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Op-Ed: How I’m Feeling on the Day After Orlando

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Not very well at all.

Sunday, June 12th, 2016 marks the largest LGBT hate crime in American history. This tragedy will be remembered as one of the most brutal and terrifying incidents of mass violence our country has ever confronted. Several issues have been raised in response to the attack. Gun control. Terrorism. Global attitudes to the LGBT community. Homeland security. Public safety. Hate. These are important conversations, and should be conducted with open hearts, a clarity of purpose, and a common dedication toward urgent resolution.

I keep saying those things to myself, because I cannot connect to them yet. I’m sure that in time I will. Right now, on the day after, it’s the little details that haunt me. I think of the investigators processing the scene at Pulse, trying to tune out a cacophony of cell phones ringing with calls from loved ones hoping for a confirmation of safety that will never come. Text messages between the soon to perish and their terrified families. People hiding under piles of bodies in hopes they could evade their own butchering. The smell of gunfire. Slipping in pools of blood while fleeing from unclear danger. Families, so many families, hoping for word that their loved ones had possibly survived this nightmare, and the crushing weight of learning that their hope was in vain. Screaming. Chaos. Horror. I keep visiting these things over and over. I’m not ready for the big conversations yet. I’m still stuck on the event itself.

It was closing time at Pulse. I’ve closed out a few gay bars in my life, and I’m usually drunk, tired, and ready to go home. I imagine it was much the same at Pulse that night. You’ve had a full evening. The energy is high. Maybe you’ve met new friends, or had a good time with old ones. Maybe you’re planning for where you’ll get a post-club sandwich or trying to figure out which late night diner might be open. The weight of the real world is 10,000 miles away. Then you hear a noise. The atmosphere in the room shifts. You notice people dropping. Then the entire world changes. For some of you, it will be the very last change.

As a gay man, this hits very close to home. Most of us have been in a place like Pulse at one time or another. Nightclubs, bars, cabarets, and other safe spaces where members of the LGBT community congregate are supposed to be just that. Safe. When I first came out, unsure of my footing, at a later age than most, it was a club in Davenport, Iowa called Fusion that made me feel welcome. As I grew into some measure of confidence, it was places like Fusion, like Pulse, like countless other similar establishments across the country, in which I could feel comfortable being myself. I knew my community would be there. I like to think about them, in all the bars, in all the towns. A legion of LGBT people getting to know each other, finding community, feeling free to be who they are. A place where you don’t have to ask yourself the question, “Is it okay to be gay here?”

But we are never as safe as we think. Members of the LGBT community have always been targets for violence, as this tragedy demonstrates. We will fight, we will love, and we will win. I’m confident of that. The LGBT community has tremendous strength, and we will require every ounce of it in the weeks and months ahead.

Still, I’m filled with a profound sense of loss. The struggle has more casualties than it should. I think about Kimberly Morris. She was a 37 year old bouncer at Pulse. Her only crime was punching a time clock. I think about Jason Benjamin Josaphat. Jason was just nineteen years old. Nineteen. You’ve barely begun to live your life at nineteen years old. He liked photography and studied computer science. I wonder what he would have become? Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon and his partner Jean Carlos Mendez Perez went to Pulse together that night. They died together. Leroy Valentin Fernandez. Angel L. Candelario-Padro. Amanda Alvear. The list goes on, and on, and on. The pain their families and friends are going through must be incomprehensible. My god, the size and depth of that pain. I didn’t know any of these people personally, but each of their stories hits me like an arrow to the heart.

Today I will leave the punditry to other, more organized minds. I don’t want to think about the political ramifications for the campaigns, or the need for comprehensive gun control, or anything other than these beautiful people that we’ve lost. That ground will be well tended without me. I don’t want to hear about the madman behind this tragedy. At the moment, I don’t particularly care why he did what he did, or what particular brand of monster he’ll ultimately prove to be. I’ll eventually care deeply about each of these issues, but today I don’t. Today I grieve for the families. I grieve for the fallen. I grieve for each safe space that now feels a little less safe. I grieve for my community, who has lost so much over the years, despite all we’ve gained. We must remember these people, their faces, and their stories. We will make our places safe again. We will find ways to bear such unbearable tragedy. But we shouldn’t have to. We really shouldn’t have to.

