This was going to be a post about freedom of speech and the necessity of a free press in order for democracy to survive.
It was to be inspired in part by this weekend’s annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where traditionally grants are awarded to young journalists, an emcee roasts the president AND the sitting president gets a chance to hit back with a speech of their own.
This was not to be.
Womp Womp
Instead, an armed man rushed the security checkpoint at the dinner’s hotel venue and exchanged gunfire with law enforcement, an encounter where one officer was shot and the armed man was tackled to the ground and taken into custody.
The man, Cole Thomas Allen, 31, is a teacher and lives in a small tract home in Torrance, CA. According to news reports, he is also a Cal Tech graduate, a game developer and, in Dec. 2024, was named teacher of the month at his local school.
More to come on that score. In fact, so much more that he and this event will no doubt become the story rather than a necessary spotlight on the importance of journalism, facts and the right every U.S. citizen has to feel free to say what they think and to speak truth to power.
Well, so much for best laid plans.
I guess we’ll get to freedom of the press next week?
It should be noted that our sitting president had refused to attend this annual dinner every year of his first term and in the first year of his second term. Not only did he decry the bias of the press in all of those years but had no stomach for being roasted by the usual comedian/host.
However, this year he agreed to attend. Perhaps because there was to be no roast of the POTUS, and no comedian host. In fact, the featured “entertainer” scheduled to appear at the podium was a mentalist named Oz Pearlman, an alumni from America’s Got Talent who specializes in “psychological illusions.”
The man poses like this in every picture… really.
Yup, that is the guy they booked to hold forth at the White House Correspondents’ dinner our current POTUS finally agreed to attend.
And no, I’m not making that up.
That is a fact.
Another fact is that despite not being roasted himself by the “mentalist” this year, our current POTUS was to be given the chance to make an extended speech roasting the press and, presumably addressing freedom of the press.
Several journalists who were granted copies of the speech beforehand reported that it was quite brutal and extremely long.
I’m with Cher on this one
Of course, we don’t know for sure.
What is a fact is that the one time this POTUS attended a White House Correspondent’s Dinner it was as a private citizen in 2011. At that time he was chided by host Seth Meyers, who famously noted, that:
Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican, which is surprising since I just assumed he was running as a joke.
The latter was in reference to his racist and since debunked birtherism claim about then Pres. Obama having a fake US birth certificate.
Memory unlocked… now make it go away
At this same dinner, Mr. Obama then went on to chide the former Apprentice host about his decision-making ability in that he was stepping up and “firing” actor Gary Busey on this TV show. “These are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night…”
It has often been said and written that the roasting that evening was perceived by the future and our current POTUS as humiliating and it tipped the scales for him to finally run for the highest office in the land.
Of course, we will never know for sure. Perhaps these are just the kind of “psychological illusions” liberals and free press advocates like to tell themselves in order to sleep at night.
Whatever works
One final fact we do know is that half an hour or so after the President, Vice President and various members of his cabinet were evacuated from the ballroom of the Washington Hilton Hotel Saturday night, our current POTUS gave a press conference.
He began his speech noting that in the five minutes or so when the members of the press and his administration were threatened by gun violence, Democrats, Republicans and the undecided were all one group who came together regardless of party lines. He also added that this was the very purpose of the annual dinner.
So, well, that was nice.
I have a feeling this is going to go somewhere else
But then very quickly he expounded on the shooter, who he referred to as “a nut job,” and repeated three separate times that he lived in “California.”
“I’ve studied assassinations and I must tell you the most impactful people, the people who do the most, they’re the ones they go after….And I hate to say I’m honored by that, but I’ve done a lot.”
knew he’d turn it around
There were no arguments or follow-up questions about the latter.
Greetings from L.A. – that burning, trash heap of a city invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals! A dangerous, hellscape of paid insurrectionists intent on ripping away the fabric of our country!!
The place that I call home.
Well, guess what TACO —
WE LOVE L.A.!!!!
We’re with you Tay!
And thanks to you, now more people than ever, in NOT ONLY the country BUT THE WORLD, love it.
That’s because this week everyone saw us trying to save democracy by exercising our constitutional right to protest.
And if the worst you can say about protestors in a city of about 12.5 million is that there were no fatalities and comparatively little violence or vandalism (Note: The worst of the latter being a couple of self-driving Waymo cars being set on fire, something I myself contemplated doing in frustration long before any protest) we’re doing pretty well.
Take that
Especially because it’s not every day you see your home experience a real invasion. The kind where the federal government sends in masked, unidentified and armed federal agents to infiltrate your neighborhood and arbitrarily grab your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers, acquaintances and fellow citizens off the street, throw them into vans and, for no discernible reason they will articulate, attempt to disappear them into custody, perhaps never to be heard from again.
It’s like some crazy old rich 79-year-old Floridian-transplanted-from-New York’s birthday wish in a pretend game where he’d get to be president of the United States for the next four years and do anything he wants.
Oh….
Ugh x 2000
I know. It’s not funny. But it could be because this should all just be some massive American punk move from a gaggle of overprivileged man-boys and mean girls with too much money and time and privilege on their hands.
Oh…
And now I have a migraine
Since Homeland Security’s “invasion” of Southern California earlier in the week, the only real and true invasion going on in any of the many neighborhoods I know includes secret ICE agents joined by 2000 members of the National Guard and 700 fighting-ready U.S. Marines with military weapons, all guarding the federal building downtown and patrolling a few key blocks nearby for no reason other than they were ordered to by a rogue federal government commandeered by a rogue president.
