Commentary

Where does it hurt?

September 25, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Anthony Carnovale

It’s not easy writing a column when you’re working with a word limit. I can’t write every half-baked limbic impulse that leaps into my mind. You see, I get paid by the column, not by the word. The more words I use, the less I get paid. The only things I give away are hugs, fist-pumps, and bread. Words are not free. Words have value. If I give my words away for free, I’m diminishing their value. And I can’t afford to give out words for free. None of us can.

I’ve been thinking about the value of words over the past few weeks. One day, while ordering pizza online, my son, laying on the couch beside me, lifted up his head and asked if I had seen the video of the Charlie Kirk killing. I swear, my mind disintegrated. It just all seemed so absurd. Pizza. Charlie Kirk. Pepperoni. Hawaiian. What?

I had seen the video earlier in the day — a student showed it to me. My student is 16; my son 13. Both of them, young, had viewed, I’m sure more than once, a man being assassinated, blood gushing from his neck like water from a cracked pipe. He was asking about the video —he may have been asking for something more. Like an explanation. And I couldn’t explain. Not in that moment. I mean, how do you explain something like that to a kid who still sleeps with a stuffed bear? In that moment, thinking failed me. Language failed me. The pizza ready in 25 minutes. This is the crisis of our times.

I get that violence happens. But the rate at which it’s happening, the rationale for what is happening, the ensuing celebrations, calls for retribution, are disconcerting. To make matters worse, the language, the words, I’m hearing come in bits and pieces. Fragments. Inarticulate. Inaccessible. Meaningless. No one is making any sense. In turn, these soundbites and images shape the way our brain internalizes these images and sound bites, which in turn shapes the way that we talk about these things. We’re using less words to communicate very complicated and complex situations. Hashtags, memes, emojis, twitchy videos and prompts are doing the heavy lifting in our debates. It all sounds like gibberish.  

I didn’t know much about Charlie Kirk. Judging from the content of his videos, we sit on opposite sides of the political divide. In fact, we sit on opposite sides of a lot of divides. That doesn’t mean I hate him. I can respect the fact that he wasn’t afraid to put himself out there. It was his right. He was out there, face to face with people who disagreed with him, hated him, loved him, challenged him, provoked him, adored him. And herein lies the tragedy: the assassin killed a son, father, friend, mentor, rabble-rouser, a provocateur. What he didn’t kill was Charlie Kirk’s ideas. In fact, the killer has now amplified those ideas. In death, Kirk has reached a status he never would have reached in life. I’m afraid for what might happen next.

And where to now? Truthfully, I think some big steps backward, so that we can eventually move forward. We’ve forgotten what it means to belong to one another. I read somewhere that in order to make pancakes you need a universe. We need to play the long game. Shortcuts are too easy. The long game brought us here. Only the long game will take us out of it. Nobody healthy or whole kills someone. Nobody healthy or whole hates someone. Nobody healthy or whole demonizes someone. Nobody healthy or whole doesn’t care for others. We’ve been broken for a long time.

Father Gregory Boyle writes “Bringing folks back into the family delivers what we all long for. The stillness in control, reminding us we are in the same world.” What’s the alternative? The alternative is what got us here.  

Here:

In a recent column, in this paper, Brian Lockhart took exception to a reader’s take on a piece he wrote about, as far as I can tell, ‘the work ethic of refugees.’ Wendy Volpe challenged Brian’s argument, which she feels, was substantiated with anecdotal evidence. Wendy’s response was terse, clear, and supported by evidence she felt refuted some of what Brian was saying. I read his column, and his repones to Wendy’s letter, a number of times and kept coming back to the same conclusion: it didn’t add up. His response to Wendy’s letter was slippery, meandering and lacking in coherence. He ended the piece by admitting that he’s okay if she disagrees with him, but not really. He shows his hand, and heart, by admitting: “I don’t care, I really don’t.”

And here we are.

I read somewhere that a person’s words and/or actions can be interpreted in one of two ways: as an ‘act of love’ or a ‘call for love’. When people are being spiteful, cruel, indignant, and dismissive, I think about civil rights activist Ruby Sales who learned to ask, ‘Where does it hurt?’ because it speaks to the heart of the crisis’ we are facing today. Where does it hurt? A crisis of the heart. The phrase ‘I don’t care’ is not an act of love; it, most certainly, is not an invitation to community, wholeness, and health. A lack of caring is what got us here. Only acts of love will get us out.

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