When does someone who’s committed a first-degree murder deserve clemency, Semafor’s David Weigel asks Pennsylvania senatorial candidate John Fetterman.
He responds:
It’s really a very simple choice. I believe the perfect metaphor is “The Shawshank Redemption.” That’s a touchstone that virtually everybody has seen, everybody understands. I’ve asked people, would you want Morgan Freeman to die in prison or not? And I’ve never met anybody that says, “Yeah, he should die in prison. I would have voted to have him die in prison.”
I certainly don’t believe Morgan Freeman should die in prison. He’s a national treasure! Also, Morgan Freeman is an actor—not God or the president or Nelson Mandela or the stern-but-caring principal of an inner-city high school in Paterson, New Jersey. A metaphor is never perfect because it is never literally applicable to the situation at hand.
