Megyn Kelly has come under fire recently for her NBC interview with InfoWars founder (and Sandy Hook skeptic) Alex Jones, with several parents of the victims of the infamous 2012 Newtown shooting threatening legal action.
Some of the parents took to social media to bash Megyn Kelly over her decision to interview the controversial conspiracy king, which ultimately led to Kelly being fired from her position as host of an annual Sandy Hook charity event. Other parents-- twelve of them, to be exact-- threatened to sue NBC if they aired the interview with Alex Jones, even though the interview has more to do with Jones' recent custody battle than it has to do with the Newtown massacre.
And this is where the Sandy Hook parents cross the line that divides grief from lunacy.
Will they sue me as well for writing this?
Of course, nothing in the world can compare to the loss of a child. It is, without a doubt, the most soul-shattering tragedy any parent can endure. Nobody, not even the likes of Alex Jones or the most ardent conspiracy theorist, would dispute this fact.
That being said, there is just something unnerving, distasteful, unseemly-- and downright annoying-- about the Sandy Hook parents.
Look, we get it. You lost a child. But guess what? So have thousands upon thousands of other parents. You won't be the first and, sadly, you won't be the last. Just answer me this simple question-- what makes you believe that the blood of your child is any more precious than the blood of another parent's child?
Why is the death of a Sandy Hook Elementary School student any more tragic than the death of a student who died at Columbine or a child who died while attending an Ariana Grande concert?
With all due respect, why do you act as if you have exclusive control of the grieving parent market?
Let's be brutally honest here. A Sandy Hook parent threatening to sue NBC because Megyn Kelly interviewed a guy who once said some bad things about the Newtown shooting is about as ridiculous as a Holocaust survivor threatening to sue the History Channel for airing a program about Hitler.
In fact, it's worse. At least the Holocaust would serve as the focal point of any Hitler documentary, whereas Kelly's interview is not centered around the events of December 14, 2012.
A headache that just won't go away
We rarely hear a peep out of the Columbine parents, the Virginia Tech parents, or the parents of those unfortunate victims who lost their lives at Jeremiah Burke High School, Marysville Pilchuck High School, Chardon High School or any of the dozens of other schools in the United States where mass shootings have taken place.
Yet, almost half a decade after the fact, we never stop hearing from the Sandy Hook parents.
There is the seemingly endless stream of multi-million-dollar lawsuits, targeting everyone from the town of Newtown to the manufacturer of the weapon used by Adam Lanza. Even the residents of Newtown have had it with their litigious antics; in 2016, the town of Newtown essentially said "we don't think so" when attorneys for the Pozner and Lewis families offered to drop their civil suits against the community in exchange for $11 million. In 2016, a Connecticut judge tossed out a similar suit against Remington.
At least these aforementioned cases had some measure of merit. But if a Connecticut judge isn't going to penalize Remington for making the AR-15 used by Adam Lanza, no judge in the nation is going to award a dime to the plaintiffs because NBC hurt their feelings by interviewing Alex Jones.
But it's not just the lawsuits that keep these families in the headlines. There's the incessant activism to reform gun control law, the habitual testifying before Congress, the magazine profiles and interviews, the lucrative book deals. Parents Alissa Parker, Scarlett Lewis and Guy Bacon have all penned books about the incident, while teacher Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis has written a book as well, and while I truly believe that money was not a motive for these literary works, the dozens of promotional interviews keep their names front and center.
To be fair, there are some Sandy Hook parents who have managed to keep a low public profile since the day Adam Lanza shattered their world, and these are the parents who are truly worthy of our respect and admiration. Those who threaten frivolous lawsuits to stifle the First Amendment rights of a jerk nobody takes seriously in the first place? Not so much.
