"We made a letter of recognition for Mr Ambassador of Aloha."
Three days after a Seattle man holidaying in Maui was filmed chucking a rock at an endangered monk seal’s head and subsequently getting hell beat out him, lickens as they say in Hawaii, his attacker has been awarded a “letter of recommendation and recognition” by Hawaii’s Senate Minority Leader.
Brenton Awa, who is thirty-nine, is a 39-year-old Republican state senator in Hawaii, a wild enough feat, given Hawaii is one of the most blue states in the country. He’s the Senate Minority Leader, representing Kaneohe through the North Shore of Oahu. First elected in 2022, re-elected in 2024 without spending or raising a single dollar. Brenton ran a zero-dollar campaign and won.
He’s a populist of the old school sort, favouring local issues, cost of living, housing etc, over partisan politics.
Brenton didn’t take real well to the monk seal attack and, in the fine wood panelled surrounds of the Hawaii State Capitol in Honolulu, announced that the Hawaiian, anonymous thus far, who beat hell out of the tourist, would received an official “letter of recommendation.”
“You’ve all seen the video of the monk seal that almost got hit by the rock from the tourist that threw it. And some of us have seen environmental activists, I like to call ’em, who took matters into his own hands to educate what might happen if you mess with our land or the animals.
“Our attorney over here wants to make it clear, we don’t condone violence.
(Cue attorney chuckling.)
“But we did make a letter of recommendation, recognition, for Mr Ambassador of Aloha…”
Awa called for all airlines flying into Hawaii to play footage of the beat down so “people don’t do this kind of stuff.”
One mill and a half likes with a who’s who of Hawaiian surfing diving into the comments, even the surf broadcaster, master storyteller and son of the South African jazz king and anti-apartheid activist Hugh Masekela, Selema Masakela is in there.
He described it as “An Ancestral Ass Whoopin.”
Classic Sal!