Articles Feature

Did V.P. Pence Write That N.Y. Times Op-Ed?

by richard12498

The Only One Whose Job Is Not in Jeopardy, but —

The Only One Whose Job Is Not in Jeopardy, but —

A spokesman for Vice President Mike Pence strongly denied Thursday that he was the author of a New York Times op-ed who claimed to be part of a ‘resistance’ effort within the administration, as frenzied speculation continued about who penned the piece,” John Wagner reported for the Washington Post.

But Peter Eisner, co-author of the just-published “The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence,” tells Journal-isms that the vice president “is the only person whose job would not be jeopardized by disclosure of his name.”

Still, Eisner is doubtful that Pence wrote the op-ed.

Eisner said Thursday by email:

“I don’t think that the New York Times is playing around with the ID, and I disagree with the notion that Pence would also be in jeopardy because of possible disclosure. Pence has been deceptive throughout his career, but I still think that he is the only person whose job would not be jeopardized by disclosure of his name. The writer has to accept the possibility that his name will be revealed at any time — and may even be considering the possibility of revealing himself.

Peter Eisner
Peter Eisner

“Pence stands to benefit politically more than any other person in the United States, should Trump be driven from office, either by impeachment or under the 25th Amendment.

“Some are referring to this as a ‘soft coup,’ and in such a coup, Pence emerges at the 46th president of the United States.

“The writer, of course, could be representing a group of people, and Pence could be involved in some way. Based, however, on our previous contacts with sources close to Pence and his view of the presidency, I doubt that he is involved.

“Pence has worked carefully to attract Trump’s base, and to be accepted by them, in dozens of speeches around the United States. In each appearance, he says ‘I bring greetings from the president’ and that Trump has done a great job, the greatest in U.S. history. He can’t be Trump’s greatest supporter in public and then claim in print that he’s known all along that Trump is unfit for the presidency.

“Meanwhile, there’s a strange element in the op-ed. The writer says that ‘there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis.’

“The problem with that is that invoking the 25th Amendment does not on its face lead to a constitutional crisis. Rather, it invokes the Constitution as written. Unless, someone, like Pence would dissent from using the amendment. That would, in fact, invoke a crisis. An argument can be made that the letter writer himself (it appears to be a man) has in fact provoked the constitutional crisis that was feared.”

What if Trump Were Out and We Got Pence?

September 5, 2018

Authors: V.P. Gave Racial Issues ‘Benign Neglect’

Trump Adviser Almost Quit Over Charlottesville

Sinclair Stations Must Run Praise of Kavanaugh

Journalists Rally Behind Sentenced Reporters

Politics in Aretha Service Shouldn’t Be Missed

Howard Lets Go Another at Communications School

Craig Melvin Promoted to News Anchor for ‘Today’

Ahtone Named NAJA President After Pollard Moves

Asian Americans on Both Sides of Affirmative Action

Detained by ICE, Journalist Describes His Hell

Short Takes

Support Journal-isms


Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb pardoned Keith Cooper on an armed-robbery conviction last year after his predecessor, Mike Pence, refused. Cooper had maintained his innocence since his arrest in 1997. He served more than eight years in prison. (video) (Credit: Dwight Adams/Indianapolis Star)

Authors: V.P. Gave Racial Issues ‘Benign Neglect’

Political reporters say the Democrats don’t want to talk about impeaching President Trump just yet because it might energize Trump’s base before the midterm elections. But what if impeachment came to pass and Trump were forced to leave office? What would the nation get if Vice President Mike Pence were in the top job?

For people of color, Pence’s record as governor of Indiana suggests they could expect “benign neglect” of their issues, according to Michael D’Antonio and Peter Eisner, journalists who have written the new “The Shadow President: The Truth About Mike Pence,” published Friday.

Journal-isms asked Eisner, an author who has worked at Newsday, the Associated Press and the Washington Post, what journalists should make of their findings. Here is his edited response:

Local groups from East Chicago shine in Washington, D.C., at a march over climate change (Credit: Lakeshore Public Radio)
At a Washington, D.C., march (Credit: Lakeshore Public Radio)

“Pence’s time as governor of Indiana does give us hints about who he is. He treated controversy, in cases that happened to involve African Americans and other minorities, with benign neglect. He would deny this with a turn of the cheek, but would he explain himself? He never has.

