Don’t understand why people are lining up to defend him. The correct take is:
His former political director, Genevieve McDonald, a former state representative who resigned on Friday over the Reddit comments, remained very skeptical about Platner’s explanation of the tattoo.
“Platner prides himself on his extensive knowledge of military history,” McDonald said. “While he may not have known what his tattoo meant when he selected the image, it is not plausible he remained ignorant of its meaning all these years.”
Honestly, I wouldn’t know about the association or recognize the tattoo as problematic but-for people being upset about it.
And his priding himself on his knowledge of military history doesn’t necessarily mean his knowledge of military history actually is exhaustive.
I don’t feel a need to defend him, and someone who wishes to get involved in politics probably should have already sought to remove the tattoo…but absent other indications of problematic philosophy, Occam suggests that the tattoo is evidence of nothing more than having made a stupid or uninformed decision when younger.
It’s a big deal when he has specifically called it a Totenkopf.
But according to a person who socialized with Platner when he was living in Washington, D.C., more than a decade ago, Platner had specifically acknowledged that the tattoo was a Totenkopf, the “death’s head” symbol adopted by an infamous Nazi SS unit that guarded concentration camps in World War II.
“He said, ‘Oh, this is my Totenkopf,’” the former acquaintance told Jewish Insider recently, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive issue. “He said it in a cutesy little way.”
This. Perhaps it’s true that he did not know that when he got it as a young man, but it seems he learned what it was at some point. Should have had it removed if it didn’t represent his views.
That sways my inclination to give him the benefit of the doubt. While it could still be youthful stupidity and a lack of awareness, our elected officials should be more aware than the average person.
The rotation where I was the pet actuary for our government relations team, and I got trotted out on a few industry lobbying trips went a LONG way towards fueling my cynicism towards government.
I dunno, looking a wikipedia, totenkopf is pretty much the german translation for skull and crossbones, and general term that pre-dated Nazis. I guess I would be more interested in the story if he acted like a Nazi or a racist or something that aligned to this than go off some dumb things he did when he was young.
Reading these posts makes me think. All the time, people ask, “how can Republicans support these people? How can they ignore all the crazy things they say/do?”
Well, look at the attempts at defense coming here now. Ask yourself, if Platner was a Republican, would you be saying the same?
We all try to defend those we identify with. It’s human nature.
I just looked up more on the guy, and yeah, it looks like his history is more than a bad decision from 20 years ago. He’s got a least some amount of owning up to other more recent comments online. The tattoo thing doesn’t seem that bad in isolation.
There’s not much to support. I’m disappointed the Democrats have a poor candidate to run against a vulnerable seat. Hopefully they come up with a better one by the time the primaries come around.
The primary isn’t for 8 months. It’s ridiculous that we are even talking about the candidates at this time. Oh, and there are 9 freaking candidates already declared.
