🏳️‍🌈 Kathy E Gill 😷 🇺🇦mastodon.social/@kegill Profile picture
Writer/speaker/journalist/professor. Active as @kegill at BSky and Mastodon. Account retained for reading lists.
Mar 20 13 tweets 4 min read
Reading this, I flashed to the 80s & the Reagan-era effort to push barefoot women back into the kitchen.

"Too Late for Prince Charming"
Crappy research (mid-80s) claimed college-educated women 40+ had a greater chance dying in a terrorist attack than getting married.

1/lots 1991: Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
Susan Faludi
Opened my eyes to two-steps-forward/one-step-back “progress.”

Who encouraged the backlash? Right wingers like Limbaugh et al, including Rupert Murdoch (by July 1985, he owned 50% of Fox Filmed Entertainment) Image
Dec 11, 2022 5 tweets 3 min read
According to @nytimes analysis, most public schools with large J.R.O.T.C. enrollment numbers are in low-income neighborhoods where students are primarily nonwhite. @ByMikeBaker et al

h/t @darlakrusee

🎁 link
nytimes.com/2022/12/11/us/… Mandatory enrollment violates Pentagon policy, supposedly.

“parents in some cities say their children are being forced to put on military uniforms, obey a chain of command and recite patriotic declarations in classes they never wanted to take.”

🧵2
Aug 31, 2022 8 tweets 3 min read
I am very Very tired of he-said, she-said reporting. Rather than tell us that Republicans think there is insufficient kerning (what?) ... why not tell us what the law/reg says? Why not tell us HOW this board can reject a ballot initiative?
detroitnews.com/story/news/loc…
🧵 Why not LINK to the document, @detroitnews?

Reproductive Freedom for All
michigan.gov/sos/-/media/Pr…

I challenge anyone to find a problem with kerning, although by state requirements it is incredibly hard to read.

Via bridgemi.com/michigan-gover…
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Aug 31, 2022 7 tweets 8 min read
What’s the rhetorical fallacy for “look over there”? Red herring? It’s GOP land’s only ‘defense’ of Trump’s theft (and compromised intelligence).

House/Jim Jordan: 236.9K
Benny: 790.9K
Alex: 210.4K
Breanna: 98.7K And @ByronYork?
Do you have a better way to show, after the fact, that highly classified docs were stuck in a box with personal mementos? One that would make it clear to a judge that a crime had occurred? Note the docs aren’t visible, just their classification.
470.3K
Aug 30, 2022 7 tweets 3 min read
Perhaps some books need to be read after having life experience.

I have always been biased towards words. News via magazine and newspaper not television or even radio. So I can imagine having raced through Amusing Ourselves To Death, nodding my head.
🧵 Image But I’m re-reading it decades later.

I have questions: Was the requirement to own land in order to vote a proxy for literacy? Am I in error thinking that most 19th century Americans were illiterate? Who let women go to school?
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Aug 30, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
I am late to those who have been tracing the deaths of men associated with sexual predator (and assumed blackmailer) Jeffrey Epstein. But this? How could there be no blood on the scene if the man shot himself with a shotgun??

Mark Middleton died 07 May 2022. Death ruled suicide. He was an Arkansas businessman who reportedly introduced Epstein to Bill Clinton.

heavy.com/news/mark-midd…
Aug 30, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
To understand how this came to be, see White flight + Reagan-era decimated federal infrastructure budgets. Image And it's not just Jackson, MS. This exists across the country as White people fled cities to avoid integrated education, as the SCOTUS said suburban school districts were safe haven, where tax base exited.

@MSFreePress
mississippifreepress.org/11498/under-th…
Aug 25, 2022 8 tweets 4 min read
I'm pretty sure my student loans were barely above prime rate. Plus, college was a helluva lot cheaper then than now (more public $).

𝗨𝗚𝗔 𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝟱𝘅 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆
Undergrad tuition (12 credits)
1976-77: $189 ($920, 2022$)
2021-22: $4895
🧵 That $10,000 is $2,000 in 1977 dollars, BTW.
It would have covered more than 10 quarters at UGA (tuition was $148 when I started).
$𝟭𝟬,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝘄𝗼 𝗨𝗚𝗔 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗱𝗮𝘆.
It takes 12 quarters to get a BA.
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Aug 22, 2022 4 tweets 3 min read
I ❤️ @davidhorsey and not just because he was my local political cartoonist for eons.

This cartoon is spot on.

What would make it better? Having the two speakers be FOX and, say, NYT.

seattletimes.com/opinion/presid…

🎁 (B/W)
wapo.st/3AH1B6B

🧵 Image I saw this in the @seattletimes Facebook feed.

“Don’t read the comments” has taken on an entirely new meaning in the age of the Trump cult.

Anyone who understands history also understands the significance of the IRA.

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Jun 29, 2022 7 tweets 3 min read
To anyone criticizing Cassidy Hutchinson for working in the Trump WH: just Stop.

She’s 25 now (per AP and NYT).

In 1973, John Dean was 34.

🧵 She probably applied “around” and took the first offer to work on the Hill. Most people start with home state reps.

