In yesterday's edition of The Eagle, newly elected republican state house representative Kyle Kacal was quoted as saying, "I've heard of people being killed playing ping-pong -- ping-pongs are more dangerous than guns," he said. "Flat-screen TVs are injuring more kids today than anything."
I was pretty pissed, so I reached out to BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski and Slate's Dave Weigel, in an effort to expand the reach of the original article.
That led to Weigel's post on Slate.
Kaczynski tweeted out "Texas Rep. says playing ping-pong is more dangerous than guns," along with a link to The Eagle's story.
Following that tweet, Salon's Jillian Rayfield wrote up a brief post based on Kaczynski's tweet.
Once it was published on Slate and Salon, a Dallas-based blog wrote, "Does he play ping-pongs with hand grenades? Throwing stars?"
My point in all this is that infinitely more people were exposed to Kacal's absurd quote. Never would I have thought that those political editors would have shared his comments. As we move forward into 2013 with a democratic president and senate, all of us need to keep an eye on the republican legislators throughout the country and share absurd quotes given to local papers or TV affiliates to the national media.
2:01 PM PT: The Huffington Post has picked up the story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...