by Lowell Feld and Jarrod Nagurka
Virginia State Senator Mark “Criminalize Miscarriages” Obenshain (R-Extremesville), who came horrifyingly close in 2013 to becoming Virginia’s Attorney General, strikes again. Click on the image to “embiggen,” and check out how Obenshain finds it absolutely HI-larious that a desperate, freezing (and possibly mentally unstable, based on her behavior) woman threw “a piece of concrete through a window at the General Assembly Building on Thursday night during a legislative committee meeting apparently was trying to get arrested so that she would have a place to stay on a bitterly cold night, according to Capitol Police.”
The response by Obenshain — one of the most extreme, bizarre members of the Virginia General Assembly (and that’s saying a lot, given some of the crazies there) — was not empathy or even the oxymoronic “compassionate conservativsm,” was to joke about the incident (“I don’t have to list that as a gift, do I?” “justanotherdayattheoffice” etc.). Hardy har har. As I said, HI-larious! Not.
For some thoughts on all this, see below for Democratic campaign manager and UVA senior Jarrod Nagurka’s response last night. I agree 100% with Jarrod on this one.
Tonight, Senator Mark D. Obenshain yet again demonstrated his total lack of compassion, empathy, and understanding of those less fortunate than himself. Ahead of the huge snowstorm and freezing temperatures, a woman threw a brick through a wall at the General Assembly so that she could be arrested and spend the night off the streets and in a warm place– jail. Rather than try to understand this woman’s desperate circumstances, Obenshain decided to make jokes out of the whole incident at the expense of someone who clearly can’t defend herself and is in need of our community’s help, not vilification. I called him out on twitter, and he proceeded to defend his remarks because the woman also punched a passerby in an attempt to get arrested (victim sustained minor injuries.) Personally, I don’t think this poor woman’s wrongs– because there’s never a defense for injuring someone else– in order to find a warm place to sleep warrants a State Senator’s attacks. Senator Obenshain’s actions are beneath the office he holds, and he should apologize immediately. And for those who don’t closely follow Virginia politics, this guy was less than 300 votes from being our current Attorney General.
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