U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, who nurtures a high national profile, yukked it up Tuesday morning on nationwide conservative radio with Hugh Hewitt. He referred to journalists as "special snowflakes," which is Trump-era name-calling for liberals.
The point is to ridicule those who are responsibly fearful of Donald Trump's irresponsible essence. It's to characterize those persons as uncommonly soft and delicate, needing to be treated as special because, after all, no two snowflakes are alike.
Meanwhile, back in Arkansas on that same Tuesday morning, a liberal activist named Sarah Scanlon, who headed Bernie Sanders' campaign in Arkansas, and who is no snowflake, was leading a group of four others appearing at the door of Cotton's office in Little Rock and seeking an unscheduled meeting.
The video of the incident as posted by Scanlon on social media revealed a female voice behind the locked door of Cotton's office telling Scanlon through a camera-and-intercom system that, on orders from the senator's Washington office, they would be denying her entry because of "threats we have received."
Scanlon had joined a group of 14 that had been permitted entry on an unannounced visit to Cotton's office the week before. They were escorted to a conference room where they asked--wholly in vain--that Cotton protect the Affordable Care Act and resist confirmation of some of Donald Trump's cabinet nominations.
The two-fold point is that Scanlon was known to the Little Rock office personnel and that something seems to have happened in a week's time that sent Cotton's Little Rock office into a deep cowering position behind locked doors.
It at least begs the question as to the real snowflake.
Then, on Wednesday, more than a hundred persons demonstrated outside Cotton's Springdale office because a scheduled appointment had been abruptly canceled the day before. That was because of sickness, Cotton's spokesman, Caroline Rabbitt, said.
As this newspaper reported on the front page Thursday, all other members of the Arkansas congressional delegation say they accept unannounced visits from constituents and believe it's what they ought to do.
Perhaps Cotton's people have been subjected to special recent threats, though Rabbitt wouldn't get back with me Thursday after I emailed and voice-mailed and otherwise pleaded. She was quoted in the news article as saying the appointment-required entry policy had been in place from the beginning of Cotton's Senate term.
Why, then, would a woman inside the Little Rock office invoke "threats we have received" to deny entry to a woman who had been allowed in with 13 others without an appointment the week before?
Apparently, that's going to go down as one of modern-day political reportage's little mysteries.
Oddly, when Scanlon asked if she could make an appointment, the voice behind Cotton's closed door said no.
So I simply can't say whether the Cotton office's official cowering reflects a specific recent concern or mere right-wing snowflakiness.
I suppose it could be something else entirely. By that I mean utter disdain by Cotton and his people for the relatively small portion of Arkansas voters who don't buy the right-wing simpleton mania that has fueled the rise of the Trumpian menace to decency and reason.
I'm leaning toward that last thing.
I got the idea watching the video that Cotton's people were huddled like snowflakes and whispering to each other that, oh, no, it's that liberal woman and those tacky different-thinking people again.
In fact, I asked Scanlon why she and her bands of liberals even bother pleading a case to representatives of a senator who is belligerent in his conservatism and openly disdainful of even moderate thinking.
She said it was because people who feel powerless in their views and overwhelmingly outnumbered--liberals in Arkansas--need to know that there are those who agree with them and are willing to stand up for their point of view even in a known losing cause.
I get that. And I believe it is just as important that the disdainful senator at least require that his people indulge such visitors and even jot down a few polite and perfunctory notes.
It never hurts to endure other points of view if the tone is civil, the behavior non-abusive and the conversation allowed to end after a reasonable time.
If that conversation must be by appointment rather than drop-in because of one senator's policy presumably based on fears either specific or general ... well, that's less a matter of concern.
We're all special snowflakes, no two of us alike, all delicate and all at risk of meltdown. Loyal opponents should respect their junior senator's people and make an appointment to see them.
And the junior senator's people ought to go ahead and unlock the door and indulge the riff-raff, if but for a little while.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 02/05/2017