Mark Kelly to leave NASA, Navy, to be with wife Gabrielle Giffords during recovery

Captain Mark Kelly retires, via Facebook: "Today, I am humbled to announce that after 25 years of service to our country, I am retiring from the United States Navy and leaving NASA, effective Oct. 1."

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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OldBrownSquirrel

I’ve been expecting him to run for his wife’s House seat. It’s not like he’s going to be piloting the shuttle again.
- penguinchris
  
  Yeah really, he was basically out of a job anyway! I certainly can appreciate the sentiment, though.
eee

I’m not sure I understand why anything related to Gabrielle is a news story and, frankly, I’m sick of hearing about her.

“Gasp! How dare you?”

- Well, she wasn’t murdered (six other people were that day, though).
- Again, she is just one person. 223 people were murdered last year in Baltimore alone. Where is all the coverage for them?

Oh yeah, most of them were not rich, white, female politicians married to an astronaut – they were, almost all, young, poor and black men.

Yeah, race card. And socio-economic card. Whatever. The constant news coverage of her is insulting to all the other families that are victims of violence.
- Anonymous
  
  Alas, that’s kind of the way the US works. We elevate certain people to star status, and what happens to them is far more significant than what happens to you and me. It’s just not an egalitarian society, and it never was.
  
  But long long ago in a land far away, this kind of ghastly attack on a celebrity might have brought real, substantive change. The reaction would have been abject horror, and a determination to prevent more of the same in the future. Laws would have been passed.
  
  No more. The supporters of nearly unlimited gun rights have won. What few laws exist are barely enforced. They’re well on their way to returning us to the days of the “wild west.”
  
  Giffords suffered all in vain. Nothing will change. There will be many more like her before it’s all through.
Anonymous

@eee, anon, etc.

As a congresswoman, Giffords represents around 640,000 people. That does actually make her tangibly more important and newsworthy than some random person who suffered a similar crime of violence.

That’s not to say that she doesn’t get preferential media treatment because of who she is or how she looks, but acting as if she’s just another Natalee Holloway is ridiculous. It’s like saying that all the media coverage of Ronald Reagan after he got shot was just because he was a privileged good-looking white hollywood actor.
Anonymous

Laws only restrain the lawful… and this genie has been out of it’s bottle for a verryy looonng time. It’s not going back in anytime soon.
Anonymous

Her determination and his devotion just make make me tear up. I love this couple. That is all.