Despicable Attacks

A new calendar year heralds a new year of political campaigning, and it should be no surprise that in this especially contentious race, mud will fly. It is inevitable that at least some of the attack angles will be especially bitter and even insulting. However, there is one line of attack against Senator Rick J. Santorum that has already gone well beyond any sense of human decency.

In 1996, Santorum’s wife, Karen, gave birth to a stillborn infant named Gabriel. Joe Klein, generally no friend of Senator Santorum, describes this event in a January 5 blog post for TIME based on his interviews with the family. Klein notes that Gabriel underwent surgery in the womb to remedy a kidney defect, but that this caused an infection in Karen Santorum. She ultimately miscarried, and the Santorums elected to bring the body of Gabriel home for the night to “see that it was ‘a perfect, tiny little baby.’”

This episode in Santorum’s life is public knowledge, but it would seem clear that it had no relevance in a political debate. Unfortunately, some commentators have not comprehended that. Alan S. Colmes, long-time contributor to FOX News, claimed in a January 2 show that Republican viewers should think twice about Santorum after hearing about the “crazy things he’s said and done,” which he defined as “taking his two-hour old baby who died right after childbirth home and played [sic] with it.” On its own, Colmes’s attack, while outlandish, might be dismissed as merely one pundit’s angry ranting.

However Eugene H. Robinson, Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor, has also claimed that Sen. Santorum’s actions were “crazy” or “weird.” On the “Rachel Maddow Show,” Robinson stated that “he’s not a little weird, he’s really weird,” giving “the story of how he and his wife handled the stillborn child…It’s a very weird story.” Maddow, unlike the commentators speaking with Colmes on FOX, did not push back but moved on to the next segment.

When Robinson was directly confronted about his attack the next day, he admitted, “I wish I hadn’t said it that way.” However, he never backtracked on his claims about how “really weird” Santorum was. Colmes at least submitted a sincere apology to the Santorum family, but Robinson obstinately refused to apologize and merely stated that he “didn’t mean to offend anyone.”

What could possibly drive these pundits to attack a candidate on his deceased child? Commentary’s Peter Wehner blames the growing acceptance of abortion among the liberal political class, noting that “in some quarters those who routinely champion abortion, even partial-birth abortion, are viewed as enlightened and morally sophisticated while those grieving the loss of their son, whom they took home for a night before burying, are mercilessly mocked.” Certainly it is unlikely that Colmes and Robinson view abortion as a flippant process. Yet, when many pundits support the argument that abortion is purely a choice with no regard to the life of the fetus, it cannot be surprising when the most extreme views would engage in cavalier mocking of the death of a stillborn infant.

It should be noted that the actions of the Santorums were in no way “weird” or “crazy.” The American Pregnancy Association’s website lists ways for families to cope with miscarriages, including taking pictures, naming the child, and spending time with the infant. The tragedy of a stillborn infant is clearly one of the most heart-wrenching tragedies that a family can endure, and no one has the right to make judgments about a family’s grieving process. Families and even infants have certainly come under unjustified attack from all sides in debates. The cases of the push polling on John McCain’s “illegitimate black child,” referencing his adopted Bangladeshi daughter, and the charges that Sarah Palin’s disabled infant son, Trig, was actually her grandson from Bristol Palin, remain infamous.

This is hardly the first time that Santorum has endured harsh criticism from pundits. His views on abortion, homosexuality, and the role of government in enforcing morality have attracted much vitriol from liberal commentators. Most infamously, the blogger Dan K. Savage sparked an entire phenomenon of manipulating Google search results to display his extremely vulgar neologism, “santorum.” Yet, while these attacks are juvenile and offensive, they at least are made in direct protest to Santorum’s views on homosexuality.

These more recent cases, however, do not even relate to Santorum’s political opinions. Colmes and Robinson have elected to engage in ad hominem attacks against Santorum and his family for decisions made during a deeply tragic event. Especially when public discourse seems to demand a new sense of civility after years of hostile rhetoric, such attacks cannot continue into this election cycle. They are not only completely irrelevant to political discourse, but they are also beyond the pale of human decency.

Samuel L. Coffin ’14 is a history concentrator in Mather House.