The Internationale is a famous socialist, communist, social-democratic, and anarchist anthem.  It is sung traditionally with the hand raised in a clenched fist salute.

(O)bserved on May 1 in the United States. It is a day set aside for the reaffirmation of loyalty to the United States and for the recognition of the heritage of American freedom.

The holiday was first observed in 1921, during the First Red Scare. It was originally called “Americanization Day,” and it was intended to replace the May 1 (“May Day”) celebration of the International Workers’ Day, which commemorates the 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago.

During the Second Red Scare, it was recognized by the U.S. Congress on April 27, 1955, and made an official reoccurring holiday on July 18, 1958 (Public Law 85-529). President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed May 1, 1955, the first observance of Loyalty Day In 1958, Eisenhower urged Congress to move Child Health Day to the First Monday in October, to avoid conflicting with Loyalty Day. Loyalty Day has been recognized with an official proclamation every year by every president since its inception as a legal holiday in 1958.

Now I want you to know that if you believe in equality, freedom, and brother (and sister) hood you are no better than a mass murdering, aristocrat assassinating, property stealing Communist and as such I welcome you.

We Anarcho-Syndicalists tend to think all the rest of you Social Democrats, Socialists, and Communists are wienies because we held out in Barcelona to the last even when attacked and betrayed by our supposed allies, but you know, not everyone is ready for social justice, worker control of the means of production, and devolution of power to collective organizations no bigger than they must be, or even democracy for that matter. It doesn’t keep us from trying to educate.

It bothers me that people are misinformed (or lied to, take your pick) to consider the Institutional Democratic Party of the United States as representative of “The Left”. While some (not many) represent a marginal improvement over the Neo Liberal status quo most collapse on a fainting couch clutching their pearls when you suggest real solutions to the problems facing this country economically (confiscatory taxes on wealth, corporations, and inheritance) or socially (equal justice under law, firearm control, actual democracy instead of elite posturing), you can’t even get them to agree to Single Payer Health Care.

You might not be as “Left” as I am but can we at least agree to this- the United States is not “America”. Even leaving out the fact that there is a whole other continent called América del Sur (South America to you gringos) including 12 sovereign countries including Brazil which is the 5th largest in the world, WE ARE NOT EVEN THE LARGEST ON OUR OWN CONTINENT!

That would be Canada.

Actually factually the order goes something (exactly, but hey, trying to be diplomatic here) like this-

1. Russia
2. Canada
3. China
4. United States
5. Brazil

We’re #4! We’re #4! Revel in it because in most other measures we don’t score nearly as well.

So as you loyally celebrate your ‘Loyalty Day’ freedumb by loyally proclaiming you belong to “one nation, under God” (which distinguishes you from all us atheist MuslimHinduBuddhistCatholicJews) I want you to remember that while you may be “Proud to Be” a United States citizen you don’t represent America, or even a majority of the citizens of your own country.

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

President George W. Bush announces major combat has ended in Iraq; U2 spy plane shot down over Soviet Union; Empire State Building dedicated.

I’ve gone through many, many things. I tell you something, that if it doesn’t kill you, you get stronger.

Judy Collins

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Each letter speaks to a specific sexual orientation or identification. Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender.

“Q” means “Queer”.

Now I myself am “Queer” in the sense of being unusual or eccentric but I have no exotic fantasies of erotic activity beyond that required to satisfy the desires of my partner.

“Are you through yet?”

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m a good sport and I’m willing to put special effort into maintaining a solid relationship but it doesn’t take much to make me happy. Not booting my ass out on the street because of my insanity goes a long, long way.

“Q” on the other hand, in this particular context, is a slur on par with the “N”.

And I’ll use the N Word, for historic accuracy or for ironic, satirical, or shock value. I’m certainly not in favor of banishing Huckleberry Finn, perhaps the most forceful condemnation of slavery, racism, and bigotry in Literature, from classrooms or even bowdlerizing it.

This is who we were and some of us still are.

On the other hand it doesn’t appear casually and without purpose.

The “Q” I consider superfluous. Were I a feminist lesbian I might imagine some aggrievement that the perfectly serviceable and non-Gendered “Gay” has been hijacked and appropriated but, whatever. Should we at some point decide distinguishing between those who have transformed or transcended their sexual identity be further marginalized and divided by the objects of their attraction, so be it.