Which is to say nothing of the hundreds of L.A. police and sheriff officers shooting rubber bullets and tear gas bombs downtown on Saturday (6/14), as millions in other cities nationwide symbolically joined us in the No Kings Protest against the democracy-breaking Trump policies.
But let’s back up a little.
It’s been that kind of week
Earlier this week, our current, ahem, POTUS took power over the National Guard from the governor of a state (Note: In this case, California but coming soon to a state near you) for the first time in more than 60 years, a power grab now being fought by California in appeals court and soon likely the U.S. Supreme Court. A couple days later he topped it off with commanding U.S. (Note: OUR) military troops, the kind trained NOT to keep the peace but to instead be efficient killing machines in places as far off as Fallujah, Kandahar and soon likely…well, you get the idea…into our city to pick off anyone who couldn’t pass for a white Afrikaner farmer. (Note: Let’s just say even I could in a pinch).
Listen up, cuz they fallin’
Meanwhile, here in L.A. hundreds of non-white children and adults are being pulled off the streets from Home Depots, schools, supermarkets, playgrounds and farmlands. This week the local news was rife with six and eight year olds crying and screaming as a parent was literally dragged away from them as their older teenage sibling, barely managing to hold it together, tried to comfort them. Then there was the story of the late twenties Black military vet shoved to his knees by one of these uniformed baboons and put in a chokehold because he had the temerity to walk up the steps of the Veteran Administration building downtown to check on his benefits (Note: This was midday and there was no reason NOT to enter the V.A. that day). Though the one seared into my brain is that of the ICE agents with kerchiefs around their mouths chasing down a Mexican farm worker from the Central Valley through a strawberry patch he was employed to work in.
They sure did
Of course, all this was nothing compared to what happened to the senior United States Senator from my home state of California, Alex Padilla, when he dared to pose a question to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, aka ICE Barbie and renowned dog killer, Kristi Noem. Cosplaying her version of chief immigration enforcer – she, of the petrified plastic surgery face accentuated by plentiful hair extensions and full pageant-style makeup, was telling a series of mistruths that culminated with this ominous threat to anyone thinking of protesting anything she or her agents choose to do in southern California.
“We are NOT going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
She’s a charmer!
At which point OUR senator, the one who was democratically elected, along with our governor and our mayor by me and millions of other Californians, proclaimed from the back of the room as he approached:
“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary. Because the fact of the matter is …”
At which point he was grabbed by a bunch of agents, dragged out of the room, tackled onto the ground and physically held down by several men on the floor who grabbed his wrists behind his back and handcuffed him in full, proud view of the cameras. And no, I’m not exaggerating even a little bit. If you haven’t already, you can view it here.
Here’s the thing about our Senator Padilla. He’s a graduate of MIT and an engineer, an L.A. native who was put through school by two Mexican immigrant parents – a Dad who worked as a short order cook and a mother who cleaned houses. A guy who trained as an engineer and could have made a ton of money doing that but instead chose to enter politics in the 1990s because he wanted to give voice to a community of people who didn’t have the education and power to speak for themselves to the powers that be. A guy who’s soft-spoken, hard-working and extremely well-liked by his Senate colleagues. Someone who would never think of killing their 14 month old puppy instead of taking the time to train it properly, or ever consider being the public face of a modern-day version of Hitler’s Brownshirts.
If I sound a bit worked up over this it’s because:
I am. And –
2. While Sen. Padilla was being ICE-handled by Cruella’s goons on Thursday, I was five blocks away sitting in a large room at the L.A. Criminal Court House waiting to be called in for jury duty.
It didn’t work this time
I can’t say I was shocked when the news alerts about all this popped up in my phone but nevertheless I was taken aback. That is until another potential juror, a thirtyish woman from Thailand, nervously approached me and tentatively asked if I’d ever been on a jury before. She was smart, had a cell phone, was conversive in the language but underneath it all looked terrified. It was as if she felt like if she made one wrong move or gave one wrong answer some masked man out of the corner would emerge out of the shadows and take her away.
I chalked it up to me just being dramatic (Note: Or as my shrink has said more than once, “inclined to piece things together in order to tell a story.”). But when we were upstairs, sitting on benches outside the courtroom door to which we’d been assigned, and she requested to sit by me so I could “help guide her” through it, I wasn’t so sure.
Turns out I was right…and then some.
Somehow being right this time didn’t feel this good
Once inside the courtroom, I looked around at about 40 or so of my fellow potential jurors, well more than half of whom were of Mexican, Black, Asian or some other non-white ethnicity – truly an L.A. melting pot — and heard us all verbally answer the judge’s questions about our jobs, previous experience with law enforcement, and prior jury service. What quickly became abundantly clear to me – storyteller or not – was that the demeanor of every single non-white person ranged from cautious and concerned to absolutely intimidated and frightened. People stumbled over their words, told stories of police harassment and witnessing violent crime, and expressed outright concern over what constituted a right or wrong answer or whether they’d said too much or too little.
As for the answers from the majority of us white folks, and the manner in which we gave them, well let’s just say I wish there was a new term for, um, Caucasian privilege, (Note: Did I make one up?) since everything about the term is so profoundly embarrassing and enraging to me.
As it should be to anyone who cares about democracy in 2025 and beyond. #Resist.
We all had a venti cup that day
Oh, and P.S. – After I confidently said to the defense attorney I’d have no trouble at all with the concept of reasonable doubt in the case potentially before us, one where a woman of color was being tried for a crime against the state, I was immediately dismissed by the city’s prosecuting attorney from jury duty.
Make of that what you will. But also know that this very kind of Caucasian privilege is what too many of my “kind” in Washington are fighting to preserve.
notes from a chair 