  • “Keith Cooper had been arrested for the crime of being black and in the vicinity of a crime he had not committed. Once serving 10 years after a faulty trial, he was set free, and only wanted Pence to acknowledge reality. Pence’s own state parole board recommended a full pardon. Tens of thousands of people signed a petition demanding action. Cooper only wanted his good name back. Pence never addressed the matter in public and — acting through subordinates — refused to give him a pardon.
  • “Pence faced his own version of the Flint, Mich., lead crisis, this case in East Chicago, Ind., where local officials in the predominantly African American city said they had run out of money to help 1,500 families whose water and the soil beneath them were poisoned with lead and other heavy metals. Pence rejected a request for declaring a local disaster — his staff responding that enough had been done. In both cases, his successor, Eric Holcomb, a conservative Republican and Pence’s own former lieutenant governor, reversed Pence’s lack of action within weeks of taking office. Holcomb pardoned Cooper, saying he had already suffered more than enough; he declared an emergency in East Chicago, and took a key step: He went to East Chicago himself to meet with members of the community. Pence never bothered.
  • “Pence’s secretary of state promoted a bogus voter fraud claim against a progressive voter registration drive in 2016 in a mostly black suburb of Indianapolis. A local prosecutor said there had been no finding of fraud. The case involved 45,000 registrants and more who could have been registered — most of them would have been likely Democratic voters. Pence aligns himself now with Trump’s baseless charges of nationwide voter fraud. Why?

“Pence in all cases stands in the shadows, employing deniability, and hiding behind professions of faith. Nonbelievers, he says, are attacking him unfairly. But he never answers the questions of policy. He would deny charges of bias — but it just so happens that the most high profile acts he is criticized for involve inaction to alleviate the suffering of minorities in his home state and now immigrants to the United States.”

Eisner also noted, “Pence did not criticize Trump for his outrageous statements in Charlottesville — ‘some of them are good people’ — nor did he say anything about a government policy that separates parents from their children on the Mexican border. . . .”

Trump Adviser Almost Quit Over Charlottesville

Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser, came to regard President Trump as “a professional liar” and threatened to resign in August 2017 over Trump’s handling of a deadly white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., according to Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book “Fear,” Philip Rucker and Robert Costa reported Tuesday in the Washington Post.

“Cohn, who is Jewish, was especially shaken when one of his daughters found a swastika on her college dorm room,” they continued, reporting on just one of many revelations in the book.

“Trump was sharply criticized for initially saying that ‘both sides’ were to blame. At the urging of advisers, he then condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis but almost immediately told aides, ‘That was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve made’ and the ‘worst speech I’ve ever given,’ according to Woodward’s account.

“When Cohn met with Trump to deliver his resignation letter after Charlottesville, the president told him, ‘This is treason,’ and persuaded his economic adviser to stay on.” White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly “then confided to Cohn that he shared Cohn’s horror at Trump’s handling of the tragedy — and shared Cohn’s fury with Trump.

“ ‘I would have taken that resignation letter and shoved it up his ass six different times,’ Kelly told Cohn, according to Woodward. Kelly himself has threatened to quit several times but has not done so. . . .”

Sinclair Stations Must Run Praise of Kavanaugh

“Conservative TV giant Sinclair Broadcast Group is requiring its local news stations across the country to air multiple ‘must-run’ segments praising ‘perfectly qualified’ Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh and encouraging a quick confirmation,” Pam Vogel reported July 30 for Media Matters for America, updated Aug. 27.

“As of August 27, Sinclair has produced at least six ‘must-run’ commentary segments about the open Supreme Court seat, including three that feature excerpts from interviews with Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). The segments either laud Kavanaugh’s qualifications, dismiss real concerns about what’s at stake if he is confirmed, or push for a quick confirmation process. Some do all three.

