MEDIA WINNER: Matthew McConaughey After advocating for gun legislation shortly after the Uvalde school shooting, Matthew McConaugheycalled out extremist politicians in an essay detailing his experience on the Hill. In a Tuesday essay for Esquire, the actor detailed his experience meeting with lawmakers following the massacre, revealing the process made him lose some “reverence” for the way the government operates. After detailing his emotional connection to the tragedy, as McConaughey grew up in Uvalde, the actor revealed his time in Washington D.C. led him to believe the “extremists” in both parties need to be removed for any reasonable debates to happen. “I arrived in Washington with such a reverence for our government and those who run it," he wrote. "While I’m not going to say that I lost that reverence, I did see the most powerful legislators in America playing an implicit political game, one they seemed to be handcuffed to, even systematically imprisoned by, as if it were the price of entry." While McConaughey did not name any specific politicians for being hesitant to talk to him, he called several out for using the excuse of the midterms to explain why they could not support legislation on a hot topic issue like guns. “Hard to be in the make-a-difference business if you’re only in the reelection business,” McConaughey wrote. He later said that both major political parties have become “little more than counterpunchers,” adding that politicians are more willing to react and attack than act. “It’s high time we take the megaphone back from the extremists who’ve been manufacturing these false fractures among us,” he wrote. “They’ve been selling us soft porn at the pep rally for too long.” Props to McConaughey for consistently immortalizing those lost, for continuing to advocate for change, and for exposing both the "extremists" and "the most powerful legislators in America" for failing to enact bipartisan legislation. |