EDITORIAL: Farenthold’s latest foot-in-mouth remark can’t be ignored or tolerated

Caller-Times (Corpus Christi, TX)

July 25--If only we could ignore U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold's latest public blunder. If only we could accept that it was tongue-in-cheek and blown out of proportion, just like the Corpus Christi Republican said -- locker-room talk, for lack of a better label. That would be the easy way out.

For those who missed it, Farenthold told local radio host Bob Jones on Monday that if the three Republican women who derailed Obamacare repeal in the Senate were men, he might challenge them to a duel Aaron Burr-style. Farenthold ended up all over mainstream news media, and he attacked the straight-news reporting of plain fact as "left-wing biased."

We can laugh off the insult to our profession. And we can agree with Farenthold that his remarks were, indeed, tongue-in-cheek. But they also did harm, intentional or not. And the responses, ranging from outrage to derision, are deserved.

To laugh off or ignore what he said would be unfair to women, the population group that one of our board members once referred to tongue-in-cheek in a column as the "51-percent minority." Farenthold's remarks assume that women can't protect themselves.

In fairness, some women will agree with Farenthold that we're over-analyzing him. But, safe to say, most women and many men consider Farenthold's comments an insult to women, too egregious to ignore. Also, safe, to say, countless women would be happy to accept his challenge and teach him a lesson, Aaron Burr-style or Rhonda Rousey-style -- tongue-in-cheek, he should hope.

Letting Farenthold's comment go unanswered also would be unfair to the growing crowd of constituents who are tired of being embarrassed on a national stage by his latest attention-getting outrageous statement. It's a pattern.

Remember when he hesitated to declare outright that he'd stop backing Donald Trump if Trump admitted to rape? More recently, he attracted embarrassing attention by declaring that if Trump said he loved puppies, the story would be that he hates kittens. The list of silly statements is longer but life is short. It's increasingly embarrassing to be the answer to a question wondered nationwide: Who elected this (fill in the blank)?

Finally, there's someone else important to us who we can't let down by ignoring Farenthold's remark: James Walker of Refugio, who wrote a Letter to the Editor sharing his dismay not only with Farenthold but also with Trump for his highly inappropriate political remarks to the Boy Scouts of America.

Walker wrote that he was much more dismayed by the lack of response than by what Farenthold and Trump said. Walker went further to say that, though his voice may be small, he would use it.

His voice is not small. And for us not to use ours would be wrong. We must speak up for him, for Farenthold's perpetually embarrassed constituents, for angry women and for what's right.

If Farenthold wants to be rather than just talk tough, he should conduct town halls on health care, the issue that prompted his remarks. These town halls should be scheduled for maximum convenience to his lowest-income, least-mobile, least-digital-savvy constituents. Our would-be duelist-to-the-death has been avoiding them. In his absence they have been haranguing cardboard effigies of him. Giving them the real thing would take only a little fortitude, not much.

There are other ways Farenthold could show, constructively, how tough he is. He could show us colleagues and bureaucrats with their arms in slings because he twisted them, hard, to expedite the deepening and widening of the still-not-deepened, not-widened Corpus Christi Ship Channel.

Let him show his toughness by being the strong, silent type, too busy working for his constituents on the hard stuff to waste time mouthing off. It's the one example set by his predecessor, Solomon Ortiz, that Farenthold should mimic.

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