Day: April 7, 2007

Lakeland Ledger Grabs at a Little Good News in Ryan Skipper Mess

Buck Banks

The Lakeland Ledger ain’t the New York Times. Duh. But the Lakeland Ledger is the local paper doing the bad reporting on the Ryan Skipper murder case, not the Times.

I wonder how many negative letters the Lakeland Ledger has received and whether we’ll ever see any of those in print.

We had an e-mail at Pensito Review the other day from a guy who was trying to call the Ledger to task over its bad reporting. Garry, from Louisiana, was frustrated by what he’d read, so he sent an e-mail to the Ledger expressing his frustration (and quoting from Pensito Review). The Ledger, surprise, responded:

Thank you for your email. Everything we printed that you dispute has come from the Sheriff’s Office. If they change what they think happened at some point, we’ll report on that. But for now, that’s its official report.

Best,
Lenore Devore
Managing Editor
The Ledger
Lakeland, Florida

(from Garry’s e-mail to us)

But not everybody is disappointed in the Ledger’s reportage, and the paper printed a letter to the editor today that congratulates it on its coverage of the murder:

Re: Ryan Skipper, thank you for the nice article about Ryan [“2 Indicted In Slaying Of Polk Man,” March 30, page B1]. He was a great guy and a good friend. I will miss him terribly.

Hopefully, I can one day make it through the entire article, but as of right now I can’t without breaking down in tears. I’ll never understand how anyone can do such a thing. Disliking gays is one thing, but there is no rationale for killing them.

Ryan wasn’t just some random gay guy. He was someone’s friend and some parent’s child. There are no words that could make him less of a human being. But I have to wonder if the same can be said for the young men accused of taking Ryan’s life. Their reason for killing him isn’t justified. If they truly felt uncomfortable around him, they could’ve just walked away.

I read an article, recently, about a man who has to spend the rest of his days looking at a picture of the woman he killed. Maybe these men should face that same reality. Putting them to death wouldn’t inflict nearly the same amount of heartache they’ve put Ryan’s friends through.

They should have to be reminded every day of what they took from us, as long as they draw breath on this Earth. We won’t get a quick exit from our pain, why should they?

TODD A. JOHNSON

Lakeland

I hope Todd at some point is able to read the entire article because I think then he would join the rest of us in our assessment that the Ledger is doing a crappy job of reporting on this case.

Parroting back the homophobic assumptions and allegations offered BY THE GUYS WHO DID THE CRIME that Sheriff Judd has said is not good newspaper reportage. It’s not journalism, and all it does is slander a dead guy who, by most accounts was a good egg, not a bad fellow, and by any account did not deserve to be killed.

And printing a letter from a guy who hasn’t even read the whole article is no mea culpa, nor does it let the Ledger off the hook for screwing up.

It’s pitiful that the Lakeland Ledger, out of desperation, prints the only positive letter it has received about its coverage of the Skipper murder. I wonder how many negative letters it has received and whether we’ll ever see any of those in print.

Vigils for Ryan Skipper – April 14, 2007

Jon Ponder

Equality Florida, in conjunction with the family and friends of Ryan Skipper will be holding vigils in his memory across the state of Florida on Saturday:

Here are the details as listed on the Equality Florida website:

  • Winter Haven
    1:00 PM
    Central Park, Central Ave at 4th and 5th Streets, Winter Haven
    Russell Patterson, 813-849-3919, russ@eqfl.org

  • Daytona Beach
    7:00 PM
    Home Metropolitan Church
    500 South Ridgewood Avenue
    David Perreault, 386-453-3089
    david.perreault@earthlink.net

  • Tampa
    7:00 PM
    USF Dream Pool, MLK Jr. Memorial Fountain by the Student Union
    Tamara Wasserman 941-626-3164, wasserman2001@yahoo.com

  • Jacksonville
    1pm on Saturday, April 14th
    UU Church of Jacksonville,
    7405 Arlington Expressway, Jacksonville, FL
    32211uujax@bellsouth.net(904) 725-8133

  • Clearwater
    7:00 PM
    On the shores of Peace Pond, Unity Church of Clearwater
    2465 Nursery Road
    (on the south side of Nursery, between Belcher andUS 19)
    Leddy Hammock, Minister, Unity Church of Clearwater, 727-531-0992
    leddy@unityofclearwater.org

  • Pensacola
    1:00 PM
    Holy Cross Metropolitan Community Church
    3130 W Fairfield Dr, Pensacola, 32505 – (850) 469-9090
    www.holycrossmcc.com

