By Bob Gaydos

The Supreme Court ruled that labor law protects LGBTQ rights.

    Sometimes, everything just falls into place, or, to put it another way, it all falls apart. Like Donald Trump’s week.

       You may have noticed that the Dotard had a very bad week last week, punctuated by a campaign “rally” in Tulsa that drew barely more than 6,000 faithful. The event, indeed the week, was a showcase for the now-familiar traits that define Trump — arrogance, laziness, pride, litigiousness, ignorance and callous disregard for anyone other than himself. To think there are some people who consider these to be attributes they want in a president used to astound me. Now, it saddens and angers me.

        Back to Trump’s week from hell.

        What ended dramatically in Tulsa began quietly in Washington, D,C., where John Roberts decided to act like the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. That is, the head of one of the three co-equal branches of government defined in the Constitution. Monday morning, with Roberts and new conservative favorite Neal Gorsuch joining the four liberal justices, the court ruled — against the Trump administration’s arguments — that the federal law which protects persons from being discriminated against in hiring and firing because of their sex applies to LGBTQs.

        The Trumpsters, catering to their conservative Christian supporters, had argued that someone could be fired — or not hired — simply on the basis of being gay. The court rejected that and, in a further jab at Trump, Gorsuch wrote the major decision. That same day, the court refused (7-2) to hear a Trump administration appeal of a California court ruling that upheld the state’s sanctuary law, which prohibits law enforcement officials from aiding federal agents in taking custody of immigrants as they are released from jail. And to top a week of attention-grabbing rulings, Roberts himself wrote the ruling which rejected the administration’s efforts to end the Dreamers program (DACA). The Chief Justice also chided Trump’s lawyers for their sloppy preparation and pointedly criticized Justicee Brett Kavanaugh’s arguments in the Dreamers as well as LGBTQ rulings.

     So, in one week, Roberts helped protect three vulnerable populations from the ego-driven whims of Trump, while also reminding him not to take the court for granted simply because he had recently appointed two supposedly friendly justices. Trump was thus reminded that presidents can’t fire Supreme Court justices. He, of course, took it personally, tweeting about whether the court didn’t like him. Roberts did not lower himself to reply.

     While this was going on, the White House was also in court trying to stop publication of a book — a typical Trump move, flying in the face of the Constitution and free speech. The book, by former national security adviser John Bolton, gives an insider‘s account of how the Trump White House operates. Which is to say, it is unflattering in its honesty. Bolton, no model of civic-mindedness, had refused to testify before Congress about this stuff, preferring to make a buck on what he witnessed (and participated in). The judge said the book could be published, mostly because it’s already been leaked and could easily be available on the Internet and there was no proof of risk to national security. Just to Trump’s ego.

      In the meantime, trying to get rid of another prosecutorial thorn in his side while no one was looking, Trump told Attorney General William Barr to get rid of Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Among other things, the prosecutor has been investigating Trump’s pre-White House dealings with Deutsche Bank, with bank fraud being the most often mentioned possible crime.

       Barr botched the job. He issued a statement Friday, when he hoped the world would be focused on the Trump anti-Covid rally in Oklahoma, saying that Berman had stepped down from his job. Berman promptly said that, no, he had not, adding that, since a federal judge had appointed him as a replacement, Barr could not fire him. Barr then said Trump had fired Berman. Trump was asked and, typically passing the responsibility buck, said he was not involved. It was Barr’s show. Confusion is another Trump trademark.

        Apparently, Barr got through to the Dotard and said, “Chief, if you want this done, you have to do it. But Berman won’t go quietly unless you name his deputy to succeed him.” And that’s how Audrey Strauss, who has worked closely with Berman on the Trump probe, came to be the new acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District. Trump got his man, but he may come to regret the whole messy, sloppy episode.

         And finally came Tulsa, in Oklahoma, where the wind not only came whistling down the plains, but could be heard whipping around a mostly empty arena Friday night. Never mind the million who had supposedly sought tickets on the Internet, there was nothing close to the 60,000 fans Trump’s team was expecting. The overflow venue was shut down early. The star rambled through an incoherent “speech” that featured him demonstrating an ability to drink water out of a glass with one hand and explaining the treachery of slippery ramps — both harking back to his previous week’s unsteady performance at West Point.

         The rally was meant to bring supporters out by showing a defiance of science and medicine and gathering en masse to show that virus a thing or two. The cherry on top of the week’s sundae was that the paltry crowd was apparently the result of an organized, nationwide social media effort to get teens and young voters to apply for free tickets on line but not show up. Wow! A million requests for tickets! Trump bragged earlier in the week, even as the campaign proceeded on social media. He and his team never saw it or never took it seriously. Lazy, Arrogant. Dumb. Dismissive.

