Tuesday, 3/3

I, personally, think the description is apt.

My TV piece last night dealt with what Marquette residents went through last week; namely, the ultimately unsuccessful search for missing NMU student Trenton Massey, and how the community pitched in in an attempt to find him. At the end of the piece I talked about the old Mr Rogers quote on “looking for the helpers”, saying that maybe the one good thing to take away from this whole tragedy is that the residents of Marquette ARE, indeed, the helpers.

I'm often wrong about things, but this is one time I know I'm not.

I guess i would hope that residents of EVERY community could find it in themselves to be called “helpers”, but something I saw after getting home from TV last night reminded me that might be one of things about which I might be wrong.

A Facebook friend of mine had expressed sympathy for a group of marginalized people, and shared the reaction someone from his hometown (another community in Upper Michigan) had stuck on the post. I'm not going to quote it exactly, because it was not nice, but in essence it said “the people of Marquette are corrupting you”. Now, I know that we live in an extremely polarized world these days, and that for some individuals empathy for others and hate of “the other” has been weaponized. The comment left on the post is proof positive of that. But to say that the people of Marquette, one of the kindest groups of people you'll ever meet, a group that turned out en masse to help find someone who was missing, are a “corrupting influence” on someone?

Really?????

Like I said, I know we live in a polarized world these days, and that the very things that make the residents of Marquette “helpers” are looked down upon by a certain segment of society. But you know what? I'll take love over hate, inclusion over division, and helpers over takers, any single day of the week. I would do that even if I wasn't one of the “corrupted residents” of Marquette. Why?

Because that's what being a good human being IS.

Here's the TV piece from last night--

(jim@wmqt.com), corrupted resident of Marquette.