What really bugs me is I had to look up “cis” just as I was getting used to “‘tro”.

In the War Against Rebellion And Slavery there were at least 360,000 Union dead. Those who died in defense of Rebellion And Slavery go unremarked by me, as they justly should for their treason.

Knowing the cost, should we have not had this war? Should we have been content that people be enslaved, beaten, and killed on the basis of their skin color for the financial benefit and sadistic pleasure of their masters?

Charlie Pierce has it exactly right-

Here are the articles of surrender, in case you wonder one day how it all happened.

“Dear Members:
 
“I want to tell you how much your kind words meant to me following my personal remarks at last night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner about the roots of my belief in journalism’s essential role.
 
“I also have heard from members expressing dismay with the entertainer’s monologue and concerns about how it reflects on our mission. Olivier Knox, who will take over this summer as our president, and I, recognize these concerns and are committed to hearing from members on your views on the format of the dinner going forward. Last night’s program was meant to offer a unifying message about our common commitment to a vigorous and free press while honoring civility, great reporting and scholarship winners, not to divide people. Unfortunately, the entertainer’s monologue was not in the spirit of that mission.
 
“Every day we are working hard to advocate for our members and ensure coverage that benefits the public, and the dinner is an important opportunity to highlight and maintain our essential work. The White House Correspondents’ Association remains dedicated to that mission.
 
“Margaret Talev”

Faced with an administration* and a president* dedicated to poisoning both the spirit and the institutions of free government, and faced with an administration* and a president* dedicated only to looting those institutions that it cannot destroy, the representatives of the elite political media, through the woman at the head of their formal association, Margaret Talev, have determined that bowing to the fauxtrage aimed at a comedian on behalf of the administration*’s paid liar is the proper way to respond to the weekend’s festivities. The commitment to a free press is not common to this nation’s people any more, if it ever was, and it damn sure doesn’t have any fans in this administration*. Anyone who thinks that “a vigorous and free press” and “honoring civility” are equally desirable goals doesn’t love the former enough to deserve the latter.
…
The daily briefings are pointless. Sanders isn’t even a particularly accomplished liar. (Neither is her boss.) The benign faces she puts on malignant policies are thin and transparent. The idea that people actually are carrying her water in reply to Michelle Wolf’s monologue on Saturday night is absolutely astonishing to me. (I thought the routine was a solid B, and I’ve never seen a standup for whom every joke landed, except for the late Richard Pryor.)

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is not your friend. She is, professionally, the enemy. I don’t care if most of the time she’s a combination of Florence Nightingale, Mother Superior, and Cher. When she gets behind the podium, her job is to belittle you and your profession and, by proxy, all of us who practice it. She is a tower of contempt. That she was discomfited on Saturday night because of a comedian is part of what she gets paid for. Discomfiting the likes of Sarah Huckabee Sanders is part of what Michelle Wolf got paid for. The forces were perfectly in balance.

But that statement…Lord, what a mess that is. It devalues what it proposes to defend and it trivializes what it claims is of paramount importance. In an age that demands what Whitman called a barbaric YAWP from all corners of the journalistic community, it is the squeaking of a hamster wheel. Next year, they should have that dinner in Stockholm.

Charlie attributes it to Stockholm Syndrome which I think far too charitable. People afflicted by that are in the throes of life threatening fear. Our Villagers are experiencing mild dyspepsia that anyone should question their gatekeeper status, 8 figure salaries, and “holier than thou” morality in the slightest.

He has helped you sell your papers & your books & your TV. You helped create this monster & now you’re profiting off of him. And if you’re gonna profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money because he doesn’t have any.

Bring me my fainting couch!

Charlie also evokes the memory of William Lloyd Garrison and The Liberator. Since he quotes it only partly and I’m a great advocate of context here is the whole thing.

From The Liberator
January 1, 1831

To the Public

In the month of August, I issued proposals for publishing “THE LIBERATOR” in Washington city; but the enterprise, though hailed in different sections of the country, was palsied by public indifference. Since that time, the removal of the Genius of Universal Emancipation [Benjamin Lundy’s anti-slavery newspaper] to the Seat of Government has rendered less imperious the establishment of a similar periodical in that quarter.

