How About Cutting Darius Khalil Gordon Some Slack? – OpEd

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A Thursday Free Beacon article by Joe Schoffstall purports to expose Darius Khalil Gordon, a newly hired Bernie Sanders presidential campaign employee, as having “a history of racial slurs and denigrating remarks directed at gays, Jews, and women.” Some Twitter posts attributed to Gordon are presented in the article as evidence for this conclusion.

All the Gordon tweets but one included in the article are from a period in 2010 through 2012. Do they represent Gordon’s current thinking? It has been seven to nine years since he posted those tweets. It is even worth considering to what extent these years-old tweets ever really represented Gordon’s views.

There is no mention in the Free Beacon article of how old Gordon was when he posted the tweets or what his circumstances were at the time. Gordon’s LinkedIn page fills in some of that information. It indicates that Gordon posted the old tweets around the time he was a salesman at shoe sores, his first listed jobs after spending 2007 through 2010 in college right after finishing high school. It was not until later — in 2013 — that Gordon had his first listed post-college politics-related job.

People working in politics-related jobs tend to know — especially in the last few years — their every written word may be criticized and tend to choose their words more carefully or are prepared to face the challenges that can come in response to loose talk. But, a twenty-something shoe salesman? That’s different — loose talk, exaggeration, and jokes in “bad taste” should not be surprising. Twitter for such a person will likely be more a place to blow off some steam and have some fun than a venue for expounding “profound truths.”

The Free Beacon article does include one more-recent tweet. The article relates that in that Twitter post Gordon retweeted an October of 2018 The Hill article, along with an image of a Palestine flag and the following comment:

This is my homie Lara, who just graduated from University of Florida. Please help her from being detained in Israel, for leading Palestinian-led boycotts bit.ly/LaraAlqasem #FreeLara #FreePalestine

Of course, there are neither “racial slurs” nor anything denigrating anyone in that post.

UPDATE: CNN reported Friday afternoon that Gordon is no longer employed by the Sanders campaign.


This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

Adam Dick

Adam Dick is a Senior Fellow at Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Adam worked from 2003 through 2013 as a legislative aide for Rep. Ron Paul. Previously, he was a member of the Wisconsin State Board of Elections, a co-manager of Ed Thompson's 2002 Wisconsin governor campaign, and a lawyer in New York and Connecticut.

4 thoughts on “How About Cutting Darius Khalil Gordon Some Slack? – OpEd

  • December 8, 2019 at 2:13 pm
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    How about cutting others some slack; how about all those statues taken down, or Kavanaugh or comics who have lost thier jobs for something they said 12 years earlier, or the young baseball player that posted some questionable things WHILE IN HIGH SCHOOL….

    Reply
  • December 8, 2019 at 4:45 pm
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    It hardly matters to me if Gordon’s tweets took place a few years back or not.

    They are tribal in nature and they reflect very backwards thinking. Likewise Sanders should have cut ties to other questionable supporters.

    I was disgusted by these tweets – as anyone with any common sense would be. These were not run of the mill mistakes of “youth” (as this article implies) – but a cynical and bigoted worldview.

    Sorry.

    Reply
  • December 9, 2019 at 7:11 am
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    Adam, I landed on this site while searching for Gordon’s age. I was thinking along the same lines as you. A person can grow a lot in 9 years, and if he’s now in his mid-20’s I could see giving the guy a pass.

    Thanks for the additional info, but.. it actually weakens the case: those tweets are from a guy at the end of his college years.

    What’s probably even worse is that, once he became politically active (presumably some years ago), he didn’t go and carefully clean up his social media postings.

    Finally, this story doesn’t show the Sanders campaign as being particularly meticulous.

    Reply
  • December 13, 2019 at 7:00 pm
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    I grew up pre social media and I can only imagine some of the things I would have written in my teens, 20’s or sadly beyond. Wisdom comes with age. My college years were confusing, to say the least. I thought I was open minded, but found the aggressive advocacy by some a turnoff and for a few years I held conservative viewpoints until I listened to conservatives who pushed me in the other direction. My grown son opened my eyes to the progressive movement. Life is about growth and no one should be judged by the viewpoints they held in the past, but by their current actions. What you do is all that matters. No matter what I FELT in the past, I never caused anyone any harm and what you do is the best predictor of character. If we were all judged by the stupidest thing we said or wrote, who could stand?

    Reply

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