Among those most intemperately calling for President Trump’s impeachment is a potty-mouthed newly elected Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib.
That a member of Congress — even an inexperienced one — would publicly and intentionally use an unprintable 12-letter vulgarity to refer to anyone, much less the president of the United States, is deplorable.
Even worse is refusing, as Tlaib did, to back down when given time to rethink what she said. While many Democrats criticized her and said their new House majority needs to focus on policies that will help their constituents, Tlaib said only, “I will always speak truth to power.”
Trump has acted too often like a juvenile in hurling personal insults at those in the opposition, but at least the president has kept it clean most of the time. Even when he has slipped into locker-room mode, it hasn’t been as vulgar as the expression to which the vocabulary-challenged Tlaib resorted while attending a party.
Maybe talking like an X-rated rapper works in Tlaib’s home grounds of Detroit, but such language has no place in public discourse in most of the rest of this country.
One of the major civic ills of this nation is the coarsening of how Americans talk to and about one another. Politicians bear a lot of the blame for this. They also bear a heavy responsibility for improving the tone.
When they choose instead to raise the crudity level, as Tlaib did, they foremost discredit themselves. But they also hurt the people and the party they represent.
