An old saying in the legal profession goes, “Never put anything in writing that you wouldn’t want read in court.” The idea is that anything written can be discovered and used against an attorney and his client when it’s time to go to trial.
There’s a broader application of that saying that applies to more of us: Never put anything in writing that you wouldn’t want your parents to read in The New York Times.
This came to mind as I read the vile private messages that have been published over the past few weeks, bringing infamy to the people who wrote them and, no doubt, significant embarrassment to their parents.
The first batch were exposed by National Review. On Oct. 3, Audrey Fahlberg broke the news that Jay Jones, a Democrat vying to be the next attorney general in Virginia, had sent text messages in 2022 saying that a Republican leader in the state should get “two bullets to the head” and that he hoped the person’s children would die because “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.” He also called this Republican leader “evil” and said he and his wife are “breeding little fascists.”
Writing for National Review about the matter, Jeffrey Blehar said that Jones was revealing “the scorpions lurking inside his brain” in his exchanges with a former colleague.
Less than two weeks later, Politico published leaked messages from private Telegram chats in which members of Young Republicans chapters used racial slurs and antisemitic language, among other reprehensible remarks. At least four people identified in the chat have lost jobs in the wake of widespread condemnation, and several of the Young Republicans chapters have been shut down.
One of the members, Bobby Walker of New York, has apologized, saying, “There is no excuse for the language and tone in messages attributed to me,” but also questioning the “circumstances” under which the messages came to be published.
“This has been a painful lesson about judgment and trust,” he said.
Unfortunately, that is sometimes the takeaway of people who aren’t so much sorry for what they said or did, but sorry that they got caught.
They will see the moral of this and similar stories as “Don’t put anything in writing that you don’t want to see in court” or, more simply, “Trust no one.” They will argue, as Peter Giunta did, that the highlighted messages were but a fraction of more than 28,000 messages in the chat, and that the release of the messages was part of a calculated campaign of “character assassination” by rivals.
The problem with this narrative is that, regardless of how private messages are released, the motives of those releasing them is a separate and arguably unrelated matter. And it is the private nature of the messages that makes them so damning. Character is what you do when no one is watching, as the saying goes. In cases like these, character is what you write when you think no one is reading but your buddy.
As these stories continue to play out, the University of Arkansas is hanging posters displaying the Ten Commandments in order to comply with a state law that is under legal challenge. The College Fix reported that some students “have responded to the posters by taping printed statements of faith from other religions ... (including) the Five Pillars of Islam, Monastic Vows, the Five Constant Virtues, and Yamas and Niyamas.”
Good people can disagree on whether principles of religious faith should be promoted in public schools and colleges, but the adoption of some of these principles, it seems, might cut down on the number of public scandals related to morally repugnant messages and texts. I have one in particular in mind: Honor thy father and thy mother.
Would any of those Young Republicans have hit “send” on their most incendiary messages had they known their mother or father would see them one day? Even worse, if they would see them on the front page of a major publication or on a TV screen? I’m betting not. Young people, being lemming-like at that stage of life, tend to behave less honorably around their friends than around their parents.
Jay Jones is a bit older than the Young Republicans. He’s 36, and a married father of two sons. He has apologized, saying in a debate Thursday, “I’m ashamed, I’m embarrassed and I’m sorry.”
It remains to be seen if that apology will be enough for voters in Virginia, where support for Jones has fallen by 5 points since the story broke. In one statement, Jones said, “Like all people, I’ve sent text messages I regret,” which is the sort of remark that can do more harm than good.
His violent expressions, like the abhorrent banter by the Young Republicans on Telegram, are not the kind of thoughts that “all people” — or even “most people” — entertain in private, let alone put in writing. Please don’t implicate them in your apologies.
But in an age when remarks in a private setting can all too quickly become public — remember the Signal chat leak in March? — there’s value in thinking, “How will this look on the front page of The New York Times?” before hitting send on anything we’ve written. There’s even more value in sweeping out the scorpions every now and then.