Layers of Duh

The dumb website Buzzfeed has published an opinion column by two college students who confronted Chelsea Clinton when she attended a vigil for victims of the mosque massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Now, Buzzfeed is not dumb for publishing the piece -- they were dumb before and they would still be dumb if they didn't give the two women space for their thoughts. They've drawn some heat for doing so but I personally don't mind all that much. For one, it's Buzzfeed. It's not like they've got a reputation to uphold. For another, my thinking on stuff like this follows the old joke that says liberals want conservatives to shut up, but conservatives want liberals to keep talking. Why?

Well, for one it's the whole freedom of speech thing. My experience is that free speech is not a conservative value, but as more and more folks on the left buy into Herbert Marcuse's bushwa about "repressive tolerance," you might begin to worry. I may just be fortunate to know smart and principled liberals who have limited their mistakes to accepting my friendship, but I think most folks accept some notion that one's political leanings or point of view don't remove them from the umbrella of the first amendment. The ones that don't are just louder.

For another, as soon as some folks -- like the two women who confronted Ms. Clinton -- start explaining themselves, they do more damage to any idea they're supposed to be supporting than any opponent ever could. What happened was that Ms. Clinton attended a vigil Friday night for those killed in last week's massacre. While she was there, the two women confronted her angrily, one filming while the other blamed the massacre on feelings stirred up by the former first daughter's tweets criticizing Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar's anti-Semitic remarks. That single tweet, one woman alleged, caused the atmosphere that led to the massacre.

Now if this idea doesn't sound whackadoodle to you from the start, then head over to Buzzfeed and read the elaboration. Are there potential grounds to believe Ms. Clinton was being an opportunist by attending the vigil? Sure -- she is, after all, a Clinton. But on the other hand she's also a person and may have thought a good way to show solidarity with Muslims following this tragedy was to support the vigil. Are there potential grounds for believing her single tweet saying that anti-Semitism from elected leaders is bad helped spur the massacre in New Zealand? No, not on this planet.

When confronted, the pregnant Ms. Clinton said she was sorry that the students felt that way about what she had tweeted. Others shouted out, "What does that mean?" I can't read her mind, but when I use those words I usually mean, "This is a bad time for me to point out you just said something exceedingly stupid."

In the Buzzfeed article, the women attempt to explain both the reasoning behind their point of view and their actions, ignoring another old saying: When you're explaining, you're losing. We could refine it: When you're explaining why you got in the face of a pregnant woman at a prayer vigil, you are most definitely losing. If you need another sign you've erred, realize your actions caused this headline: "Trump defends Clinton," as Donald Trump, Jr., said Ms. Clinton was the wronged party in this exchange.

The smart thing to do is to say something like, "I was angry and lashed out in a way I wouldn't have otherwise. I'd welcome the chance to meet with her sometime to talk about what I was trying to say." The dumb thing is to let a clickbait factory like Buzzfeed take advantage of your youth by letting you try to explain yourself -- not because they really care about what you believe, but because they care about the traffic you will generate.

In the end, it seems like the thing to do is to paraphrase Zed from Men in Black: "Congratulations! You're everything we've come to expect from years of modern undergraduate education."