She has only known a conservative America (at federal level) for most of life. (Obama was in the WH but McConnell blocked everything.)

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Jun 28, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
Cassidy Hutchinson is a hero.

She is going to get the full threat/hate treatment visited upon Christine Blasey Ford in 2018 when she testified against Brett Kavanaugh. One big difference: THIS committee cares about her safety unlike Mitch McConnell.

🧵 There could very well be an element of self-protection in Hutchinson's testimony, given the email and text message record. I want to believe that she is cooperating because she chose a career in public service not self-aggrandizement.

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Jun 27, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
I’m tapping my toes, @seattletimes, waiting for investigative reporters to tell us who funded Kennedy’s media tour, who recruited this part-time coach for his role in the movement determined to turn the US into a “Christian nation.” “Christian nation” is in quotation marks for a variety of reasons not the least being that the right-wing GOP is not espousing the teachings of Jesus.
Feb 25, 2022 6 tweets 5 min read
It’s telling that this news parody is a tweet from the PR side of COMCAST > NBCUniversal, an ENTERTAINMENT company.

There is ZERO news value here, @LesterHoltNBC @NBCNews

US media: please STOP amplifying, normalizing serial liars (Inspector General reports++). “Russian state media…are lauding Russian President Vladimir Putin and his order to send troops to…Ukraine, and [are] using commentary from…former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to further support his actions.”

AND YOU’RE HANDING HIM A MIC @NBCNews
news.yahoo.com/russian-state-…
Feb 17, 2022 8 tweets 5 min read
Current state of NEWS MEDIA focus, driven by Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” + grasping for $$$

“Endemic delusion”

Case in point: #TruckerConvoy
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science.org/content/articl… Even @ScienceInsider is waffling in the hede: “some scientists”

With a nod to politics rather than public health by including a political scientist near the top.

NO quotes from public health arguing to open things up.

And THIS near the bottom:

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Feb 15, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Elmer Stewart Rhodes III is an ex-Army paratrooper; worked for Rep. Ron Paul in 2008; graduated from Yale Law School; and was an AZ SC law clerk.

These credentials (including full name) should be mentioned early in any story to show him as the privileged White guy that he is. The Montana Supreme Court disbarred him after it “found that he'd abandoned clients in Arizona, a 2015 court order shows.”

So much for oaths and honor, right?

nbcnews.com/politics/polit…
Feb 14, 2022 8 tweets 6 min read
Why are US media not raising questions like @Garossino has in @NatObserver about @gofundme and the Canadian #trucker protest? 🚩
#Ottawa #cdnpoli
attn: @Will_Bunch Not a registered charity 🚩
Not non-profit 🚩
Not a trucking organization 🚩

Yet: “At the time of its suspension, the convoy campaign had racked up approximately $10.1 million in just over two weeks… impossible to achieve organically within Canada.”

nationalobserver.com/2022/02/04/opi…
Feb 12, 2022 12 tweets 8 min read
The best account of @SoundTransit #applecup fiasco is THEIR blog post, which Google doesn’t consider news.

Although it looks like a template for “news org” reporter-as-stenographer stories, only @UrbanistOrg links to it:

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soundtransit.org/blog/platform/… Also, only @UrbanistOrg notes this deflection/finger pointing: an unamed “contractor had failed to fully implement the construction drawings.”

No mention of @SoundTransit responsibility to INSPECT.

🧵2

theurbanist.org/2022/02/11/tra…
Feb 10, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
Classified documents removed from the White House. Constant circumvention of public White House phone records.

TFG demonstrates a pattern of behavior that is criminal; he should be in prison not running for 2024 on lies.

@5DollarFeminist

abovethelaw.com/2022/02/trumps… Or starting yet another social network that news media will amplify rather than contextualize.
Feb 2, 2022 12 tweets 11 min read
“Some of them get paid to have takes. We get paid to end this pandemic.”*

@DrLeanaWen, how much does @cnn pay for your “takes”?

Do you pitch @washingtonpost or did they $olicit this?

Transparency is imperative.

WHAT STATE OF EMERGENCY? #covid19 There is no national US state of emergency on #COVID19, @DrLeanaWen, except the one that loosens purse strings and makes it easier for public health to, you know, do public health. Not one imposing behaviors.

statnews.com/2020/03/13/nat…
Jan 31, 2022 6 tweets 4 min read
News orgs too often center political news on “lies, damn lies and polls” [h/t, “lies, damn lies and statistics”].

Poll questions shape answers. Poll sample size, composition shape reliability. This Biden/SCOTUS ABC-Ipsos poll flunks both.

(Yes, polls include statistics.) Question,leading
Margin of Error, enormous: +/- 4.9%

The small sample size meant that ABC/Ipsos could not break out results for Black people. But “only 28%” of nonwhite Americans want Biden to “consider only Black women” for the SCOTUS. The MoA for that stat is even larger. Image
Jan 3, 2022 6 tweets 3 min read
I remain amazed at (1) thin-skinned TV news people and (2) journalists who refuse to provide sources for photos, videos etc in their tweets.

Three years ago I politely asked @BeschlossDC for the source of a photo. I discovered tonight that he had blocked me. 😂