“Sinclair designates that certain news and commentary segments, produced in its national studios, must air on its local news stations across the country — including all four of the Kavanaugh-related segments. According to a Media Matters search of the iQ media database, one or more of these segments have aired in at least 22 states, including those with potentially key senators in a confirmation vote like Alabama, Maine, Nevada, and West Virginia. . . .”

The confirmation hearings opened Tuesday. “Senate Democrats tore into President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee on Tuesday, painting Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh as a narrow-minded partisan as the opening day of his confirmation hearings verged on pandemonium,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Adam Liptak reported for the New York Times..

Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Kamala Harris, D-Calif., both of color, raised racial issues. Harris said she might not have attended the schools she did were it not for the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ordering school desegregation. Booker invited Carlotta Walls LaNier, the youngest of the Little Rock Nine who integrated Central High School in 1957 in Little Rock, Ark. He said some of Trump’s judicial nominees have refused to acknowledge that the Brown decision is settled law.

Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state under President George W. Bush and the second African American to hold that post, vouched for Kavanaugh’s character.

Reuters' Washington bureau stands in solidarity with @Reuters colleagues Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo (Credit: Twitter)
Reuters’ Washington bureau stands in solidarity with @Reuters colleagues Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo (Credit: Twitter)

Journalists Rally Behind Sentenced Reporters

“Reuters journalists in bureaus around the world on Tuesday voiced support for a pair of reporters for the news service who were sentenced this week to seven years in jail in Myanmar,” Joe Concha reported for the Hill.

“Free speech advocates have decried a Myanmar judge’s ruling Monday that Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, broke the law by obtaining confidential documents for a report on the persecution of Rohingya Muslims.

“U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley slammed Myanmar’s government over the ruling Monday on Twitter, saying it was ‘another terrible stain’ on the country and calling for the reporters’ immediate release.

“Reuters employees in Washington, D.C., New York and bureaus in multiple other countries shared photos on social media on Tuesday showing journalists standing in solidarity with the jailed reporters. . . .”

Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief, Stephen J. Adler said in a statement, “We will not wait while Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo suffer this injustice and will evaluate how to proceed in the coming days, including whether to seek relief in an international forum.”

International press freedom groups also expressed outrage.

Michael Eric Dyson said of President Trump, “You lugubrious leech! You dopey doppelgänger of deceit and deviance! You lethal liar, you dim-witted dictator, you foolish fascist!” (Credit: Detroit Free Press)
Michael Eric Dyson said of President Trump, “You lugubrious leech! You dopey doppelgänger of deceit and deviance! You lethal liar, you dim-witted dictator, you foolish fascist!” (Credit: Detroit Free Press)

Politics in Aretha Service Shouldn’t Be Missed

The eight-hour “homegoing” for Aretha Franklin in Detroit Friday was such a cultural and civic celebration that commentators often overlooked its political elements.

Some did notice, however.

“In speech after speech, Ms. Franklin in death became a rallying point for speakers who used her example to address political and social frustrations, and to vow to persevere,” Ben Sisario and Steve Friess wrote Friday for the New York Times. The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. “noted that there were long lines for her viewings but short lines at voting booths. Pastor William J. Barber II described Ms. Franklin’s voice itself as being vital to the civil rights movement.

“ ‘Before [Barack] Obama said, “Yes we can,” ‘ Pastor Barber announced, ‘Aretha sang, “We can conquer hate forever, yes we can,” ‘ alluding to her song ‘Wholly Holy.’

“Mr. [Stevie] Wonder cited similar themes before a rousing musical performance near the end of the ceremony. ‘We can talk about all the things that are wrong,’ he said, ‘and there are many, but the only thing that can deliver us is love. So what needs to happen today, not only in this nation, but throughout the world, is that we need to make love great again. Because black lives do matter’. . . .”

E.R. Shipp noted Tuesday in the Baltimore Sun, “Among the many constituencies that have suffered as the president tries to recast the United States as a white supremacist ‘America First’ plutocracy, black people have a growing list of grievances. So honoring the Queen of Soul became an outlet for venting frustration, anger, longing and loss while reasserting pride and honoring resilience. Yes, her reign stretched far beyond black America, but Aretha Franklin was unapologetically black.