During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery, every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact, that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free states — and particularly in New-England — than at the south. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen, than among slave owners themselves. Of course, there were individual exceptions to the contrary. This state of things afflicted, but did not dishearten me. I determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill and in the birth place of liberty. That standard is now unfurled; and long may it float, unhurt by the spoliations of time or the missiles of a desperate foe — yea, till every chain be broken, and every bondman set free! Let southern oppressors tremble — let their secret abettors tremble — let their northern apologists tremble — let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble.

I deem the publication of my original Prospectus unnecessary, as it has obtained a wide circulation. The principles therein inculcated will be steadily pursued in this paper, excepting that I shall not array myself as the political partisan of any man. In defending the great cause of human rights, I wish to derive the assistance of all religions and of all parties.

Assenting to the “self-evident truth” maintained in the American Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights — among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. In Park-street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popluar but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September, 1829. My consicence in now satisfied.

I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; — but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.

It is pretended, that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective, and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my influence, — humble as it is, — is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be felt in coming years — not perniciously, but beneficially — not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God, that he enables me to disregard “the fear of man which bringeth a snare,” and to speak his truth in its simplicity and power. And here I close with this fresh dedication:

Oppression! I have seen thee, face to face,
And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow;
But thy soul-withering glance I fear not now —
For dread to prouder feelings doth give place
Of deep abhorrence! Scorning the disgrace
Of slavish knees that at thy footstool bow,
I also kneel — but with far other vow
Do hail thee and thy hord of hirelings base: —
I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing veins,
Still to oppose and thwart, with heart and hand,
Thy brutalising sway — till Afric’s chains
Are burst, and Freedom rules the rescued land, —
Trampling Oppression and his iron rod:
Such is the vow I take — SO HELP ME GOD!

What does Stockton think? So glad you asked.

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a damned shame that a field as potentially dynamic and vital as journalism should be overrun with dullards, bums, and hacks, hag-ridden with myopia, apathy, and complacence, and generally stuck in a bog of stagnant mediocrity.

There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong. This is a dangerous notion, and very few professional journalists will endorse it — calling it “vengeful” and “primitive” and “perverse” regardless of how often they might do the same thing themselves. “That kind of stuff is opinion,” they say, “and the reader is cheated if it’s not labelled as opinion.” Well, maybe so. Maybe Tom Paine cheated his readers and Mark Twain was a devious fraud with no morals at all who used journalism for his own foul ends. And maybe H. L. Mencken should have been locked up for trying to pass off his opinions on gullible readers and normal “objective journalism.” Mencken understood that politics — as used in journalism — was the art of controlling his environment, and he made no apologies for it. In my case, using what politely might be called “advocacy journalism,” I’ve used reporting as a weapon to affect political situations that bear down on my environment.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment. That is one of the key things I learned in these years, and I learned it the hard way. Anybody who thinks that ‘it doesn’t matter who’s President’ has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid War on the other side of the World — or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property — or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons — or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.

I’ve taken classes in Journalism, even published, but I’m not a Journalist- I’m a writer.

Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits— a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

Every Day Is Exactly The Same

Every New Trump Story Is Old

Trump’s (Ick) Sex Life

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler commits suicide; End of the Vietnam War as Saigon falls; George Washington sworn in as America’s first president; The Louisiana Purchase; Country singer Willie Nelson born.

What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander but is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the guinea hen.

Alice B. Toklas

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You know, this is supposed to be funny, funny stuff.

Why do I listen to it and hear a litany of failure?

Michelle Wolf 2018

Hasan Minhaj 2017

Larry Wilmore 2016

Cecily Strong 2015

Joel McHale 2014

Conan O’Brien 2013

Jimmy Kimmel 2012

Seth Meyers 2011

Jay Leno 2010

Wanda Sykes 2009

Craig Ferguson 2008

Rich Little 2007

Oh, maybe this is why.

Stephen Colbert 2006

(A)s excited as I am to be here with the President, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of FOX News. FOX News gives you both sides of every story: the President’s side, and the Vice President’s side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking?

Reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they’re super-depressing. And if that’s your goal, well, misery accomplished.

Over the last five years you people were so good, over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out.

Those were good times, as far as we knew. But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works.

The President makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down.

Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!

Because, really, what incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So, the White House has personnel changes. And then you write, “Oh, they’re just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring! If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!

It is twelve years now and the media is just as bad as it ever was, maybe worse. Vote with your eyeballs, it’s little enough to ask.

Update: Aww, Your Poor Widdle Fee Fees

Look folks, the point of today’s piece isn’t that Michelle Wolf was too tough on Sarah Huckababy Sanders who is a lying sack of crap, it’s that she wasn’t nearly tough enough. Trump is a traitor, a Russian Spy. His Administration is a Spy Ring.

Oh, it’s also an organized Crime Family but even Salvatore Lucania had some patriotism.

Celebrity Journalists are complicit. They’re accessories. They should be tried, convicted, and locked up. First Amendment my ass, they’re nothing but stenographers and propagandists.

They don’t even bother to hide that fact, instead they have this annual event to brag about the depth of their Rolodex and the shallowness of their reporting, and demonstrate to the Serfs and Thralls the coolness they don’t possess because their Audience hates them for being talentless sycophantic sellouts and Politicians despise them for being so easily corrupted, even the Congresspeople.

If I had one piece of advice to give Michelle it’s that the whole Steven Wright delivery thing doesn’t work in that room. Not that she’ll get a second chance.

I dropped spot remover on my dog. He disappeared.

The older you get, the more you learn to see what you’ve been taught to see. When you’re a kid, you see what’s there.

Always remember you’re unique, just like everyone else.

Next year Kathy Griffin with a severed Trump head!

Tom Brokaw’s letter–

It is 4:00 am on the first day of my new life as an accused predator in the universe of American journalism. I was ambushed and then perp walked across the pages of The Washington Post and Variety as an avatar of male misogyny, taken to the guillotine and stripped of any honor and achievement I had earned in more than a half century of journalism and citizenship.

I am angry, hurt and unmoored from what I thought would be the final passage of my life and career, a mix of written and broadcast journalism, philanthropy and participation in environmental and social causes that have always given extra meaning to my life.

Instead I am facing a long list of grievances from a former colleague who left NBC News angry that she had failed in her pursuit of stardom. She has unleashed a torrent of unsubstantiated criticism and attacks on me more than twenty years after I opened the door for her and a new job at Fox news.

Linda Vester was given the run of the Washington Post and Variety to vent her grievances, to complain that I tickled her without permission (you read that right), that I invaded her hotel room, accepted an invitation to her apartment under false pretenses and in general was given a free hand to try to destroy all that I have achieved with my family, my NBC career, my writing and my citizenship.

My family and friends are stunned and supportive. My NBC colleagues are bewildered that Vester, who had limited success at NBC News, a modest career at Fox and a reputation as a colleague who had trouble with the truth, was suddenly the keeper of the flame of journalistic integrity.

Her big charge: that on two occasions more than 20 years ago I made inappropriate and uninvited appearances in her apartment and in a hotel room. As an eager beginner, Vester, like others in that category, was eager for advice and camaraderie with senior colleagues. She often sought me out for informal meetings, including the one she describes in her New York hotel room. I should not have gone but I emphatically did not verbally and physically attack her and suggest an affair in language right out of pulp fiction.

She was coy, not frightened, filled with office gossip, including a recent rumor of an affair. As that discussion advanced she often reminded me she was a Catholic and that she was uncomfortable with my presence. So I left, 23 years later, to be stunned by her melodramatic description of the meeting. A year or so later, as I passed through London after covering end of WWII ceremonies in Moscow, I saw her in the office, chatted and agreed to a drink later. (If NY was so traumatic, why a reunion?) She knew a bar but by that late hour it was closed so she suggested her nearby apartment (not, “Well, no where to go. See you tomorrow”).

Again, her hospitality was straight forward [sic] with lots of pride in her reporting in the Congo and more questions about NY opportunities.

As I remember, she was at one end of a sofa, I was at the other. It was late and I had been up for 24 hours. As I got up to leave I may have leaned over for a perfunctory goodnight kiss, but my memory is that it happened at the door – on the cheek. No clenching her neck. That move she so vividly describes is NOT WHO I AM. Not in high school, college or thereafter.

