In Impromptus today, I touch on a number of issues, as is the habit of the column — its nature, actually. One of them is Springfield, Ohio. It must be the most famous town in America right now (or infamous?). In my column, I quote three men, in particular — three men who have been stand-up in this whole affair, as I see it. Two of them are Republican officials: Ohio governor Mike DeWine and Springfield mayor Rob Rue. The third is Nathan Clark, a Springfield citizen.
Clark’s son, Aiden, was killed in a traffic accident last year. He was eleven. Referring to Aiden, Senator JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, wrote that “a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant.” In response, Aiden’s father said, “My son was not murdered. He was accidentally killed by an immigrant from Haiti.” He had a lot more to say too, about the use of his son by politicians.
As I say in my column, “a father’s indignation can be a powerful thing.”
This morning, the Wall Street Journal published a long, detailed, and revealing article by a trio of reporters: Kris Maher, Valerie Bauerlein, and Tawnell D. Hobbs. The article begins as follows:
City Manager Bryan Heck fielded an unusual question at City Hall on the morning of Sept. 9, from a staff member of Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance. The staffer called to ask if there was any truth to bizarre rumors about Haitian immigrants and pets in Springfield.
“He asked point-blank, ‘Are the rumors true of pets being taken and eaten?’” recalled Heck. “I told him no. There was no verifiable evidence or reports to show this was true. I told them these claims were baseless.”
By then, Vance had already posted about the rumors to his 1.9 million followers on X. Yet he kept the post up, and repeated an even more insistent version of the claim the next morning.
That night, former President Donald Trump stood on a Philadelphia debate stage and shot the rumor into the stratosphere.
There is an old expression in journalism: “too good to check.” Mainly, this is tongue-in-cheek. Of course one must check. You may want a rumor to be true, and loath to discover it is not, but you must check regardless.
Should politicians check, too? Well, Vance checked, apparently (through a staffer). But when he was told no, he went with the rumor anyway. Or persisted with it.
The temptation is so strong: You think a thing ought to be true. It should be true. It feels true. It would be an advantage if it were true.
We have all been there, I think.
Springfield, Ohio, is now combustible. Extremist groups have descended on the town. Threats are in the air. Everyone is on edge. Reports the Journal,
The morning after the debate, parents in Springfield kept their children home en masse. Several schools, City Hall and the state motor vehicle offices in Springfield were forced to evacuate after receiving bomb threats. The city canceled its two-day CultureFest celebrating diversity, arts and culture “in light of recent threats and safety concerns.”
And so on and so forth.
How did all this get started? What is the fons et origo?
The cat-eating rumors, started with a post by a Springfield woman on a private Facebook page, turned out to be third-hand and were subsequently disavowed by the original poster, according to NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation.
Maybe just one more excerpt, from the Journal article:
A Vance spokesperson on Tuesday provided The Wall Street Journal with a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors. But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later — found safe in her own basement.
Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.
What harm does it do? What harm is there in telling stories, true or not, that illustrate a larger point, a larger truth, namely that there are problems with immigration and assimilation (as there have always been and always will be)?
I think back to 1994 — the Maryland gubernatorial race. It pitted Parris Glendening (Democrat) against Ellen Sauerbrey (Republican). Glendening won. At the end of the campaign, he played a very dirty card, portraying Sauerbrey as a racist.
Later, Sauerbrey told me something like the following: “It’s one thing if you lie about a person’s view of tax policy or agricultural subsidies or something. That’s not very nice, but then the election happens, and everybody goes on. Not much harm done. If you lie about a person’s racial views, there’s a lingering effect. The lie corrodes society. It makes race relations worse. It makes it harder for society to heal, after all these years, all these decades.”
We have enough problems in this country without inventing more. And those who exacerbate, or inflame, our problems do us a world of hurt.
The heading of the Journal report is stark: “How the Trump Campaign Ran With Rumors About Pet-Eating Migrants — After Being Told They Weren’t True.” The subheading is stark as well: “Springfield, Ohio, city officials were contacted by Vance’s team and said the claims were baseless. It didn’t matter and now the town is in chaos.”
Chaos is bad. Manufactured chaos is particularly bad — because we will have chaos in life, personal and societal, regardless.
I would like to paste one more bit from my column today:
It is perfectly possible to be an immigration “hawk” — favoring tighter controls, a more orderly process — while refraining from mocking or disparaging immigrants. To say nothing of demonizing them. Immigrants are some of the hardest-working, most enterprising, most admirable people we have. It was once natural for Republicans to say so, and it should be again.
Firmness about public order and decency in expression and behavior: These are not mutually contradictory things.