Don Young the braying jackass

Rep. Don Young (R-AK) addressed a high school assembly Tuesday. It didn't go well.

Zachary Grier, 17, a senior at Wasilla High School, asked Young during the assembly why he still opposed same-sex marriage, even after a court struck down Alaska's ban on same-sex unions. Young responded by asking Grier, “What do you get when you have two bulls having sex?” When Grier answered that he didn’t know, Young told him: “A whole lot of bull.”

This is the remark that has gotten a lot of media attention. It's asinine, no question, and Young's attitude is patronizing to boot — ironic, considering how much smarter these kids are than he.

However, this is the reason Young should be kicked in his posterior until he begs, borrows, or buys a clue.

Even more shocking, Grier said, was the way Young talked about suicide less than a week after a high school classmate took his own life. Young told the assembly of about 130 students that suicide was caused by a lack of community support, which angered a close friend of the deceased student. When the student interrupted Young to say that wasn’t true, the congressman called him a “smartass,” Grier said.

Strike that — Young doesn't need a clue, he needs a fucking heart.

Don Young sure as hell wasn't closer to that student than the classmate was. He has some goddamned nerve not just being on his fucking soapbox, but then smacking down the student's grieving friend like a heckler at a comedy club.

I get the feeling Young thinks what he did is tough love, telling hard truths to ignorant young people. It's not. What Young said and did was simply heartless. He thought he knew more than his audience did. He was cruel out of moronic arrogance.

This isn't the first time Young has been an arrogant, ill-mannered boor. Back in 2011 I commented on a contretemps during Congressional hearings on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A witness had the temerity to interrupt Young in order to correct Young's misstatement of his name; Young, with the self-righteousness only a lifetime in Congress could bring, retorted, “I'll call you anything I want to call you when you sit in that chair. You just be quiet.” At that time I wrote:

Don Young, if you were anywhere near as smart as the people who testify at Congressional hearings, you'd have a real job. Instead, you're a sorry little man desperate for respect, and you use your public office to extort it from people during hearings.

Apparently Young is a sorry little man desperate for respect when he's outside the halls of Congress, too.

Young would be lucky if he had the brains of the "smartass" who interrupted him. Alas, he's just an ass(hole).

[EDIT: To clarify who Don Young is (representative of Alaska) and to include a prior reference to him in another post.]