She came to NY and had mixed success on the overnight news. As I remember her try out [sic] on TODAY did not go well. Her contract was not renewed.

Here is a part of her story she somehow left out. I think I saw her in the hallways and asked how it was going. She was interested in cable start up [sic] and I said I didn’t think that was going anywhere. What about Fox, which was just building up? She was interested and followed me to my office where, while she listened in, I called Roger Ailes. He said, “send her over.”

She got the job. I never heard from her or saw her again. I was aware that she became a big fan of Ailes, often praising his considerable broadcasting instincts in public. But when he got in trouble on sexual matters, not a peep from this woman who now describes her self [sic] as the keeper of the flame for Me:Too.

I am not a perfect person. I’ve made mistakes, personally and professionally. But as I write this at dawn on the morning after a drive by [sic] shooting by Vester, the Washington Post and Variety, I am stunned by the free ride given a woman with a grudge against NBC News, no distinctive credentials or issue passions while at FOX.

As a private citizen who married a wealthy man, she has been active in social causes but she came to Me:Too late, portraying herself as a den mother. In the intervening years since we met on those two occasions, she had no reason to worry I could affect her career.

Some of her relatives by marriage are very close friends. She couldn’t pick up the phone and say, “I’d like to talk. I have issues from those two meetings 20 years ago?” Instead she became a character assassin. Strip away all of the hyperbole and what has she achieved? What was her goal? Hard to believe it wasn’t much more Look At Me than Me:Too.

I deeply resent the pain and anger she inflicted on my wife, daughters and granddaughters – all women of considerable success and passion about women’s rights which they personify in their daily lives and professions. We’ll go on as a family that pursues social justice in medical emergency rooms, corporate offices, social therapy, African women’s empowerment and journalism. And no one woman’s assault can take that away.

I am proud of who I am as a husband, father, grandfather, journalist and citizen. Vester, the Washington Post and Variety cannot diminish that. But in this one woman piece of sensational claims they are trying.

Tom Brokaw

Does this sound like an apology to you? A recognition of past wrongs? Repentence?

I’ve pissed people off both deliberately and thoughtlessly and I regret nothing. I might express sympathy that you feel bad and defend my actions from a personal perspective, but I’ll never claim they weren’t mine and that you’re delusional. That would be intentional abuse in the present moment- mere gaslighting.

Too frequently that’s what we’re seeing now and it makes me angry. “In the context of the times…” “They were misunderstood…” “This mountain of evidence is just a molehill…”

Well, I’m not having any of it. The last time I got thrown off dK it was because I called Deoliver a rapist apologist because she was and is. She defended a sockpuppet crony’s attack on a heartfelt and real rape experience simply because he was her crony. She did that and owns it.

Now, were they right to ban me? Probably. It’s not good for discipline to allow Peons (make no mistake, that’s what the software calls you) slam your Contributing Editors and Admins no matter how true it is and I not only don’t regret my actions, they made my life happier and better.

Well, in the long run.

Here’s everything wrong with Tom Brokaw’s awful letter responding to sexual harassment allegations
by Rebekah Entralgo, Think Progress
Apr 27, 2018

According to both the Post and Variety, Tom Brokaw, a special correspondent for NBC News and the retired anchor of NBC Nightly News, has been accused of sexual predation by a former NBC correspondent named Linda Vester.

Vester told Variety that in the 1990s, Brokaw tried to force her into kissing him on more than one occasion and groped her in a company conference room.

Brokaw initially denied the allegations flatly and plainly, saying he made “no romantic overtures towards her at that time or any other,” but in the hours since the story first broke, Brokaw apparently decided he should say more.

In a lengthy letter sent to colleagues Friday, Brokaw slammed Vester and the allegations — using damning language that some have likened to Bill O’Reilly’s when he faced with sexual harassment allegations of his own.

It would be difficult to appropriately sum up all the egregious, victim-blaming language used by Brokaw so let’s just tick through the worst of it.
…
If you have to start off a letter by addressing how late it is, it is probably in your best interest to close your computer, get some sleep, and address your colleagues with a well-rested mind in the morning.