“In her music, the scholar Michael Eric Dyson said in remarks more meaningful than the drivel the official eulogist later spewed, she conveyed ‘the reality of the hurt and pain, the ardor, the ecstasy, the suffering and the reality that we had to confront as a black people.’ And in her quiet commitment to justice, he said, from supporting Martin Luther King Jr. and Angela Davis to playing secret Santa to Detroit families who’d suffered tragedies, “she was about transforming the existence of black America.”

Those who heard Dyson won’t soon forget his takedown of President Trump.

“And then this orange apparition had the nerve to say she worked for him!” Dyson said.

Dyson told the audience. “You lugubrious leech! You dopey doppelgänger of deceit and deviance! You lethal liar, you dim-witted dictator, you foolish fascist!

“She ain’t work for you!” he exclaimed. “She worked above you! She worked beyond you! Get your preposition right!

“Then he got the nerve to say he gonna grab it!” Dyson continued. “That ain’t what Aretha Franklin said — I’mma give you something you can feel.

“Like the brothers in the streets say, tap lightly! Like a woodpecker with a headache!” he concluded.

Mildred Gaddis, beloved Detroit talk radio host, told the crowd that Franklin followed the news. She would call WJBK-TV anchor Huel Perkins and ask “Why did you have to run that story?” In addition, however, “Aretha would see a family, a family that had been burned out, a child that had been hit on the head, she would say to Huel Perkins, ‘I want to send a check, and don’t you tell anybody about it.’ That’s who our Aretha was.”

Meanwhile, Essence magazine repackaged its “bookazine” on Franklin, first launched last year in honor of the 50th anniversary of the song, “Respect.” “We printed around 250,000 for the original run (edited by Patrik Henry Bass),” spokeswoman Sheila Harris told Journal-isms. “For the re-issue we printed about 275,000 copies. It’s 96 pages long” and sells for $12.

Howard Lets Go Another at Communications School

Robin Thornhill
Robin Thornhill

Within days of Carol Dudley losing, then regaining her job mentoring students at Howard University’s Cathy Hughes School of Communications, Robin Thornhill, another longtime faculty member at the school, was let go.

“It blindsided me. I technically was dean of students,” Thornhill, a 18-year veteran of the school who was assistant dean for student affairs and assessment, told Journal-isms by telephone on Friday. “I do all things students. I never imagined they would terminate that person because it’s so central.”

Thornhill also taught advertising and public relations. She also said the university let go six others in the School of Communications, mostly administrative assistants. Thornhill questioned the timing of the layoffs, as school had already begun.

Asked what she wanted to do next, Thornhill replied, “I don’t know. I’m still sort of trying to get my feet back under me.”

Craig Melvin Promoted to News Anchor for ‘Today’

Craig Melvin
Craig Melvin

Craig Melvin, who recently stepped down as co-anchor of Saturday Today, is moving to the weekday side of NBC News’ morning show as news anchor,” Patrick Hipes reported Tuesday for Deadline: Hollywood. “His new Today role was announced Tuesday morning by co-anchors Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb.

“Melvin had been a busy guy. In addition to co-hosting the Saturday edition of Today, he had been a correspondent and fill-in anchor on the weekday edition. He anchors MSNBC Live at 1 PM ET weekdays for the cable news network. . . .”

Brian Stelter reported for CNN that Melvin’s promotion “is the latest sign that NBC is still treading carefully with its morning show nearly one year after Matt Lauer was fired. . . . some executives at NBC News have believed that ‘Today’ needed more of an ensemble feel — which meant having more supporting players next to Guthrie and Kotb.

“Melvin has basically been playing that role for months, and now it’s been formalized. Carson Daly and Al Roker also appear on the show every morning. . . .”

Ahtone Named NAJA President After Pollard Moves

Tristan Ahtone
Tristan Ahtone

Less than six weeks after being elected to a third term as president of the Native American Journalists Association, Bryan Pollard (Cherokee) resigned his seat on the board and became a staff member at the organization, NAJA announced on Tuesday. Board member Tristan Ahtone (Kiowa) was named president during NAJA’s monthly board meeting meeting Aug. 30.