      The Dotard showed up back at the White House late Friday night, looking disheveled and despondent. Unpresidential, to say the least. For him, the master of conceit, deceit and bluster (that could be a name for his law firm) it was a terrible week. Nothing went as “planned.” Everything fell apart. Or, to put it another way, for a change, everything fell into place.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

BOB GAYDOS

The Report … the red shoes, racism and Kool-Aid

If they fit … 

   They were sitting on top of a trash can outside the entrance to a supermarket we frequent. A pair of red shoes. Women’s slip-on loafers, worn but still wearable. Take us if you need us.

      You couldn’t miss seeing them as you entered the store. They were obviously not trash because they could have just been tossed into the bin on which they were resting. No, they were … a gift. If they had a card attached it might have said: “Times are tough. I don’t need these any more. Save your money for food. And water, if they have any inside.”

     But there was no card. Just the shoes, speaking silently. If the shoes fit, please take them. Do not be too proud. They have served me well. Wear them in good health.

    There’s a lot of pain and anger in the world right now. Also, fear, frustration, impatience, confusion and resentment, compounded by an appalling lack of responsible leadership by many of those elected to provide it. So we are left to our own devices. Generosity. Sharing. Compassion. Small gestures. All we need do is notice.

          — By the way … A few weeks back, I wrote about some “famous” people whose paths had crossed with mine and invited readers to share similar experiences. Here are a couple of my favorites:

— “I suspect this will be rejected as ”no words were exchanged,” but my run-in with Robin Williams was all in “mime.” Thus, words could not be spoken. In a world of exemptions I now claim this as mine. … In the early ‘80’s, while being part of an “art glass ” company, I was coming out of a meeting with architects somewhere in Manhattan. As I bounded the steps to the sidewalk I literally (and I mean literally) ran into Robin and two women. We reared up inches from each other’s noses, made faces, feigned shock and dismay, rotated around each other like an old cartoon and slowly backed away from each other fending each other off with glares and shock. No big deal, but fun to recall and relate.”

Ernie Miller

 — “Ok, here goes …. Trumpeters extraordinaire Raphael Mendez, Harry James, Dizzy Gillespie, Doc Severinsen, and Al Hirt.  (Yes, I used to play trumpet and heard each of them perform in concert.)  Pete Seeger, Allen Ginsburg, Jane Fonda, poet Robert Lowell, Jules Feiffer, Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., Dr. Benjamen Spock, actors Judith Malina and Julian Beck of the Living Theater, photographer Karl Bissenger, Grace Paley, Tom Hayden, Dave Dellinger, Dorothy Day, Phil and Daniel Berrigan, Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Al Lowry, and Jesse Jackson.”

Jim Bridges

(Jim noted that many of his meetings were the result of his active participation in the civil rights movement.)

      Unfortunately, the internet has misfiled or erased details on Sean Kober’s dinner with Floyd Patterson, Moe Mitterling’s interview with Roy Campanella, Debra Scacciaferro’s meetings with famous authors and someone (!) shaking hands with Princess Di. Apologies and thanks.

       — By the way … All it took was a worldwide explosion of demonstrations condemning police violence against blacks for the NFL to recognize that Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the National Anthem was a remarkably restrained and dignified way of expressing his outrage. Now, some team needs to give him a job as a quarterback.

        — By the way … While we’re at it, how about NASCAR finally acknowledging that all those Confederate flags at their races were not a symbol of a proud moment in our nation’s history? It’s as if millions of Americans — white Americans — suddenly realized what the Civil War was all about. And who lost.

      — By the way … It takes an extraordinary amount of chutzpah to go around calling COVID-19 a hoax, not wearing a mask, and encouraging everyone to go about business as usual and to then host a large political rally in a state where cases of the virus are spiking and at which attendees will be required to sign a waiver of responsibility for the host if the attendees happen to, you know, get COVID-19. What it takes to sign that waiver is an extraordinary amount of Kool-Aid.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

The lead pre-cog in “Minority Report.”

     Most recent lockdown movie watched was “Minority Report,“ starring Tom Cruise. Talk about synchronicity.

     Cruise plays a police officer in the mid-21st century who is part of a special unit that arrests people for “pre-crimes.“ That is, crimes they were about to commit. Usually, the “pre-crime“ is murder.