 

Photo: Toronto Vigil for Orlando Shooting
Image by Lws & Clrk via Flickr and a CC license

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OPINION

‘Have to Get Back to Law and Order’: Trump Declares at NYPD Officer’s Wake

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Donald Trump attended the wake of the slain New York City police officer who was shot and killed while conducting a traffic stop this week. The four-times indicted ex-president demanded America “get back to law and order,” barely days after a New York judge imposed a gag order in the case where the presumptive Republican presidential nominee faces 34 felony counts for “falsifying New York business records in order to conceal damaging information and unlawful activity from American voters before and after the 2016 election,” according to the New York District Attorney.

That damaging information included hush money payments to several women including an adult film actress.

“We have to stop it,” Trump said Thursday, speaking before the cameras about crime as he stood under an umbrella in front of police officers. “We have to stop, we have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently because this is not working. This is happening too often.”

“Police are the greatest people we have. There’s nothing and there’s nobody like them. And this should never happen,” Trump said as he lamented how repeat offenders “don’t learn because they don’t respect.”

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“We’ve got to toughen it up. We’ve got to strengthen it up. It should never be allowed things like they shouldn’t take place and to take place so often,” said Trump, who is out on bail and currently faces 88 felony charges after three were dropped.

The Trump campaign announced that the ex-president had been invited to attend the wake.

“President Trump is moved by the invitation to join NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller’s family and colleagues as they deal with his senseless and tragic death,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said, according to The Daily Beast.

The Associated Press added that “Trump has deplored crime in heavily Democratic cities, called for shoplifters to be shot immediately and wants to immunize police officers from lawsuits for potential misconduct. But he’s also demonized local prosecutors, the FBI and the Department of Justice over the criminal prosecutions he faces and the investigation while he was president into his first campaign’s interactions with Russia.”

“He has also embraced those imprisoned for their roles on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, when a mob of his angry supporters overran police lines and Capitol and local police officers were attacked and beaten.”

Earlier on Thursday NBC News reported on Trump’s mischaracterizations of crime.

“Surging crime levels, out-of-control Democratic cities and ‘migrant crime,'” the network noted. “Former President Donald Trump regularly cites all three at his campaign rallies, in news releases and on Truth Social, often saying President Joe Biden and Democrats are to blame.”

READ MORE: ‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

“But the crime picture Trump paints contrasts sharply with years of police and government data at both the local and national levels,” NBC added. “FBI statistics released this year suggested a steep drop in crime across the country last year. It’s a similar story across major cities, with violent crime down year over year in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.”

Watch Trump’s remarks below or at this link.

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OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

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The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

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News

Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

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Michigan MAGA Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock is under fire after claiming three buses were “loaded up with illegal invaders.” The buses, according to multiple reports, were actually loaded with the Gonzaga University basketball team arriving for March Madness.

“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Rep. Maddock wrote on social media Wednesday evening, tagging far-right former U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump and is now the state’s Republican Party chair.

Informed of his error on social media, Rep. Maddock doubled down, and attacked.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“Probably teams for the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 playing at LCA on Friday and Sunday,” a user on X wrote.

“Sure kommie. Good talking point,” Maddock quickly shot back.

ABC affiliate WXYZ executive producer Maxwell White, responding to the Maddock’s original post wrote: “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted.”

“This is a wild tweet,” White added, before adding more evidence.

Hoekstra, who was accused of using racism and xenophobia to win his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat (he lost), did not respond directly to Maddock but did repost the apparently false claim.

Michigan State Senate Democratic Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow denounced Maddock’s claim as “dangerous.”

Maddock’s remark also made the national stage when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell responded.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“Hey Einstein,” the California Democrat wrote, “your state is hosting the Sweet 16. Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

In 2021 The Washington Post reported, “Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.”

See the social media posts above 0r at this link.

 

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