Senator Marco Rubio hopped on Twitter in the wee hours of Friday morning to decry a monumental societal ill, perhaps the most pressing of these tumultuous times we live in: people using the word “fuck.”
This would easily have come across as run-of-the-mill pearl clutching from a cowardly conservative if not for the timing: CNN aired an uncensored interview between Anderson Cooper and Phil Davis and Selene San Felice, two survivors of Thursday’s Captial Gazette newspaper shooting in Annapolis, Maryland. The gunman left five people dead.
San Felice, a Capital Gazette staff writer, told Cooper that she heard President Trump had tweeted his “thoughts and prayers” to the shooting victims and their families. She anticipated that this mass shooting will be forgotten in a few days—like so many others—due in part to people offering thoughts and prayers and little else:
I reported on Pulse when Pulse happened. I went to school in Florida, and I remember being so upset hearing about the victims who were texting their families, and there I was, sitting under a desk, texting my parents, telling them I love them...I’m gonna need more than a couple days of news coverage and some thoughts and prayers because our whole lives have been shattered. So thanks for your prayers, but I couldn’t give a fuck about them if there’s nothing else.
Unfortunately—or, rather, predictably—her language became the focus of the segment as opposed to the message; it was optimal rant bait for folks who value decorum over sincerity and will do basically anything to avoid talking about gun control. You know, folks like Marco Rubio who lean on thoughts and prayers like a crutch.