David Hogg, had he not been a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a mass shooting occurred, might have grown up to be a useful, ethical, productive and emotionally healthy human being. Unfortunately, he is likely to be a lifetime victim of the shooting, for it propelled him into the career path of being a professional single-issue fanatic, America’s Greta Thunberg but on the issue of gun control rather than climate change. In an example of the chaos PTSD can wreak on the vulnerable, Hogg has been transformed into a cynical grifter by a mass-murderer’s bullets. It’s tragic, but that doesn’t mean his unethical conduct should be tolerated, much less rewarded.
Barely two weeks after his election as a Democratic National Committee official, Hogg began using DNC contact lists to solicit donations to his own political action committee, “Leaders We Deserve.” That PAC pays his salary of more than $100,000 a year, according to Federal Election Commission records. “David Hogg here: I was just elected DNC Vice Chair! This is a huge win for our movement to make the Democratic Party more reflective of our base: youthful, energetic, and ready to win,” reads one the texts he sent out to the DNC’s vast database. The texts include a link to his PAC.
News accounts keep saying that there is no “rule” against doing this in an organization you read leading, but that’s only because no organization can put down in black and white a prohibition against every conceivable unethical act. Of course using a propitiatory contacts list for a personal project is unethical and a conflict of interest. In this case it happens to be two organizations whose politics are more or less aligned, but it doesn’t matter. Hogg has engaged in abuse of fiduciary duties, particularly loyalty as well as an abuse of position. Money he raised for his PAC is likely to be money he cannot raise for the Democratic Party. At very least Hogg should have received formal permission to use the DNC mailing list for his own agenda; he didn’t ask because the answer he would have received is “no.” One senior Democratic Party official called Hogg’s fundraising texts “a stunning lack of judgment that is concerning to many people,” many people meaning anyone who was under the impression that Hogg was capable of putting another organization’s broader interests ahead of his own.
“David has already raised money for the DNC since becoming Vice Chair, and many times before,” a DNC spokesman later told the news media, ducking the issue. That’s “Ethics Accounting” if you’re keeping score with the EA .Rationalizations list. Cameron Kasky, like Hogg a Parkland survivor, was more honest. “I mean it’s just very frustrating to be in a party in desperate need of increased accountability for our struggling leadership, and watch someone who is never held accountable ascend to leadership,” he said.
I’m using the same photo of Hogg that I used when he was elected by the DNC because it radiates the essential obnoxiousness of the twerp. If the youth vote, male of female, responds to leaders like that, things have really changed since I hung around with the whippersnappers. The evidence I’ve seen so far, however, indicates that they haven’t changed that much.
Good choice, Democrats. Good choice. Another “good choice.”
Ethics Alarms 
Hogg’s too talentless and stupid to orchestrate this, it’s the efforts of his despicable, blood-sucking handlers & hangers on.
When his pull date arrives, and it will, he’ll end up like Cindy Sheehan.
PWS
While a typo, “in bland and white” made me snicker to read. I can’t imagine a better description of Hogg.
I had to fix it. I wish I could say honestly that it was intentional.
I once had a bag of rice cakes in my refrigerator – lightweight, tasteless things. It eventually came to pass that there was only one of them left in the bag. Lonely, limp, cold, and stale, it just lingered there until I finally threw it out.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered, years later, that it had been reincarnated, and was now vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee!
https://images.app.goo.gl/YU35ZLFxtAme62186
Hogg seems a bit grifty and cartoonish to me.
I don’t think Hogg can use PTSD as an excuse. He wasn’t even on that campus when the shooting occurred. I have been a student at schools when mass shooting occurred (2 of them). I was even on campus when one occurred, but it wasn’t near the building I was in. I don’t think it even phased me, much less caused mental anguish. While in high school, 3 people I knew were murdered one night, one classmate murdered a woman, and two of my friends committed suicide. None of this caused me the type of anguish that Hogg claims. I felt bad for the famiies and I missed the people I knew, but this didn’t happen to ME, it happened to others. Their misfortune and suffering doesn’t make me special.
He has always seemed like a grifter. The Gun Control Industry, Inc. needed a child to be their puppet for this event and it seemed like he volunteered and he has used it to get far more fame and benefit than he deserved.
This. By his logic, I survived the Challenger explosion. Put me in charge of safety at NASA.
The Democrats are clearly trying to de-age their leadership to appeal to younger voters, but Hogg was given fame far too quickly than his ego can handle.
This guy’s on a lefty gravy train with biscuit wheels. Per his wiki article, he has hyperactivity attention deficit disorder and he’s dyslexic as well has having PTSD. But he was admitted to Harvard and got his BA. Now he’s been elevated to senior management at the DNC! It’s a wonderful life.
As my memory of the coverage immediately post-Parkland tells me, Hogg was always likely to inherit his parents’ position as a background Democrat activist. All Parkland did is promote him into the foreground.
People looked into him because it was uncanny how much press coverage this particular student was getting, and it became widely believed his parents had pulled strings to get him his first interviews… and possibly coaching him on how to endear himself to the gun grabbers, which naturally netted more.
I was wondering whether we should give Hogg a pass as he is still young….or would that be an ethics rationalization?
I remember one of the many interviews David Hogg did after the shooting. He was asked about his college plans and immediately listed the schools that had rejected him. My daughter had gone through the application process and I don’t remember a single one of her friends telling anyone what schools REJECTED them. I remember thinking at the time that it was a power play, shaming schools for rejecting this victim, goading others into accepting him, and it worked.
I have no doubt that he thought of this scheme himself. He has always been a grifter.