Jan Brewer’s speech about her decision to veto of the knuckledragging attempt of the Arizona legislature (the epitome of a corrupt, ALEC-driven state legislature) to push their state deeper in the dark ages with a bible-driven condemnation of gay marriage) turned out to be graceful and “ungrudging,” as Hendrik Hertzberg writes in the New Yorker.
Okay, she was under pressure from higher-ups in the Republican party to reject a bill that could prove too much of an embarrassment to the party in November. But the governor, not known for her grace and decency, was graceful and decent in her decision.
Jan Brewer! Wow! Who would have thought she could produce such an effective put-down of “ugliness.”
Wow. She’s saying that discrimination is at the very heart of the bill.
“Going forward, let’s turn the ugliness of the debate over Senate Bill 1062 into a renewed search for greater respect and understanding among all Arizonans and Americans.”
It’s not really “the debate” that she’s calling ugly. The ugliness is the bill, without which there wouldn’t be a debate. And what is respect and understanding if not tolerance and acceptance?
Speaking of ugliness, don’t get me wrong: Jan Brewer’s governorship has not exactly been a thing of beauty. She abolished state-administered health insurance for children whose families weren’t quite poor enough for Medicaid. She has been unbelievably cruel in her treatment of undocumented immigrants. And before she was against discrimination she was for it, supporting ballot propositions banning not just marriage equality but civil unions, too.
But it was a damn good speech—unequivocal, ungrudging, and stern. That it was delivered by a Republican governor in a Republican state—and delivered with every sign of sincerity, even passion—is simply the latest astonishment in an astonishing American revolution. The change is, as Governor Brewer says, dramatic. It is tectonic. It is unstoppable. In an otherwise foreboding political landscape, it’s a blazing sunrise. …Hendrik Hertzberg, New Yorker