“I was ambushed and then perp walked across the pages of The Washington Post and Variety as an avatar of male misogyny, taken to the guillotine and stripped of any honor and achievement I had earned in more than a half century of journalism and citizenship,” Brokaw wrote.

Brokaw is not in prison. He was not “perp walked.” He’s mostly retired from life in the spotlight.
…
He takes credit for, and later attacks, his accuser’s career.

“She has unleashed a torrent of unsubstantiated criticism and attacks on my more than twenty years after I opened the door for her and a new job at Fox News,” Brokaw wrote of Vester.

Taking credit for his accuser’s career and using it as leverage is a bad look, particularly when Vester was already an accomplished young journalist before she became an NBC foreign correspondent.

Later in the letter, he attacks her integrity as a journalist, writing, “My colleagues are bewildered that Vester, who had limited success at NBC News, a modest career at Fox and a reputation as a colleague who had trouble with the truth was suddenly the keeper of the flame of journalistic integrity.”

Brokaw also throws in a tidbit that she had “mixed success” on the overnight news shift, and that her TODAY show audition did not go well.

Lots of victim-blaming.

Brokaw describes Vester in the 1990s as an “eager beginner” who sought him out for informal meetings, including the one she described in her New York hotel room where Vester alleges Brokaw showed up uninvited and attempted to kiss her.

He goes on to ask why she never came forward in the 20 years after the incident, hinting at ulterior motives and using her wealth and marriage against her.

“As a private citizen who married a wealthy man she has been active in social causes but she came to Me:Too late, portraying herself as a den mother,” Brokaw wrote.

For the record: it is never too late for women to come forward with their stories of sexual harassment.

“What was her goal? Hard to believe it wasn’t much more Look At Me than Me: Too,” Brokaw wrote.

That Brokaw would be so insensitive to a female accuser should really come as no surprise to those familiar with comments he has made about the #MeToo movement.

In a January appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, he complained that there was “no system in place” to deal with such accusations, deriding them as “tabloid fodder.”
…
“But as I write this at dawn on the morning after a drive by shooting by Vester, the Washington Post and Variety I am stunned by the free ride given a woman with a grudge against NBC News, no distinctive credentials or issue passions while at FOX,” Brokaw wrote.

Again, Brokaw insults Vester’s career by insinuating she wasn’t successful at her work. That, of course, should have no bearing on the accusations. Does Brokaw believe that only accusations made by well-known public figures be taken seriously?

Good question. Does he? How does he feel about Cosby, another NBC icon now proven guilty of felony sexual assault?

Rachel Maddow, Andrea Mitchell Among More Than 60 Women Voicing Support for Tom Brokaw
By Cynthia Littleton, Variety
4/27/18

As professional women, we fully endorse the conversation around abuse of power in the workplace. In the context of that conversation, we would like to share our perspectives on working with Tom Brokaw.

We are current and former colleagues of Tom’s, who have worked with him over a period spanning four decades. We are producers, correspondents, anchors, directors, executives, researchers, personal assistants, editors and technical staff.

Tom has treated each of us with fairness and respect. He has given each of us opportunities for advancement and championed our successes throughout our careers. As we have advanced across industries — news, publishing, law, business and government — Tom has been a valued source of counsel and support. We know him to be a man of tremendous decency and integrity.

I dunno, is Linda Vester simply another Andrea Constand con artist and liar? Will Bill Cosby get his own “me too” moment on Charlie Rose’s new show?

Sympathy for the Charlie
Megan Garber, The Atlantic
Apr 26, 2018

The particulars of these comeback stories, like the egregiousness of their subjects’ reported behavior, vary. They feature a mixture of anonymous quotes; of informed speculation; of advice offered up to the disgraced; of, as in Keillor’s case, announcements of one’s own intention to return couched in vaguely conspiratorial tones. (“I’m ready to start up The Writers [sic] Almanac again,” the radio host wrote on Facebook. “I get the idea that public radio stations will never carry it again and so we’ll need to find a way to do it through social media. There are smart people who can manage this and make it easy.”)