     The “pre-crimes“ are predicted by pre-cogs — three drugged human beings floating in a pool of warm water who are wired to a computer system that allows others (the police) to monitor what is going on in the pre-cogs‘ minds. Precognition. The three, one female and two males, can see the future. They predict pre-murder victim and pre-murderer, as well as date and time. Cruise has to figure out where and get there in time to stop the crime and make an arrest, even though no crime has been committed. The pre-cogs are supposed to be infallible. It turns out they’re not. Cruise finds this out when he himself is named as a pre-murderer and has to prove his innocence before any crime is committed. 

       By now, the police in the film have become pre-conditioned to believe in precognition: This is what the precogs say, so it must be true. You did intend to kill this person. You are under arrest for the pre-crime of homicide. It’s kind of like some police today have become preconditioned to believe that if a male is black, he must be guilty of something and is dangerous to boot, so use whatever force is necessary in making an arrest. And the system says it’s justified.

        Just as the pre-cogs’ reputation for accuracy was based on a lie, so the preconditioning of some of today’s real-life police officers is based on generations of lies. George Floyd’s death in the custody of police in Minneapolis is the latest in a dismal series of similar incidents that entered my consciousness in Middletown, N.Y., in 1986. That the country and, in fact, much of the world has risen up to protest Floyd’s death is encouraging, but tragically long overdue.

       I was writing editorials for The Times Herald-Record, the local paper, when Jimmy Lee Bruce, a 20-year-old black man, died in the back of a patrol car near Middletown on Dec. 13, 1986. He and a group of friends from Ellenville, N.Y., had gone to a movie theater in a mall outside Middletown. The group became rowdy. There was drinking involved. Two white, off-duty Middletown police officers, acting as security guards, escorted the group out of the theater. A scuffle ensued. An officer applied a chokehold to Bruce and tossed him in the back of a police car, which had brought two on-duty Town of Wallkill police officers to the scene.

       The police then drove around for 7½ minutes looking for Bruce’s friends. When they returned to the theater, a state trooper, who had also arrived on the scene, shined a flashlight in the back of the patrol car and noticed the young man was not responding to the light. Police rushed him to a nearby hospital, but attempts to revive him failed.

       In my previous experience as a reporter talking to plenty of lawyers I had been told that any district attorney worth his salt could indict a ham sandwich. Apparently this was baloney. A grand jury considering the case ruled that Bruce’s death was an accident because the officers had used a technique – the chokehold (they called it a “sleeper”) — for which they had not been trained and which actually was prohibited by their department.

        There have since been too many similar stories between Bruce and Floyd, including Eric Garner, a victim of a chokehold applied by police on Staten Island in 2015. Excessive force used by a police officer resulting in the death of a black male and, most of the time, no action taken against the officer. You could almost predict it. Preconditioning.

         Following Bruce’s death, I wrote an editorial (later read into The Congressional Record on March 25, 1987 by Rep. Matthew F. McHugh) that said the grand jury that cleared the four police officers had actually indicted a system that had failed to properly train its police in handling such situations and for being slow to investigate the case, “raising suspicions of bigotry.” Would that I had the pre-cogs available to me then.

         The same factors, predictably, applied to the Eric Garner case 18 years later. Precognition? No. Preconditioning. Little had happened in the ensuing years to change the way most police departments recruit, train and discipline police officers. In fact, the situation was worsened by the giveaway of all kinds of military grade weapons to police departments. Without the proper training and handling of civil disturbances, such weapons will be used. And they were.

          So now, in the face of massive demonstrations including in front of the White House where a cowering Donald Trump fled to the bunker in the basement, politicians and police officials are finally recognizing what needed to be done more than 30 years ago: Diversify police recruiting. Weed out applicants with sketchy records. Give recruits more training on how to talk to the public, how to de-escalate tense situations and how to use force properly. Make it their duty to speak out about improper use of force. Get rid of that military hardware. Stop dressing like storm troopers. Become involved in the community. Act swiftly and surely to punish officers who abuse their position. Reestablish justice department review of police departments whose behavior is challenged by the public. Educate all officers on the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of peaceful assembly. Make the entire community part of this reconditioning process.

      It’s not impossible, not even difficult. It just needs a unified commitment to doing so. There have been moderately successful efforts in cities across the country to reform police departments in the wake of public outcry over the deaths, usually, of black males at the hands of police. Here in Middletown, police actually joined demonstrators recently in marching peacefully for reform. 

      “Black Lives Matter“ has now made this a national priority. In fact, the House of Representatives and the New York State Legislature have introduced legislation to ban the use of chokeholds by police — 34 years too late for Jimmy Lee Bruce, but perhaps just in time for future generations of black males.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.