What do Republican state legislators in Michigan deserve for disagreeing with Stephen Henderson, the Detroit Free Press’ editorial page editor?
If you ask Henderson, they deserve to be rounded up. “Sew them into burlap sacks with rabid animals, and toss them into the Straits of Mackinac,” Henderson wrote Saturday. “That’s harsh. Maybe. But isn’t that what the Romans or Greeks or some other early practitioners of democracy used to do with solicitous and unprincipled public officials?”
By Henderson’s logic, it’s okay to murder people you disagree with, because the Romans and Greeks did it thousands of years ago.
According to Henderson, if you don’t think those legislators should be murdered, you don’t love democracy. “A sack. An animal. A lake. No lover of actual democracy could weep at that outcome,” he wrote.
Feel free to read Henderson’s full column if you want the full context, but I don’t think it helps. On Twitter, Henderson defended himself, saying the rhetoric was only hyperbole.
First, Henderson tweeted that legislators deserve “worse than hanging.” Then, when someone called him out for it and said he should be fired, Henderson replied “join the world of lit where hyperbole, especially historical hyperbole, lives.”
.@EdWhelanEPPC get your head out of those Rand books, and join the world of lit where hyperbole, especially historical hyperbole, lives.
— Stephen Henderson (@SHDetroit) June 7, 2016
If Henderson didn’t intend for his comments to be taken literally, he should have made that clear. If the audience misinterprets a writer’s intent, that responsibility falls on the writer for not being clearer.
Henderson thinks it was obvious he doesn’t literally want legislators murdered, but in this chaotic election year it can be difficult to differentiate between what should be taken literally and what’s supposed to be hyperbole. After all, Vox editor Emmett Rensin was suspended Friday for tweeting that people should start riots if Trump comes to their town.
Henderson’s anti-public charter school column is wrong in many ways. But that’s not the point. The point is that his violent rhetoric has no place in politics, even as hyperbole, especially in education policy.
Henderson is fighting for better education for Detroit’s children. But calling for legislators to be murdered, or even silenced, sets a terrible example for those same children.
I would say the same thing if Henderson had written a column praising charter schools and calling for anti-charter legislators to be slaughtered or silenced.
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