What the stories tend to share is that trial-balloon hot air. They read, collectively, as tentative but brazen, painting pictures of men who are abashed, but not so abashed as to imagine that they won’t benefit from that old, alleged gift: the great American second chance. They revolve, in all that, around complicated questions— a tangle of moral considerations and business concerns and time being up and time marching on— about who deserves redemption. And who, conversely, does not. “No quote has ever been proven false more often than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s declaration that there are no second acts [in] American lives,” The Hollywood Reporter observed, before proceeding to offer a smattering of suggestions about how Louis C.K. might orchestrate his own such encore.

Which is to say that the comeback stories make distinctly sitcomic assumptions: Their universes are small. They present a set cast of characters—men who are so familiar that one of them earned $25 million a year precisely because of that familiarity—and figure that their fates are the ones readers will want to follow. The stories are, taken together, subtle (you might also say insidious) arguments not merely about who merits forgiveness, but also about who merits empathy in the first place. Who, according to the laws of the sitcom interloper, deserves the audience’s attention and investment and care? Who is the star—the center that must hold—and who is expendable? Who, in America’s ceaseless show, should stay in the spotlight?

Missing from the easy redemption stories, for the most part, are the women who came forward to say, “Me too.” Missing are the carefully reported details of the behavior that made the men’s redemption necessary in the first place. “He lifted his arms straight up and grabbed both of my breasts,” one woman, in December, reported of Batali. Rose, a woman said in November, “appeared before her in an untethered bathrobe, naked underneath. She said he subsequently attempted to put his hands down her pants. She said she pushed his hands away and wept throughout the encounter.” It was reported the same month that Lauer, summoning a female employee to his office, “dropped his pants, showing her his penis. After the employee declined to do anything, visibly shaken, he reprimanded her for not engaging in a sexual act.”

These are the accounts that tend to get edited out of the breezy redemption narratives that are currently emerging. These are the stories that tend to get brushed aside in favor of something newer and fresher and more familiar. (The thing about plots is that they must, somehow, find a way to move forward.) After he masturbated in front of her and her comedy partner Julia Wolov, Dana Min Goodman recalled in November, Louis C.K. effectively gave the pair the expendable-sitcom-character treatment: “Which one is Dana and which one is Julia?” he asked them.
…
“To welcome someone like C.K. or Batali back into the fold not six months after these accusations broke,” The Ringer’s Lindsay Zoladz put it, “is to intimidate other victims from speaking out, because it will make them think their stories don’t matter, or that the power granted to them by the #MeToo movement was just a temporary spell.” It is also to treat the women, in all these stories of quiet rehabilitation, as, effectively, complications. Having made their cameos, when #MeToo was the story arc of the moment, they are now no longer necessary. The show has moved on. The episode has ended; the credits have unspooled. The women become, in those framings of things, Emilys: Their anger—their pain—no longer fits the narrative. It is inconvenient. And so it is written away.

In March, before The Hollywood Reporter would run a long feature on his “broken” and “brilliant” and “lonely” new life—and before Page Six would find him dining with Sean Penn and “partying” with Woody Allen and allegedly planning an atonement-themed #MeToo talk show— Charlie Rose sent a tweet. “H,” the message read, in full. Whether a typo or a test or something else entirely, the posting—the single letter, denuded of context or explanation—ended up serving as the first public comment Rose made on Twitter since leaving his shows in disgrace. And the hovering little letter was met with, for the most part … an outpouring of love. “Charlie, welcome back. Your absence has left an intellectual void not only in my life, but that of many of your viewers,” one person replied. “We all make Big mistakes, Hurry back,” said another. “Hope to see you back on the air soon,” said another. After all, Charlie Rose’s loyal fan explained: “At this time of turmoil we need your journalism and professionalism.”

Really?

These elitist assholes are nothing but paid professional liars who think that their popularity and money will keep them from suffering any negative consequences from objectively horrific acts.

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Sioux Center Iowa, 1/23/16

I wonder who said that?

My point is that we seem to live in post-accountability times for which I blame Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid for failing to prosecute what can only be called War Crimes by the W Administration (Holder immunizing Wall Street didn’t help). The default plan of action is denial, I was hacked, I didn’t really mean that, and- Ok, I’m really sorry you caught me and have all this proof that I did it, can’t we all just get over it, I’ve evolved.

I hope that sounds as insincere as I meant it to.