You know the scene in Rosemary's Baby where Mia Farrow realizes that all her husband's friends are witches?
Or the scene in The Stepford Wives where Katherine Ross realizes that all her friends have been turned into femme bots?
That's how I felt Thursday night watching CNN.
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Throughout the Trump years Kaitlyn Collins regularly chased Trump out of the briefing room with her incisive bull's eye q's that made him name call her in tweets. Brianna Keilar b*tch slapped Trump's stooges frequently and ordered Peter Navarro off her broadcast for lying.
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Erin Burnett called Trump a liar more than any other news anchor. She and Keilar each had segments devoted to showing clips of Trump's lies. Burnett has been MIA for a few weeks,on vacation or perhaps refusing to have the new bothsides chip implanted. But Poppy Harlow. Sigh.
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It's way more than disheartening.MSNBC has always had this problem, but CNN at certain hours (never Jake Tapper's) felt like safe space for honest Trump reporting. Not during the #BidenSpeech, though. And it felt like losing a friend who eloped with some toxic dude: gutting.
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I know there's been changes at the top. I know all MSM is cheerleading for neutrality. But if networks that could skewer Trump fearlessly before the way Burnett and Collins and Don Lemon have done cease to do so now, where does that leave us for keeping the fascists at bay?
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Because it truly doesn't matter that there were two Marines at the door to Independence Hall when Trump did this 👇🏻
(Photo: Martha Raddatz)
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Biden kept talking while Trumpists here in Philly went wild trying to interrupt his speech. He said it was democracy. Whereas Trump teargassed sitting protestors so he could have a photo op with an upside down Bible.
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People who aren't journalists always make the ludicrous claim that news should be neutral. Impossible. But what it can be is honest. I try to do that. Most of my colleagues are doing that. But that's not what's talking over. Instead we are getting that bothsides neutrality.
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It's dangerous. Neutrality asserts there is no moral clarity,no moral compass. Just random statements of what happened. We can't have that. We have to speak truth to power. It's the job. Do that job. Or find a new profession where truth is a variable, not our very lifeblood.
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So let me say this: A few dozen MAGAs in my mentions are telling me I'm a "self loathing white person," so let me clarify for those folks and anyone else that my support for Black women like Jasmine Crockett (who has been very supportive of me during my recent illness and bereavement) is my being an ally. I am blessed to have some fabulous Black women in my life and I support many Black women politicians and Black women activists. My mentor for two decades was a Black woman theorist and writer. I grew up with strong Black women Civil Rights activists staying in our house because my parents were Civil Rights workers. I was in college before I truly understood how unusual that was--that a Black woman activist would be sleeping in my bed and I would be sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag while she told me stories about her life in Mississippi. I am grateful to have been raised by anti-racist parents and I have tried to carry on that legacy. So no, I am not self loathing. I am proud to stand with Black women (and my many Black male friends as well!). And you thinking I have to hate myself to lift up and support Black women is a you problem that you should work on because racism continues to wreak havoc on this country.
I wrote this piece about a few weeks back about Civil Rights, my parents' activism, my early childhood in the Civil Rights movement and the long ugly history of bathroom discrimination in America and the harn it's done and does. (Gift 🎁 link) epgn.com/2024/03/28/the-
I wrote this tribute to my longtime friend and mentor Audre Lorde 9yrs ago. I can still see us dancing together like it was yesterday, not decades ago. I so wish she were still with us. I love this essay. I hope you will too. (Gift 🎁link.) lambdaliterary.org/2015/02/dancin…
🧵I once filed a column from cardiac ICU when I was 30something and my heart just went haywire when I was out on assignment and started beating in the 200s and I passed out and was taken to hospital via ambulance and they had to shock me several times. It is nothing like on TV.
🧵 It's like having a hot iron (remember those?) dropped from a tall building onto your chest. They never show that on TV. It's pretty terrible. It didn't work, so they had to do a coronary ablation, where they try to re-set your heart's electrical circuitry by threading some wires into it.
🧵I was just thinking that maybe I am being a big baby by not working today due to my having surgery yesterday ("you can work from bed") and then I thought about when I did that column (I was at the Daily News then) and the nurse coming in and yelling at me because the alarm went off on my machine because I was stressing.
OMG. This @ABC special #OnTheBrink with Diane Sawyer and @rachelvscott is absolutely gutting and should make everyone enraged that women are being subjected to this.
Termination committees are being convened to determine whether women deserve an emergency medical abortion. Insanity.
One woman was sent home with bleeding and fever and pain because she wasn't sick enough to be treated. She ended up hemorrhaging into the toilet and is rushed to the hospital, she is put on life support.
#OnTheBrink
Hollywood podcaster "reporting" on Hamas and the IDF from L.A. while real journalists like myself are covering the actual conflict. Yet folks like his narrative more--even as they blame "the media" for real reporting: They don't like what we tell them and how awful it is.
In reality IDF has razed northern Gaza and Netanyahu told hostage families his priority is attacking Gaza, not rescuing the 160 hostages still held. Thousands are demanding Netanyahu's resignation.
Pay more attention to people like @AlonLeeGreen, actually in Israel and doing real work.
Now I am flat out sobbing. Vivian Silver was such a remarkable person. So dedicated to making the world better. Oct 4th she was leading a peace march--she founded Women Wage Peace. Oct. 7 she was abducted by Hamas from a closet where she was hiding.
Vivian Silver worked constantly with/for people in Gaza. She drove Gazans to Israeli hospitals. She fought for wage increases. She was dedicated to a two state solution and put herself out there every day. She embodied tikkun olam.
May her memory be a blessing and a revolution.
Last night I read this lovely post by @LibyaLiberty who so generously opened her a space to people who disagree with her on Israel-Hamas and it was such an aspirational post. And I already admired Hend who I have followed for years and who I am fortunate follows me.
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Hend is doing a better job of living her faith than I am. She blesses people all the time. She challenges people without being too sharp or too harsh. I am failing Jesus every day because I am in a state of rage over the complexity and the clarity of this war.
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My wife was Jewish. Half my family + hers are Jewish. I have family anr friends in Israel. What happened Oct. 7 was horrific. Undeniably. What is happening in Gaza is horrific. As I said to Hend Thursday night, I guess I thought EVERYONE could agree killing kids is wrong, no matter whether they are Jews or Palestinians. I was wrong.
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