“Pollard will join NAJA in the new full-time staff position of director of programs and strategic partnerships, where he will oversee programming including annual conference training, awards, the Native American Journalism Fellowship (NAJF) and the RED Press Initiative,” an announcement said.

“He will also be responsible for developing partnerships and assisting with fundraising, in accordance with the organization’s 2018-2020 strategic plan.

“Pollard joins NAJA after serving as the communications director and AmeriCorps VISTA Coordinator at the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University of Arkansas. Prior to joining the U of A, he was executive editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the tribal news media for the Cherokee Nation based in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. . . .”

“Ahtone is a citizen of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, a lifetime NAJA member and associate editor for tribal affairs at High Country News. His stories have won multiple honors, including investigative awards from Public Radio News Directors Incorporated and the Gannett Foundation. He is a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts and Columbia School of Journalism.

In 2017 Ahtone was awarded a Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard University. . . .”

(Credit: AAPI Data)
(Credit: AAPI Data)

Asian Americans on Both Sides of Affirmative Action

“Some of the headlines read: ‘DOJ sides with Asian Americans against Harvard admissions.’ They could easily have said, ‘DOJ goes against Asian Americans in Harvard admissions, ‘ ” As Am News reported on Friday.

“Asian Americans were on both sides of the controversy over Harvard’s admissions procedures.

“The Department of Justice sided with the plaintiffs challenging Harvard when it filed a Statement of Interest on the side of the plaintiff in Students For Fair Admissions’ discrimination case against Harvard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

“Also Thursday, civil rights advocates Asian Americans Advancing Justice (Advancing Justice) alongside the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Boston-based Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, and pro bono counsel Arnold & Porter, filed a second amicus curiae, ‘friend of the court,’ brief on behalf of a diverse group of students, including Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who support Harvard’s race-conscious holistic admissions policy. The students have special status in the case, which allows them to submit evidence and participate in oral argument. . . .”

In June, the group AAPI Data reported:

“Asian Americans have consistently supported affirmative action policies, with some differences in support depending on question wording;

“Support among Chinese Americans has declined dramatically over four years, while it has remained stable for other Asian Americans;

“Despite declines due to opinion change among Chinese Americans, nearly two-thirds of Asian Americans still support affirmative action. . . .”

Emilio Gutiérrez Soto on his release day in El Paso. (Credit: Julian Aguilar/Texas Tribune)
Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto on his release day in El Paso, Texas. (Credit: Julian Aguilar/Texas Tribune)

Detained by ICE, Journalist Describes His Hell

“Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, a Mexican journalist based in the United States, has twice been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Columbia Journalism Review reported on Tuesday. “In late July, he was released from his second round of detention. For the first time, he has written a first-person account of the experience.”

“I need to spell out some of my recent experiences, so that others will not go through these extremely degrading hardships in a foreign place where universal liberties are proclaimed and then inhumanely denied to those who would seek protection,” Gutiérrez wrote.

“Ten years ago, in spite of the danger of working as a journalist in my home country, Mexico, and President Felipe Calderón’s “War on Drugs,” I never imagined that I would cross the border to the US, seeking the protection of the authorities, or that I would twice be imprisoned in holding camps, the second time with my son Oscar at my side.

“But the decision to request asylum was quick. Crossing the armed forces of my country, the executing arm of the Mexican state under the control of Calderón, was not something to think twice about. I had received serious threats from the Mexican government. Because of my work, I lost access to my true heritage, lost a family, lost a beloved woman, lost a community, lost a Motherland, and was forced to venture out in search of charity.

“When I crossed the border to El Norte from my small community in the northeast of Chihuahua, to save my life and that of my son, I requested political asylum.

“I remember the moment of crossing.

“ ‘What are you bringing?’ La Migra (the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer) asked when we crossed that morning through El Berrendo to the US.

“ ‘Fear,’ I responded right away.

“ ‘Of whom?’

“ ‘Of the military officials who want to kill me. I’m a journalist.’

