I’m disappointed with Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback’s response to a high school student’s tweet and with media coverage of the resulting fuss.
From his initial bullying response to his grudging, whining apology that didn’t really accept responsibility, Brownback has behaved as the child in this whole incident. And the media should have called him on his lame apology.
Brownback spoke Nov. 21 to a Youth in Government program visiting Topeka on a school field trip. A student at the program, Emma Sullivan, tweeted:
She didn’t really talk to Brownback; she was just joking among her friends, as kids tend to do using social media. But Brownback was listening — reading, actually. As the Kansas City Star reported, Brownback’s director of communication, Sherriene Jones-Sontag, called the tweet to the attention of a Youth in Government program official, who notified Shawnee Mission East Principal Karl Krawitz. The student got the proverbial call to the principal’s office, where she was told to write an apology letter.
Suddenly Brownback’s staff had lots more tweets to read:
https://twitter.com/#!/rainbow_sauce/status/139908343195111424
The governor’s reaction could not have been more stupid. The response to the tweet should have taken one of these approaches:
- Ignore it. He’s the governor. He’s the grown-up. He should have a thick skin and a mature reaction.
- Respond with a light-hearted tweet showing some humor and willingness to engage.
- Invite the girl to come spend a day at the governor’s office. She gets a civics lesson and some swag. She meets the governor (a nice enough fellow in person) and probably ends up with a positive tweet (even if she didn’t agree with him politically, she might credit him with being a nice guy).
But Brownback’s bullying and Krawitz’s lack of backbone (he should have told the governor’s office it was out of line) were shameful. And Sunday, Sullivan stood up to them:
Since Brownback blew with his initial response, by Monday the situation called for a simple, abject and sincere apology. Here’s what I suggested:
Alas, the governor did not seek my advice. Here’s what Brownback’s “apology” said (published in full below, with my commentary in bold in parentheses):
My staff over-reacted to this tweet, and for that I apologize. (Whatever happened to “the buck stops here”? Every politician sets the tone in his or her office and is responsible for the work of his staff. How many times has Brownback claimed and received credit for the work of his staff? When the staff does something stupid in your name, be a man and take the heat rather than pointing fingers.) Freedom of speech is among our most treasured freedoms.
I enjoyed speaking to the more than 100 students who participated in the Youth in Government Program at the Kansas Capitol. They are our future.
I also want to thank the thousands of Kansas educators who remind us daily of our liberties, as well as the values of civility and decorum. (The snarkiness of the student’s tweet does not justify bullying by a politician and a principal. So platitudes — whining, really — about civility and decorum have no place in an apology. It’s as much as saying, “I was right, but I apologize,” which is no apology.)
Again, I apologize for our over-reaction.”
The Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times and CBS all reported the apology, but I haven’t seen anyone note that he threw his staff under the bus, rather than accepting responsibility. A stuffy Kansas City Star editorial and Washington Post blogger Alexandra Petri faulted Brownback and the school but couldn’t resist whining about the rudeness of the tweet.
Let me be clear here: If I were the student’s father, I might have chastised her gently for her disrespectful language. I might have done the same if I were her teacher, if I saw the tweet on my own, without involvement of Brownback’s office. If I were her father or teacher, I might have suggested (but probably wouldn’t have required) that she write a letter to Brownback, explaining respectfully whatever criticism she has. But I also might let it pass; I’d rather have a daughter or student who’s confident about voicing opinions on politics than one who’s uninterested in politics or worried about being scolded for speaking her mind.
But Brownback’s staff should have shrugged the tweet off or responded maturely. The principal and school officials should have told Brownback’s staff that he was out of bounds and that they would not even discuss the tweet with Sullivan. And the media should respect the right to criticize government officials without feeling the need to scold the student for a little youthful snark. Especially since they didn’t fault the adult for his lame, the-buck-stops-over-there-and-remember-she-was-uncivil non-apology. Petri actually, and incredibly, praised Brownback for his apology and said that Sullivan should apologize to him.