  • West Palm Beach
    Downtown Lake Worth
    6:30 PM
    Gather at Town Hall
    Dixie and Lake Ave
    Three block vigil walk to park in center of Downtown
    Allan Hendricks, 561.541.3700, eqflpbc@yahoo.com

  • Fort Lauderdale
    1:00 PM
    Gay and Lesbian Community Center
    1717 N. Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale
    Rev. Frank Faine, frank@sunshinecathedral.org

  • Port Richey
    11:00 AM
    Waterside Landing
    7737 Grand Blvd.
    727-841-7900
  • Miami
    1:00 PM
    Pridelines Youth Services
    180 NE 19th St (Corner of NE 19th St & 2nd Ave)
    Tobias Packer, tobias@eqfl.org, 305-924-6237
  • Broward
    The Broward Vigil will be held at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center,
    1717 N. Andrews Avenue,
    at 1:00 p.m. On Saturday, April 14
    For more information, contact Rev. Frank Faine:
    frank@sunshinecathedral.org

  • Tallahassee
    10:00 AM
    Front steps of the Old Capitol
    Jim Van Riper & Alain Raymond, alain@eqfl.org, 904-807-5928
  • Ocala
    8:00 PM
    Downtown Square
    Robert W. Poth III, homes@robpoth.com, 352-697-2522
  • Key West
    7:00 PM
    Steps of the Old Customs House
    Base of White Head Street
    Sponsored by GLCC of Key West and NOW
    John Andola, jandola@hotmail.com, 305-849-0379
  • Washington, D.C.
    6:30 PM
    Dupont Circle Park
    Lara Martin, lsm4u1982@hotmail.com

Updated by Trish on 4/13

Did Bush Pressure Olmert to Deny Pelosi’s Statement about Syria?

Jon Ponder

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi left Israel last week, her delegation announced she was bearing a message from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Bashar al-Assad, the president-for-life of Syria.

This suggests that the Bush White House may have also tried to “order” the speaker not to meet with Assad, only to find itself tripped up again by the inconvenience of the separation of powers in the Constitution. Since they couldn’t stop Pelosi’s visit, the next best option was to ruin it, which was likely accomplished with a single phone call.

In Syria, Pelosi’s meeting with Assad made good visuals: A Democratic leader was taking charge of putting Israel back on a path to negotiations with its Arab neighbors. Commentators noted that the speaker was carrying out a key recommendation of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group — engaging governments in the Middle East in dialogue — that the Bush administration has stubbornly refused to do.

Within hours, however, the Israeli government issued a statement that essentially called the U.S. Speaker of the House a liar by flatly denying Olmert asked Pelosi to convey anything to Assad.

Yesterday, Pelosi was asked about the confusion:

PELOSI: There was no confusion. There was absolutely no confusion. The message that we carried from Prime Minister Olmert was the exact message that he gave us. He is a man of peace, and he expressed to us that we should express to the president of Syria his interest in going to the negotiating table, but not until Syria took steps to stop its support for Hamas and Hezbollah. And that is exactly the message that we conveyed.

Q: But the prime minister of Israel’s office issued a clarification, a denial, in effect, because according to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz the other day, the statement from the prime minister’s office, from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office, said that Olmert had told Pelosi that Israel continued to regard Syria, quote, “as part of the axis of evil and a party encouraging terrorism in the entire Middle East.” If I heard you, you didn’t — you don’t recall him saying that in you conversation.

Pelosi: No. What he told us was that the thrust of his statement is that Israel is prepared to go to the negotiating table; we are not preparing for war — that was the important part of it — we are not preparing for war; we’re prepared to go to negotiation when Syria takes steps to stop its support of Hamas and Hezbollah.

In light of this, former Pres. Jimmy Carter announced yesterday the Bush White House ordered him not to meet with Assad, whom Pres. Carter has known for nearly 30 years.

This suggests that the Bush White House may have also tried to “order” the speaker not to meet with Assad, only to find itself tripped up again by the inconvenience of that pesky constitutional separation of powers. Since they couldn’t stop Pelosi’s visit, the next best option was to ruin it, which was likely accomplished with a single phone call to Tel Aviv.

Interestingly, the White House responded with little more than a pro forma complaint about Rep. Darrell Issa’s meeting with Pres. Assad yesterday. Issa is a Republican from San Diego County.

Update: (April 11, 2007) Rep. Tom Lantos who was on the trip confirms that Bush pressured Olmert to change his story. However, on C-SPAN last week Rep. Nick Rahall, D-West Virginia, who was also on the trip, denied that the Bush administration ever tried to forbid Pelosi from meeting with Assad.