“ ‘And what do you want here?’

“ ‘Political asylum,’ I answered.

“La Migra slid his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose to peer over them at me inquisitively. ‘But aren’t soldiers there to look after you?’

“ ‘Not those ones!’ I said. I turned white.

” ‘Okay! Please step down to the office,’ La Migra said.

“That’s when the way of sorrows began, and would last more than ten years.

“I was sent to a holding camp, and my son — just 15 years old — to a youth center. Jail! And with jail came separation from Oscar, who is my life, my very breath. Our separation was a disgrace. The limbo began, and it was without mercy. . . ”

Gutiérrez also wrote, “the criminalization of those of us seeking political asylum has just begun. . . .”

Short Takes

Madhulika Sikka
Madhulika Sikka

The Washington Post has hired award-winning journalist and veteran audio storyteller Madhulika Sikka as an executive producer on The Post’s audio team” the Post announced Tuesday. Sikka was public editor at PBS. Public editor opening

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Behind Walls, ‘Completely Out of Public View’

September 7, 2018
Prison Strike Continues, but Reporters Kept Away

Harris, Booker Futures Are Part of Kavanaugh Story

Steele Suspects N.Y. Times Op-Ed Was Group Effort

Durhams Is First Black President of LGBTQ Group


“Coverage of the killings, and the strike, have been limited, and not because they aren’t noteworthy.” (video) (Credit: WSPA-TV, Spartanburg, S.C.)

Prison Strike Continues, but Reporters Kept Away

“On a Monday in April, at Lee Correctional Facility, in South Carolina, a bloody brawl erupted,” Alexandra Ellerbeck and Avi Asher-Schapiro reported Thursday for Columbia Journalism Review.

“More than four hours passed before guards intervened; in the meantime, seven men died and dozens lay injured. The violence was so intense, and the sluggish response from authorities so disconcerting, that, starting August 21, incarcerated people across the country launched a peaceful strike in protest

In Lansing, Mich. (Credit: Twitter)
In Lansing, Mich. (Credit: Twitter)

“In an effort organized by the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, a union group, and Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, an anonymous collective, prisoners are refusing to perform their assigned jobs and demanding that authorities address a range of concerns — from little or no pay for prison labor to racial disparities in sentencing to the lack of voting rights for incarcerated citizens and ex-felons.

“Coverage of the killings, and the strike, have been limited, and not because they aren’t noteworthy. Although prisons and jails can be found in nearly every community in America, journalists struggle to keep the public informed. ‘What happens behind prison walls — with public funds and in the name of public safety — is completely out of public view,” Jessica Pupovac, a reporter in Chicago, says.

“Pupovac, who has worked with the Society of Professional Journalists to document media access to prisons in all 50 states, has found that, in many cases, authorities will simply avoid reporters they don’t want to deal with. ‘If they’d prefer a story not get out,’ she tells CJR, ‘it doesn’t.’

“In addition to a complex network of state policies that restrict everything from the length of interviews to the pens and paper reporters can bring in, journalists say that the system is often unresponsive to information requests and that they must worry about retaliation against their sources. . . .”

Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. (Photo via Kamala Harris)
Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Cory Booker, D-N.J. (Photo via Kamala Harris)

Harris, Booker Futures Are Part of Kavanaugh Story

“Eleven years after Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton used Senate hearings as an anti-Iraq war launchpad for their presidential ambitions, two Democratic senators are similarly seizing on the Supreme Court battle to play to the gallery of 2020 primary voters,” Eric Bradner and Stephen Collinson reported Friday for CNN.

“Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing has given California Sen. Kamala Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker an opportunity to show the Democratic base they can put up a fight against President Donald Trump while the national television cameras are running.”

CNN’s was but one story casting the futures of Harris and Booker as part of the storyline of the Kavanaugh hearings.

“The two have seized the moment,” the reporters continued, “upending the conversation around the hearing with exchanges that demonstrated qualities at the core of their political appeal: Booker, a willingness to break norms to stand for his principles, and Harris, a long-time prosecutor’s ability to undermine a cagey witness.