Sometimes my colleagues in the news media baffle me. If you’re going to scold the kid for her snarky tweet, at least give her credit for quoting Gandhi, too:
Two footnotes that relate more to cluelessness about Twitter than to who was right and who was wrong in this fuss:
- Brownback apologized on his Facebook page, but not on his Twitter account. Didn’t this fuss start on Twitter? Doesn’t he want some of those people who were ripping him to retweet his apology (presuming that they won’t notice how weak it was)?
- Dean Obeidallah of CNN saw something sinister in the fact that Brownback’s office was monitoring tweets. Politicians routinely monitor mentions of them in professional media and respond to constituent letters and emails. Why wouldn’t they monitor what is being said about them in social media? Update: I see that the CNN piece identifies Obeidallah as a comedian, so I want to clarify that this is a commentary (and not that funny). Update #2. See Obeidallah’s response at the end.
Personal disclosures: I covered and interviewed Brownback nearly 20 years ago when I was a reporter and he was Kansas agriculture secretary. We didn’t become friends, by any means, but he was a helpful source and I liked him.
My views of Brownback’s failure to take responsibility for his staff are, I am sure, influenced by the fact that two of my sons have worked for U.S. senators. Mike, my oldest son, was press secretary, communication director and later chief of staff for former Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican. My youngest son, Tom, is a legislative correspondent for Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat.
Nearly final note (updated): I will send have sent emails and/or social messages tomorrow inviting response from the journalists cited here, as well as Brownback, Krawitz and Sullivan.
Final note: Emma Sullivan, who reportedly had 61 Twitter followers last week, has 13,715 as I write this. @govsambrownback has 3,336.
Response from Dean Obeidallah:
Thanks for the emails – As long as we all have the right to mock elected officials when they suck, Im happy -if not, as a comedian Im out of business and more importantly it’s bad for our nation.
Im happy that so many stood up to Gov Brownback so quickly – thankfully it was not partisan, but just about what is good for America. (it’s truly rare in today’s political climate that Dems and Reps agree on anything)
I do think that there is a Big Brother feel to elected officials monitoring our personal Twitter and Facebook accounts and then having their aides contact people who hold power over us in the hopes of stifling criticism of them- I hope you agree with that. We must all stand up against that and its important the media and Americans be vigilant when our fundamental freedoms – speech, association or religion – are being infringed upon by our elected officials.
Thanks to Dean for that quick response. I agree fully, except that I have no problem with elected officials monitoring their mentions in social media. It was the response that was inappropriate.
The Buttry Diary 
Steve, as far as I can see, the articles you link to all quote Brownback’s “apology” in which he lays responsibility at the feet of his staff. I’m not sure how much more the authors needed to say. If readers need someone to quote that and then *also* tell them, “Look, he’s blaming his staff!”, then America is in worse intellectual shape than I have often feared.
One would hope the teacher would use this opportunity to help the students learn to craft intelligent policy critiques in < 140 characters. Judging by Ms. Sullivan's general tweeting, I'd say she could use a few such lessons; quoting Gandhi alone does not brilliance make.
That said, I agree this was blown out of proportion, and the governor and his staff appear to be very, very bad at social media.
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Sarah, thanks for your comment. I like your suggestion for the teacher, though I will always credit a student for quoting Gandhi (and the jerks who scolded her for rudeness should at least have noted that). On the reporting, I disagree. Certainly the Alexandra Petri piece, which was commentary, should have noted that Brownback was passing the buck, rather than praising him. And I don’t think that neutral reporting would rule out a set-up saying that he apologized but blamed his staff.
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Thanks for the coverage, Steve! Justice has come to the governor.
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Thoughtful post and I liked your commentary. But I seriously think the world has spent far too much time discussing this. Seriously. Live, learn and move on. Life is far too short. Just sayin’.
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On one level, I agree. That’s why I passed on this the first time around. But when the media reports on his apology were so lame, as if it were a genuine apology, and some of them had the nerve to whine about the girl being rude, well, sometimes you gotta help folks learn before you move on.
