Month: April 2007
Official Misstatements about Ryan Skipper’s Murder Have Been Propagated in the Media
One of the saddest aspects about the aftermath of Ryan Skipper’s murder is that no one outside his friends and family seems to care about the heinous manner in which he was killed.
“I want to identify with the people that I serve. I want them to identify with me. And I want to be blatantly honest with them. I don’t intentionally say anything that will impugn anyone other than a real criminal, and then I’m not too concerned about that.”
— Sheriff Grady Judd, March 18, 2007
— Sheriff Grady Judd, March 18, 2007
Neither the governor nor the attorney general in Florida — both of whom are Republicans — has expressed concern about the fact that Skipper’s murder has been labeled a hate crime. National gay organizations have been largely mute, and coverage in the local and national gay press has been very slim, especially considering the brutality of his murder.
Sheriff’s Assertions Were Based on Killers’ Statements
It is likely that the lack of outrage stems from a series of misstatements to the media at the outset of the investigation that have been attributed to Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and others in his office. On the face of it, the motivation for making these statements appears to be bigotry toward gay people.
On Friday, March 16, two days after Skipper’s body was discovered, the local newspaper, The Ledger, reported:
Skipper, 25, was driving around Eloise late Tuesday night looking to pick up someone when he met [his all edged killer, Joseph] Bearden, whom he took back to his home in Winter Haven, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The next day, the paper ran a quote from Sheriff Judd that sounded like it could have been the basis of the earlier reporting:
“What we do know is that Ryan was out looking to pick up someone that evening,” Judd said.
Elsewhere, the full quote has been given as:
“What we do know is that Ryan was looking for someone to pick up that evening. And unfortunately for Ryan, he picked up the wrong person.” [Emphasis added.]
In fact — and as we have said in other coverage of this story — Sheriff Judd did not “know” this. It was immediately obvious to my colleague Trish, who reported the story here on March 18, that, since the victim was dead and could not speak for himself, the only source for this information had to have been the alleged killers.
But the slander against Ryan Skipper did not stop there. In its coverage on March 17, The Ledger published the trawling-for-sex allegation as well as three additional completely unsubstantiated statements:
McCain Walks ‘Freely’ in Baghdad – With 100 Guards and Helicopters
The slo-mo wreckage of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign continued this weekened when his surprise trip to Baghdad produced a horribly embarrassing spectacle.
It started last week when McCain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that parts of Baghdad had been secured since the surge began, and were now safe enough for Westerners to walk around in freely. He was immediately contradicted on this by CNN reporter Michael Ware, who covers Baghdad,
Ostensibly to prove his point, McCain took a walk in an open air market just outside the Green Zone. He did move about “freely,” except that he had 100 soldiers with him who were armed to the teeth, as well as Blackhawk helicopters keeping watch overhead.
Offering an assist to the GOP from back home, Drudge reported falsely that at a news conference after McCain’s walkabout he was heckled by Michael Ware.
This morning on CNN, Ware denied the charge:
I did not heckle the senator. Indeed, I didn’t say a word. I didn’t even ask a question. In fact, when I raised my hand to ask a question the press conference abruptly ended. So, what I would suggest is that anyone who has any queries about whether I heckled, watch the videotape of the press conference — Soledad.
Movie in the Works on the Life of Whitewater’s Only Hero, Susan McDougal
Out of the morass of GOP dirty tricks in the 1990s variously known as the Whitewater scandal, the Arkansas Project and the Vast Rightwing Conspiracy, only one person was a true hero: Susan McDougal.
Remnants of the Gang of 500’s sneering tone about Whitewater and the Clintons are evident in the US News blurb, which referred to Susan McDougal, who is a true American patriot, as a “bit player” in the scandal.
To truly comprehend the skullduggery deployed by the Republicans to lay the way for saddling the nation and the world with the Worst President Ever, you have to understand what they were up to in the 1990s. McDougal’s autobiography, The Woman Who Wouldn’t Talk is one of the best primers around on the story. When it came out in paperback earlier this year, she was interviewed by Robert Scheer at Truthdig. The video is posted HERE.
