Patricia and Mark McCloskey rose to their “fifteen minutes of fame” recently when they aimed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who were demonstrating in the street outside their St. Louis home — and they ultimately rode that fame all the way to the Republican National Convention last night where they delivered a speech to the nation in support of Donald Trump.
The move on the RNC’s part was ridiculous and a bit shocking, even with all we’ve come to expect from that group of people and resulted in various people speaking out on various platforms about the convention’s frankly disgusting decision — especially in the midst of such social uproar across the nation against systemic racism and police brutality and in support of the BLM movement.
However, it was the words of one of the couples’ neighbors that really struck a chord with us.
Rabbi Susan Talve’s St. Louis’ Jewish Central Reform Congregation shares a property line with the McCloskeys and when she heard that the couple was slated to speak at the convention, she just could not remain silent any longer.
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“It’s so upsetting that they have a national audience,” Talve said, according to a report from the Jewish publication, Forward. “It’s upsetting we make heroes out of people who hate.”
Talve goes on to tell of an instance in 2013 when her synagogue put beehives along the wall they share with the McCloskeys to produce their own honey for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah — only to find one morning that Mark had taken a sledgehammer or an ax to their hives, destroying them and leaving all their bees dead. All because the fence was sitting 6 inches inside his property line.
“He could have picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey, those beehives are on my property,’ and we would have happily moved them,” Talve said. She went on to tell of how upset and heartbroken the children of her Synagogue were when they heard the news about their hives. She also notes that the McCloskey’s did not once attempt to contact the temple before destroying their hives and killing their bees — only leaving behind a note after the damage was done, threatening to sue the synagogue if the mess he’d left behind in the aftermath of destroying the beehives was not cleaned up immediately.
“Civility,” Talve said. “I’m willing to speak out now because there’s such a lack of civility that’s happening, and I don’t feel like I can be a part of that, and silence is complicity.”
Adding after a pause, “They are bullies. The fact that they’re speaking at the convention is a win for bullies.”
However, if you heard the couple’s speech during the RNC last night, you know that they’re publicly trying to paint themselves as nothing more than the innocent victims of a political agenda.
But I can tell you now, there are two sides to this proverbial fence in this nation — and the one that’s full of BLM protesters is not the one that would destroy a beehive belonging to synagogue children.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via screen capture
