I am a Journalist

Truly today I wish I could say I am a journalist. Although I toiled for many years in the publishing industry, I was on the sales, marketing, distribution side of the house. The closest I got to a newsroom was an ill-fated all-sports weekly called Island Sportsline back in the early 80s. The premise was superbly simple, do what the established local rag wouldn’t, cover more sports. To be fair, that paper, The Bainbridge Review, has a long and storied history, being at the very heart of the Japanese Internment debacle in 1942 and the basis for David Guterson’s masterpiece Snow Falling on Cedars. I think our tiny 10 page salmon wrapper made it for about a dozen editions before sending out a financial SOS and eventually tossing the towel. I co-authored the front page opinion column and tried to channel my inner Jim Murray, in colossal failure. I remember going to play a round of golf in metaphorical commentary on the agony of defeat as we shut her down (and I missed a two foot putt.)

I bring this up today for obvious reasons. We are under attack. Our very democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution by which we live is being erased like so many pages heavy with white-out. The hate mongers on the right (not even far) have been echoing the violent rhetoric of their fearful leader and calling for the distinctly uncivil felony of not only labeling the media as enemy, but in gaslighting these soft minded lemmings into doing the unthinkable. Killing journalists. I am sick to my stomach at this appalling tactic, as in some authoritarian, fascist and dystopian Unites States, there is a bounty on the freedoms of the press. 

I suppose that the red handed criminals running amok in trump’s white house secretly celebrate today as they plot and conspire against American morals, ethics and civilities simply for the sake of more power, another judge and higher walls. We are under attack folks. Maybe you didn’t notice that 575 people were arrested while peacefully protesting the ginned-up border crisis including a US Representative. In Tacoma and Portland, federal stormtroopers we called in to keep Mothers, Daughters, Wives, Sisters and Aunts from voicing their guaranteed rights to counter-point. The Bully-in-Chief strikes again. And will again.

Until we, united, decide that it WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN. Nidoto Nai Yoni. 

That means, as one of my favorite all-time journalists, Emmett Watson of the old Seattle PI, used to write, KEEP THE BASTARDS OUT. I have taken editorial liberty with EW’s pithy temerity, updating it for modern usage:

VOTE THE BASTARDS OUT. 

Today I am a journalist.