US News is reporting that McDougal’s story is going to be made into a movie, with Paul Haggis — director of two Oscar winning movies, the horribly written “Crash” and “Million Dollar Baby” — and Charlize Theron in the lead role.
Remnants of the Gang of 500’s sneering tone about Whitewater and the Clintons are evident in the US News blurb, which referred to Susan McDougal, who is a true American patriot, as a “bit player” in the scandal.
The truth is, McDougal is the only person in the scandal who stood up to evil “Judge Starr,” and for that service she should be applauded.
Gay GOP Ex-Porn Star Cpl. Matt Sanchez Accused of Conning Iraq Donors
A Marine judge advocate says Sanchez “wrongfully solicited funds to support [his] purported deployment to Iraq” by coordinating a $300 payment from [a veterans group] and $12,000 from U-Haul Corporation.
Former Marine Reserve Cpl. Matt Sanchez, the darling of this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — who once worked as a gay prostitute and in male films under the porn name “Rod Majors” — has been accused by the Marine Corps of conning $12,300 from a business and a veterans group by falsely claiming he was being deployed to Iraq.
On March 22, a judge advocate informed Cpl. Sanchez that:
Sanchez’s participation in porn films was part of the investigation, but that two of the three allegations against him involved lying “to various people, including but not limited to, representatives of the New York City United War Veterans Council and U-Haul Corporation†about deploying to Iraq at the commandant’s request.
“Specifically, you wrongfully solicited funds to support your purported deployment to Iraq” by coordinating a $300 payment from the UWVC and $12,000 from U-Haul, Jones wrote.
In an interview Thursday with Marine Corps Times, Sanchez said the fund-raising allegations are “demonstrably false” and that he never collected money from either organization.
Sanchez recently caught the attention of rightwing media types by claiming he was publicly humiliated by an anti-war group at Columbia University. The incident was reportedly investigated by the university and found to be false. This finding was irrelevant, of course, to conservatives who showered Sanchez with attention. He appeared on “Hannity & Colmes” and “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News, and was awarded the Jeanne Kirkpatrick Academic Freedom Award at CPAC because of his alleged contretemps with the war protesters at Columbia.
It was at CPAC that Ann Coulter famously called presidential candidate John Edwards a “faggot.” This incendiary moment lends irony to the famous photo taken of Coulter with Matt Sanchez that day at the convention hotel.
Despite quite a large cache of filmed evidence otherwise, Sanchez claims that he is not gay.
When Man-Crushes Go Bad – Former Bushie Has a Change of Heart
Matthew Dowd switched parties in 1999 to work on George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. He says he believed candidate Bush’s pledge that he would bring a new spirit of cooperation to politics in Washington.
It is hard to feel sympathetic toward Matthew Dowd now that his eyes have been opened to his colossal self-delusion about George W. Bush.
I remember hearing then-Gov. Bush making those claims back then, and I didn’t buy it for a minute. Bush learned slasher style politics at the knee of his father’s dirty trickster, Lee Atwater. I expected the political divide to be as bad as it was in the Clinton era, although I could have never predicted that Bush would divide the country before sending it off to to war. (Who could have ever expected a president to do something so dastardly.)
Now Dowd has a come to Jesus on the true character of George W. Bush:
Speak Spanish? Newt Says You Probably Live in the Ghetto
Jeez Newt, ese danos! Desmadiado!
Newt Gingrich stood before an adoring crowd of Republican women and said Spanish is the “language of living in a ghetto.”
Gingrich: “We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country…not the language of living in a ghetto”
“The American people believe English should be the official language of the government. … We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto,”
This will come as big news to all those Cubans down Buck’s way who live in waterfront mansions and could buy and sell Newt several times over without calling an accountant.
Peter Zamora, co-chair of the Washington-based Hispanic Education Coalition, which supports bilingual education, said, “The tone of his comments were very hateful. Spanish is spoken by many individuals who do not live in the ghetto.”
