns, on wearing masks, on being “all in this together,” blamed the person whose livelihood is being destroyed by those principles. And she wants an apology.

Allo, Marie Antoinette, tu as un coup de fil de 2020. (For those of you who didn’t major in French, that would be “Hello Marie Antoinette, 2020 is calling.”)

Those who grew up in the Philadelphia area would likely call this the Abscam Apology, which is basically “Youze set me up, youze bums.” While there are situations where entrapment is a legitimate defense to committing an offense, it is hard to use when the person who ends up committing the offense did so without pressure, willingly, and tipped the alleged “entrapper.”

Here, Nancy was the one who made the appointment, went to the salon, sashayed from shampoo chair to trim chair to blow out chair with grace, and did it with the full knowledge that it was in violation of the very regulations she trumpeted. So it’s really hard to swallow the “set up” excuse her supporters are trying to shove down our throats (through our masks).

And unlike Kenney (I can’t believe I’m actually saying something positive about him,) Pelosi is deflecting the blame from herself to a private citizen. In bringing the full weight of her authority, popularity and presence to bear against the salon owner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives has triggered an avalanche of bad publicity, slurs, and death threats directed at the poor woman.

But she is the one who deserves an apology. Une apologie pour la reine Marie Annunziata!

If this is not an example of the pathetic, tone deaf nature of the virtue-signaling preachers of the progressive gospel, I honestly don’t know what is.

But in the next two months, I’m sure I’ll find out.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].

It’s rare that a simple tweet triggers in me the desire to write a column.

On night three of the Republican National Convention last week, I had the great pleasure of watching Madison Cawthorne, a young paraplegic who is running for a house seat in North Carolina. At the very end of his short but moving address, this man – who is otherwise confined to a wheelchair – was helped out of that chair by two friends and stood.

He was standing for the flag, for what it represents, for his fellow citizens, for the president he supports, for his family, and as a symbolic gesture of how we are all able to transcend the most exceptional and challenging circumstances. Being paralyzed at the age of 20 clearly qualifies. Watching him struggle to stand up, and only imagining the effort it took to mobilize petrified muscle and sinew, I thought of the following lines from my father’s favorite poem, “Invictus:”

“In the fell clutch of circumstance/I have not winced nor cried aloud/Under the bludgeoning of chance/My head is bloody, but unbowed.”

I assumed that most people watching had the same reaction, even if their minds didn’t wander to a 145-year-old poem. I was wrong. Shortly after Cawthorne spoke, NPR correspondent Yamiche Alcindor tweeted the following:

“Madison Cawthorn made it a point to stand, suggesting that all Americans should stand during the Pledge of Allegiance & National Anthem. It was a direct rebuke of actions by ppl – including Black athletes who are currently sitting out games – protesting police brutality.”

The thing that angered me about Alcindor’s tweet was the fact that she presumed to delve into the mind of this courageous young man and find some negative, possibly sinister motive to his profoundly moving act of standing up.

Instead of simply admiring the effort it took for Madison Cawthorne to raise himself up and expose his disability to millions of viewers nationwide, this journalist decided to set him up as a foil to the men she obviously admired much more. Alcindor, without anything other than her own bias, decided that Cawthorne was attacking the Colin Kaepernick brigade, all of those “Black athletes who are currently sitting out games protesting police brutality.”

And that, I would suggest, is beneath contempt.

Those “Black athletes who are currently sitting” are able to stand up at leisure and walk to the nearest bank to cash their six- and seven-figure salaries, while Madison Cawthorne will never be able to walk anywhere, ever again.

It is also beneath contempt because this journalist of color is, in a not so veiled way, accusing a young disabled white man of showing disrespect to able-bodied Black men. How dare she use someone else’s misfortune to advance a political agenda, and do so in a way that is dishonestly veiled. After all, Alcindor can easily say that she wasn’t criticizing Cawthorne, she was just “suggesting” that this is what his action “suggested.” It’s a nice trick, one I’ve used myself. But I would never be so callous as to use it to shame a paraplegic to advance a political message.

You might disagree that this is what Alcindor was doing. You might think that it was legitimate, and that Cawthorne opened himself to such attacks because he let himself be “used” by the GOP at the convention, allowed himself to be trotted out as some symbol of “Trump love for country.” I actually heard that said.

Far be it from me to try and disabuse you of the notion that every time someone shows a moment of courage and allows us a glimpse into their soul, it’s inauthentic and programmed (particularly if they support President Trump).

If you are that type of person, you were already clicking “like” on Alcindor’s tweet before Madison Cawthorne had a chance to sit back down in his wheelchair.

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Copyright 2020 Christine Flowers. Flowers is an attorney and a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times, and can be reached at [email protected].