PERRY: Reel in spiteful politicians who party hardy at their foul ball

After decades of watching people for a living, little mystifies me about humans — except for one thing.

I’ve never understood why some people, especially people in the public eye, are so spiteful.

I don’t mean pithy or willing to hand off a cleverly-worded slight. That just keeps things interesting.

I’m talking about an explosion of people who make it their trademark to say savagely cruel things about people they often don’t know and have never even met.

I’m not so naive as to think that bullying behavior was invented alongside social media, but I’ve never seen and heard so much raw savagery publicly flung by so many, only to be lauded for their ferociousness for “telling it like it is.”

Mean comics were all the rage long before there was anything more exciting than late-night color TV.

Joan Rivers brutally harassed other celebrities, and especially Elizabeth Taylor.

“Elizabeth Taylor, fat? Her favorite food is seconds,” drew rim shots on TV talk shows for years. “She’s the only person I know who stands in front of a microwave and screams, ‘hurry!’”

But what set Rivers and other insult comics apart from today’s bullies was how they dished out deprecating humor about themselves, too. 

“I wish I had a twin, so I could know what I’d look like without plastic surgery,” was a Rivers standard.

Then, Twitter and Donald Trump came along. One night after a GOP presidential primary debate Trump was degrading former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly for her no-nonsense pursuit of answers from him.

“There was blood coming out of her wherever,” Trump said, to the delight of millions.

For years after, Trump hurled fabulously grotesque and vicious barbs across the Twitterverse and on TV. His go-to punch was calling women ugly, fat or stupid. Men he hates are “weak” and “losers.”

Rather than call out his bullying, many of his political allies began imitating him, even turning up the heat on heartless harangues.

Colorado first-term Congressperson Lauren Boebert has built her nascent political career on volumes of crass and ruthless remarks, let alone a massive catalogue of delusions, propaganda and ridiculous falsehoods.

During the president’s state of union speech this year, Boebert tweeted, “Nancy looks a bit sad tonight, have they already put sanctions on the Russian vodka?”

Her thin repertoire focuses mostly on making fun of Pelosi and President Joe Biden for being old. “Will the new nursing home regulations apply to the White House, too?”

Boebert often takes her cruel and bullying remarks to the outer limits, recently being called out even by her own Republican peers for “joking” that a Muslim member of Congress is a terrorist, and that Boebert was safe in an elevator because U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar wasn’t “carrying a backpack.”

It’s virtually a daily race to the bottom between Boebert and fellow GOP Congressperson Marjorie Taylor Greene to see who can launch the most malicious sneer of the day.

After Boebert was recently called out  by a fellow Republican congressperson for attacking Omar, Greene jumped to Boebert’s defense by calling fellow GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina “trash” because Mace supported a rape exception in a failed bill outlawing abortions. Mace explained her support to fellow members saying she was sexually assaulted as a teen.

It’s unclear whether that vicious iniquity rolled downhill to Aurora, where some members of the city council lob venomous slurs at each other and others they don’t like.

Councilmember Danielle Jurinsky called now-fired Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson “trash” during a segment on a right-wing talk radio show a few months ago.

No one is above being targeted. Here in Aurora, at the State Capitol or in Congress, all are regular and fair game.

GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Greg Lopez told supporters during a recent campaign speech, “I think it’s time we had a real first lady,” slurring Colorado’s First Gentleman Marlon Reis, husband of Gov. Jared Polis.

The homophobic slam, which, at best, hints that LGBTQ residents are inferior to heterosexuals, barely drew attention even among political insiders.

No one, anywhere is immune to this pandemic of animus.

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who also preens to news that he’s fast with hurtful insults to anyone, told lifetime military veteran and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin he’s an unparalleled failure.

“I’m embarrassed by your leadership,” Gaetz said during a recent hearing. “It’s disgraceful that you would sit here and conflate your failures with those of uniformed service members.” Austin is a West Point grad and retired after 41 years in uniform as a four-star Army general.

There’s no shortage of answers why people behave this way. Sigmund Freud made a career out of explaining that people who do this have deep-seated insecurities and lash out in a moment of transference. Other research shows that these people are often hurt badly by insults either lobbed at them or even self-inflicted. Current research reveals that people feeling threatened by tanking self-esteem or guilt are fast to hit the “cruel” button.

Clearly, though, these people keep on staying publicly malevolent because there’s a payoff. People cheering rather than jeering these vicious spiteful jabs signal campaign dollars and a rush of approval endorphins.

Maybe it’s our fault they continue to be so savage. We seem to fail to see these people as political and community leaders instead of third-rate insult comics.

It’s a fad in journalism right now to simply ignore politicians and other social media trolls that pour out hatefulness and delusion with massive megaphones day in and day out.

While millions of Twitter followers of people like Boebert and Greene just keep on liking every odious thing they post, fewer call them out for their cruelty.

Why not just ask them, “why are you being so mean?” The answer would have to be either, Biden, Pelosi, Polis, Chief Wilson deserve to be targets of hate speech, or, Boebert, Greene, Trump or Jurinsky have psychological problems that deserve to be addressed.

Letting them go on ad nauseum isn’t doing anything but pumping up the volume and growing market share among other people who enjoy and take part in the sadism.

I’m not the only one who thinks looking the other way is the wrong plan.

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything,” Albert Einstein famously said. 

Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com