“It comes in one of the last major Senate fights before major Democratic 2020 presidential candidates are expected to launch their campaigns after November’s midterm elections.

“Republicans have complained that Harris and Booker are posturing with 2020 in mind. . . .”

According to the website becauseofthemwecan.com, “This marks the first time two African Americans have sat on the committee at the same time in its 201-year- history.

“As a matter of fact, no African American senator has sat on this committee since the 1990’s when Carole Moseley-Braun served. Moseley-Braun was the first Black woman elected to the Senate as a Democrat from Illinois in 1993. Booker is now the first Black man to sit on this committee. . . .”

Steele Suspects N.Y. Times Op-Ed Was Group Effort

“Former Republican Party National Chairman Michael Steele goes on the record with NNPA Newswire and it turns out there are more resisters inside the White House — a high-level group of Republican resisters to President Donald Trump — not a single individual, but a large and still growing group,” Stacy M. Brown wrote Friday for the National Newspaper Publishers Association.

Michael Steele
Michael Steele

“In an NNPA Newswire exclusive, Steele said the damning New York Times op-ed by a senior Trump administration official was likely written by a team of the president’s trusted hierarchy and it’s a clear signal that America is now witnessing a White House in utter chaos. . . .”

Others were not only trying to determine the identity of the op-ed writer, but debating the propriety of the Times’ publishing the piece with a promise of anonymity.

In addition, Michael Calderone reported Friday for Politico:

“Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders . . . scolded the media for its ‘wild obsession’ with the writer’s identity and directed those who ‘want to know who this gutless loser is,’ to ‘call the opinion desk of the failing New York Times.’ She also posted the Times’s main number and at least a half dozen journalists —including reporters and editors who work on the news, rather than opinion side of the paper — acknowledged getting calls.

” ‘Not sure this is what [Sanders] had in mind when she urged people to call The New York Times,’ tweeted political reporter Ken Vogel, along with audio of caller thanking the paper. The Times’s Andrew Das, Sydney Ember, Elizabeth Dias, Vivian Lee, and Edmund Lee also noted receiving calls, some positive and others negative. ‘The vitriol against the paper is astounding,’ tweeted Lee, who covers media. ‘I don’t know how politics reporters do this every day.’ . . .”

Durhams Is First Black President of LGBTQ Group

Sharif Durhams
Sharif Durhams

Sharif Durhams, a senior editor for news and alerting for CNN Digital, was “confirmed” as president of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the organization, also called NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, announced on Friday.

Durham’s appointment takes effect at the conclusion of NLGJA’s 2018 National Convention in Palm Springs, Calif., on Sunday. It makes him the first African American president of the 28-year-old NLGJA, the National Association of Black Journalists noted in a congratulatory announcement.

NABJ noted that Durhams has been a member of NLGJA since 2000 and previously served as vice president of broadcast and treasurer.

The NABJ announcement continued, ” ‘My goal is to improve the diversity of this organization as well as [its] outreach,’ said Durhams, who has lifetime memberships in both NLGJA and NABJ. ‘I definitely want both organizations to work more together. In some ways, our issues mirror each other, such as making sure there is support in our newsrooms for diversity and getting people from diverse backgrounds into leadership positions.

” ‘There are ways we can back each other up to make sure all of our voices are heard.’ . . .”

 (more to come)
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Richard Prince’s Journal-isms originates from Washington. It began in print before most of us knew what the internet was, and it would like to be referred to as a “column.” Any views expressed in the column are those of the person or organization quoted and not those of any other entity.
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About Richard Prince

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1 comment

Dan Holly September 7, 2018 at 11:56 am

Has anyone else noticed that the Times Op-Ed controversy is starting to sound a lot like the plot to “The President is Missing”? The plot involved a leaker in the White House who clearly had access to info only the inner circle would have.The vice president was the chief suspect because she stood to benefit if the president were impeached.

I won’t spoil the plot for anyone who hasn’t read that book (which I highly recommend) but I will only say the plot has many twists and turns. I suspect this controversy will also.

This just goes to show that, in the Trump administration truth is stranger than fiction.

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