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Hi Steve! Here’s what Petri said in a live chat today:
Yeah, I’ve gotten some flak for being, in Weingarten’s phrase, a cantankerous young fud who fails to acknowledge the obligation of teenagers to say inane things. As someone who depends upon the right to say inane things for her livelihood, I think I should have given this line of thinking a little more credit. I still think you apologize when you’re rude to people and try hard not to be (this belief will last until someone gives me a cable show) but I am more sympathetic in retrospect to the idea that you shouldn’t be required to maintain ideal levels of decorum in communications that you, thinking like a teenager, post on the Internet in an area you assume will be private. Maybe it’s not that awful an assumption — you never think you’ll be tracked across the Internet and called for apologies because you correctly assume that the Brownback staffers should be doing something better with their time. But once it’s out there, it’s rude, and if she wanted to be the bigger person in this interaction instead of just letting the Internet hoist her up in triumph, an unforced apology that at least admitted what she said was uncivil would have done that. I can understand the temptation not to offer one, though. Why do it when the people on your side won’t appreciate it? That’s what worries me.
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Thanks, Brad. Did she have any excuse for not similarly ripping Brownback for not knowing how to apologize?
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Not that I saw.
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Brad, am I mistaken here, or do we have a columnist for a newspaper with a national following saying she didn’t think through her words enough before submitting them for publication, while at the same time still calling a teenager rude for a tweet that took the kid 15 seconds to compose?
I sense quite a bit of hypocrisy there.
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Yeah, I think so.
I’m still bitter about the lunchtime detention I got in the sixth grade for writing “Eat Your English Book” on the classroom chalkboard. In fact, I staged a hunger strike (that day).
So I think teenagers should be punished for what they say, in cosmic fairness to me.
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Steve, I have been fascinated by this story since it broke, and this is by far the best analysis I have read about it.
I will say this about Brownback, though. Although he did blame his staff, he did say, “I apologize” instead of “We apologize” for whatever that was worth.
But I would like to hear also from your son, the former communications director. After someone on the staff did something this dumb, would it have taken him five days to draft an apology, even over a holiday weekend?
That’s my concern here. It certainly appears that Brownback “apologized” only after he was forced to after nearly a week of ridicule. And that point seems to have been missed by everyone except you.
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Thanks, Kevin. I will pass your suggestion on to Mike. I don’t know whether he will want to weigh in. I also don’t know whether or how well he knows Brownback, who served in the Senate with Chuck Hagel.
I should say, though, that I don’t think there was a week of ridicule involved. The tweet was on a Monday. I’m not sure how long it took for the story to break. There was a delay of some sort as Brownback’s staff saw the tweet, passed it on to school officials and the student got called to the principal’s office. I’m not sure when the girl was called to the principal’s office and when the story broke, but the Kansas City Star story about the incident was posted late Wednesday evening. So it appears that the story broke heading into the holiday. I didn’t see coverage of the incident till Friday. As critical as I am of the initial response and the apology, I’ll cut some slack for apologizing by Monday, given the holiday weekend.
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Steve, the story also broke in The Wichita Eagle on Wednesday, Nov. 23, as well as The Kansas City Star, so you have the two biggest papers covering Kansas reporting on it. It was also picked up by the AP, and quickly spread all over the Internet. By Friday, it was coast to coast, when you learned about it, and the governor was becoming a laughingstock.
Just from a simple communications management standpoint, it seems to me you cannot let a story like that continue to fester and grow, holiday weekend or not.
It certainly appears to me, at least, that the governor’s people thought the story might die out with Thanksgiving, Black Friday, etc., and compounded the mistake.
Not seeking your son’s opinion about Brownback. Just wondering how he would handle a “bad” story from his professional viewpoint. To me, this is a classic case of turning one day’s worth of bad press into a week’s worth of bad press.
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Oh, and the timeline of all the events as I understand it is the girl posted her tweet sometime on Monday, Nov. 21 and was in the principal’s office on Tuesday, Nov. 22, her first day back from the field trip to Topeka.
