While Vox tends to pride itself on being above the hot take industry that dominates the media, Ezra Klein, the explainer site’s editor-in-chief, on Twitter apparently isn’t. Today, in the wake of the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), he tweeted that Americans were lucky that they live in a world where “politics rarely lead to violence.”
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/874970394813444096
America, as any casual observer of American society knows, is an extremely violent place, and its violence is based in politics, a fact Twitter was swift to point out. For example, not a few minutes after Klein’s tweet, the head of Flint, Michigan’s health department was charged with manslaughter for the city’s water crisis.
https://twitter.com/nkulw/status/874973470240772098
That’s just one instance. There were plenty, plenty more.
https://twitter.com/SeanMcElwee/status/874987091163262977
https://twitter.com/fivefifths/status/874978941790015488
https://twitter.com/amandamull/status/874980861736779776
https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/874982401210015745
https://twitter.com/juliacraven/status/874981487589945344
I can think of half a dozen people that were killed by white supremacists in the past month or so https://t.co/jw6nvAHrFa
— Yes, You're Racist (@YesYoureRacist) June 14, 2017
https://twitter.com/Patrick_Wyman/status/874984826360668160
https://twitter.com/NoTotally/status/874972827560026112
https://twitter.com/DavidDTSS/status/874979634429001728
It’s such a patently bad a take that it even got the Mocking Spongebob treatment
https://twitter.com/gatorgoat/status/874986379809361921
Ezra, thankfully, though, whose wheelhouse is explaining the news, explained this news.
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/874982719050182657
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/874983112593342464
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/874983526181023744
Then there’s this.
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/874984691786543104
What?
That take immediately aged poorly.
LOL this is sociopathic centrism at its best. "Let's nonviolently decide to kill people." https://t.co/BFnYXY2d28
— Jeremy McLellan (@JeremyMcLellan) June 14, 2017
it's important that society's most elite people do not literally murder one another over the power to enact violence on the rest of us, true https://t.co/vtPeROgv6v
— ig: @shereenshafi (@shereeny) June 14, 2017
Anyway, Klein continued.
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/874985545109295104
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/874985685354250240
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/874985991404216320
https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/874986232513785858
As everyone pointed out, we all already knew this. Merely the fact that no one was surprised or shocked that sitting U.S. congresspeople were the target of gun violence disproves his first tweet.
Thankfully, Twitter knows how to explain that news to people who may not get it.