Tennessee gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn has been calling around the state getting people fired for being mean about Charlie Kirk’s death. This is truly astounding. She’s running for governor of Tennessee, and she’s getting Tennesseans fired for not being properly deferential to Charlie Kirk? Really?
Set aside everything else — and lord knows I’m asking you to set aside a lot of racism and sexism and stupid fights with Nick Fuentes. Charlie Kirk should have already been an enemy of Tennessee.
As Steven Hale pointed out over at the Nashville Banner, one week after six people were killed by a mass shooter at Nashville's Covenant School in 2023, Charlie Kirk said: “I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
The Covenant School victims — Evelyn Dieckhaus, William Kinney, Hallie Scruggs, Cynthia Peak, Mike Hill and Katherine Koonce — were worth it?! Their families never made any such deal to trade their lives for the Second Amendment. They were given no such choice. A week after they were gunned down in a school in our city, when our grief was still a raw and open wound, Kirk spouted off about how their deaths were worth it. That's repulsive and cruel. People shouldn't be allowed to acknowledge that?
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And now Marsha Blackburn is on his side? If there’s one state in the union where we should all be able to join together regardless of political affiliation to be like, “Well, I feel bad for his family, but at least he’s not going to be an asshole about our dead children anymore,” it is this one. If some people in Tennessee want to gloat at his death, the rest of us might find it distasteful, but we should understand the impulse.
I don’t understand, just from the perspective of a human being, why Marsha Blackburn would forget the Covenant families. Does she think we have?
But I also don’t understand this from a political perspective. Covenant is full of well-to-do Republican families — the very people Blackburn’s going to need to vote for her and give money to her gubernatorial campaign. Why is she risking alienating them by going to bat for Kirk?
Here’s the other thing. I know who Charlie Kirk was because I pay more attention than a person should to what’s going on with violent right-wing extremists, many of whom disliked him deeply. But Marsha Blackburn is 73. I can't imagine she's listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos. That’s not part of baby boomer culture, and that's also not something a sitting U.S. senator has the time for. Why is she Karening so hard for him?
Seriously, if any other septuagenarian had called a university in a town she didn’t live in to demand someone at that university be fired for having an opinion she doesn’t like, whoever answered the phone would be like, “OK, I’ll pass this along,” and then they’d pass it along into the trash can.
But then she called multiple universities? If this were anyone else, the universities would compare notes and then wonder if they should call a family member or some authority because this woman was clearly agitated and possibly confused.
I get that it’s different because she’s a sitting senator, but should it be?
As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t a First Amendment issue (or if it is, the courts will decide). This is about honor and loyalty and putting the people of the state of Tennessee first. We can squabble amongst ourselves, sure, but when someone who doesn’t live here is not only saying that it’s OK that our children die in their schools, but he’s literally making money off of saying that, this shouldn’t be any more complicated than a schoolyard fight — you talk shit about my friends, you have a problem with me. And my friends are the people of Tennessee (with, like, six exceptions, but they know what they did). Tennessee on one side, right-wing influencers dismissing gun violence on the other.
Marsha Blackburn is showing us that she’s not on our side. Her priorities are first with the national figures she knows and protecting them and their feelings. The people of Tennessee come second. It looks like she agrees with Charlie Kirk — some Tennesseans are just going to be sacrificed so that the rich and powerful never have to be uncomfortable, and I guess she’s just trying to position herself as someone who decides which ones of us will be thrown to the wolves.
But this is a banana-pants position from which to run for governor. “Vote for Marsha, the only candidate openly boasting about costing Tennesseans jobs.” “Vote for Marsha: She’s on the side of non-Tennesseans.” “Vote for Marsha: She’s real mean.”
Will it work? I mean, I guess so. She’s the favorite to win. But Tennessee deserves better.