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The Wichita Eagle story was also published Wednesday evening. I should note here that I’m not defending the timing. Yes, they should have apologized Friday, when the story went viral. But in my view, this is a distant third in the problems with Brownback’s response here, behind the initial bullying and the grudging, finger-pointing nature of the apology. Especially with a holiday and a weekend thrown in, I’d give them a pass if they had come up with a better apology by Monday. But yes, Friday was the better time to apologize.
My point in responding was not that I disagreed with you that he should have responded more quickly, but trying to clarify the facts. You said “nearly a week of ridicule,” and I don’t think the ridicule was strong until Friday. The incident started a week before the apology, but not the ridicule.
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Five days, the time it took Brownback to “apologize” is nearly a week. And to me the timing is relevant because it took five days of ridicule before he “apologized.”
In addition to blaming his staff, that to me makes the “apology” even more insincere. It sounds to me more like, “I’m sorry my staff got caught” rather than “I’m sorry my staff did this in the first place.”
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Uh-oh. Now Ruth Marcus has weighed in:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/emma-sullivans-potty-mouthed-tweet-has-a-lesson-for-all-of-us/2011/11/29/gIQAG6CEAO_story.html?hpid=z5
I’m looking forward to hearing what that crotchety ol’ John Rosemond has to say.
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I’m sorry I called John Rosemond ‘crotchety.’
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Sounds accurate to me. Perhaps Emma Sullivan could suggest a hashtag for you to use.
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Oh my word! “Potty-mouthed tweet”? It appears that Ruth Marcus hasn’t been around a real, live American teenager in decades.
Why has a person with such delicate ears been given space in a major national newspaper?
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You know, you mentioned that and I remembered that just a few months ago Ruth Marcus wrote about having the tree outside her home tee-peed by teenagers and had a good laugh about it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/the-good-news-in-a-toilet-paper-prank/2011/06/16/AG1phdXH_blog.html
Maybe it just depends on your mood — or the proximity of the teenager.
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Hey Kevin,
This is Steve’s son Mike. They probably did take too long to realize this thing was going sideways on them. The fact that it was a holiday weekend made it a great time to apologize.
Yes, the apology was lame, but it was probably written by staff who had to have a painful conversation with the Governor about why he was getting all this negative attention for something he had nothing to do with and probably didn’t understand. I think they probably threw themselves under the bus. I’d note that aside from the attention my Dad paid to it, the apology did its job (and let’s be clear…the objective of the apology was to make this go away, not express contrition). They managed to avoid making this story worse.
Obviously, they should have ignored it. I’m sure there are more important things for the Governor’s staff to be working on than increasing the twitter followship of a rude teenager.
Enjoyed the post Dad.
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Hey, thanks Mike. It also struck me that they lost a wonderful opportunity to make lemonade here, had the “apology” been issued no later than Friday.
I’m from KC, and there has been a rather concentrated effort here to spin the story into “the girl was rude.” And that seems to be meeting with some degree of success, judging by brad’s like to Ruth Marcus’ idiotic column.
I do agree with your dad that the issue of the timing of the apology is down on the list of important things learned from this episode, and it is certainly “inside baseball” for people in the communications field.
But if that is down on the list, where does the “girl was rude” rank? About 843rd?
By the way, I am on the other side of the political fence, but Chuck Hagel certainly had my respect. Too bad we don’t have more grownups like him around in government any more.
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Hey! I didn’t say I liked it. I didn’t even click a ‘like’ button.
I just provided the link, called parenting columnist John Rosemond a name and followed up with the information that Ruth Marcus had a bunch of toilet paper in her tree a few months ago.
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Oops, sorry. My mind thought “link” and my fingers typed “like”. That happens more and more with age.
Any way, my fingers over-reacted and for that I apologize.
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It’s OK. I was only mock indignant anyway.
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Thanks for your insight, Mike. I still think the buck stops with Brownback. He signed off on the apology, and should have had the good sense to cut out the gratuitous whining about civility and simply take the heat, even if staffers were willing to fall on the sword.
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