Letter to the editor: Kirk not responsible for his death

The headline “Kirk’s campus event polarizing” on page A7 of Thursday’s print edition is a bit perplexing as a continuation of the front-page story by the Associated Press. Nowhere does the article quote Utah Valley University students at the event expressing such an opinion. Much of the mainstream media chimes in that Charlie Kirk was controversial or right wing or something on the marginal fringes.

Nowhere did I see such mainstream media comments when describing the 2020 summer of riots when antifa or far-left groups were creating mayhem in Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis and St. Louis, just to name a few cities. Why do you suppose that is?

Kirk was a disrupter of the status quo who went on college campuses and challenged the view that all young college educated kids should subscribe to the dogma of the far left. It is a status quo badly in need of disruption, much as the Rev. Martin Luther King disrupted the status quo when I was a pup and was also assassinated for his trouble. Even as a boy, I recall King described as polarizing, a womanizer, disruptive and worse as if he was somehow at least partly responsible for his own assassination. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now.

David Staples

Hempfield