From: januarybaybee@gmail.com   
      
   Updated August 30, 2018   
      
      
   Mollie Tibbetts' father turns grief into humanity lesson   
      
      
   Few can fully comprehend what Rob Tibbetts felt Sunday, when he suppressed his   
   anguish and his outrage to eulogize his murdered child, a 20-year-old woman   
   who by all accounts was a model of human kindness, a person of missionary zeal   
   and boundless    
   curiosity.   
      
   Yet Mollie Tibbetts' dad had to set something straight - not only for the   
   crowd packed into an Iowa high school gym, but for the entire country - and   
   point out that his daughter's death cannot be used as a cause celebre for   
   anti-immigrant hostility even    
   if the suspect is undocumented Mexican farmworker.   
      
   So Rob Tibbetts, a portrait of grief and grace, spoke of how the Hispanic   
   community in the rural Iowa town embraced him during the six-week search for   
   his daughter.  He spoke of how a hotel put him up for free after he came in   
   from California, how the    
   Latino employees there - and those who worked in the Mexican restaurants -   
   were unfailingly sensitive and kind.   
      
   "The Hispanic community are Iowans," Tibbetts said.  "They have the same   
   values as Iowans.  As far as I'm concerned, they're Iowans with better food."   
      
   His remarks drew an thunderous ovation from 1,200 people awed by his ability   
   to find such eloquence and humor at that moment.   
      
   And clearly, it was relief from the political vitriol.   
      
   Mollie's death was used to promote a lie that undocumented immigrants bring   
   more crime, despite piles of research to the contrary.  White supremacists   
   sent out robocalls throughout Mollie's hometown about "savage, non-white   
   intruders."   
      
   Fox News, which politicizes tragedies as long as they aren't school shootings,   
   spun xenophobic fables on a loop.  An Arizona Senate candidate named Kelli   
   Ward somehow blamed it all on John McCain, falsely charging that he favored   
   "open borders."   
      
   And the President of the United States implied that this tragedy justifies his   
   child separation policy: "The Tibbetts family has been permanently separated,"   
   Donald Trump droned.   
      
   Sadly, none of this is unexpected anymore.  But it was comforting that Rob   
   Tibbetts refused to let anyone turn his greatest treasure into a political   
   football.   
                                                  _______________________   
      
   Mollie and her father:   
   https://image.nj.com/home/njo-media/width960/img/new_jersey_opin   
   on/photo/molliejpg-968aa8d2913e2991.jpg   
      
                                                  ________________________   
      
   PS:  August 31 at 7:00 AM   
   Poll: 60 percent disapprove of Trump, while clear majorities back Mueller and   
   Sessions   
      
   President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a high point of 60 percent,   
   according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that also finds that clear   
   majorities of Americans support the special counsel’s Russia investigation   
   and say the president    
   should not fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions.   
      
   https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-60-percent-disappro   
   e-of-trump-while-clear-majorities-back-mueller-and-sessions/2018   
   08/30/4cd32174-ac7c-11e8-a8d7-0f63ab8b1370_story.html?utm_term=.ceff4fafc445   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)