Thursday, February 14, 2008

But He Didn't Mean Anything By That

The political battle between Democrat Assemblyman David Gantt and the GOP majority in the Monroe County Legislature took a nasty turn on Tuesday. Philbrick at Mustard Street has a brief snippet of video from Tuesday night's legislature meeting attached to his post on the affair. It shows Mr. Gantt being escorted from the Legislature Chambers, while making a comment that (one would hope) he regrets making. Stunningly, while the cameras were rolling, Mr. Gantt said "You wonder why a guy go into Missouri and shoot some damn body".

His reference to the recent shooting of City Council members in the St. Louis, Mo. area is reprehensible. Apparently no longer content to simply score political points, Gantt has moved on to incitement to violence. I'm sure he and his apologists will say he wasn't suggesting that the St. Louis shooting was justified by the conduct of the victims, nor was he sending signals to anyone in our community that they should consider such action.

But if not, then I have to ask, just what was he trying to say? Perhaps Mr. Gantt read Tom Tobin's post on the D&C Editorial Blog headlined "Gantt smoked 'em" referring to Gantt's political machinations having bested GOP County Legislators in this matter. Maybe Gantt thinks Tobin's next piece ought to read "Gantt snuffed 'em".

1 comment:

simon said...

Repoman;
What Gantt is trying to say here is, I have tried to bully the majority in the Legislator on a political level and a protesting level, neither worked. So I will resort to trying to scare them by letting them know that violence isn’t out of the realm of possibility. I think that the legislators should insist that Gantt be held liable for his actions, and what any sane person would consider an insane call to violence.