Look, I’m the guy who once called her a “viperous harridan,” OK? That was 11 years ago in this space. I described her as such after she savaged four widows whose husbands died in the Sept. 11 attacks, denouncing them as “witches” and “broads” who were “enjoying their husbands’ deaths.” So I don’t need to […]
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Posted inOp-Eds
America is well worth fighting for
BP has not been pleased. Indeed, BP, who is one of my readers, has been downright disappointed with what she’s seen in this space since last year’s election. She wrote me about it a few days ago. Her email said, in part: “I had hoped for your articles to be the beacon of light to […]
advertisement
Posted inOp-Eds
In war against drugs, everyone loses
Looks like the War on Drugs is back. The Washington Post reported Sunday that the new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is preparing a return to the same hardline strategies that have so spectacularly failed to reduce drug use since 1971. Indeed, the nation has spent more than a trillion dollars, made itself the biggest jailer […]
Posted inOp-Eds
Jeff Sessions, Pepsi choose to be blind
Yes, that Pepsi ad was an insult. But if you think it was the worst insult Black Lives Matter suffered last week, then you weren’t paying attention. Not that the ad wasn’t revolting. Imagine that, three years after the police shooting of a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, ignited protests by African Americans sick of […]
Posted inOp-Eds
King’s dream of racial and economic justice
This is a column about Martin Luther King’s other dream. His most famous dream, of course, is the one he articulated at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. It was a vision of racial amity so frightening that people killed to keep it from coming true. Five decades later, it’s so broadly accepted that even those […]
Posted inOp-Eds
Some words of wisdom for Bill O’Reilly
Dear Bill O’Reilly: Let’s talk insults. Me, I like a good put-down as much as the next pundit. Judiciously employed, it can be an effective rhetorical tool, the equivalent of a slam dunk over the defense. You don’t just score, but you also demoralize and embarrass the other team. Similarly, to drop an insult into […]
Posted inOp-Eds
Campaign 2016 — journalism’s biggest failure
We did a lousy job. Doubtless, there are journalists who would disagree with that assessment of how news media performed during the 2016 campaign, but I’ve never met one. The consensus among those I know is that coverage of that campaign represents journalism’s biggest fail since the run-up to the Iraq War. The culprit, of […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Florida governor leading mob mentality
It’s a scene you’ve seen a hundred times. The angry rabble advances on the jail, meaning to seize the prisoner and hang him from the nearest tree. The sheriff, a lone defender of the rule of law, stands them off, refusing to give in to the mob’s demand for extralegal justice. Granted, no one is […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web
Trump’s chickens finally come home to roost
On Monday, accountability finally arrived for Donald Trump. After 70 years spent largely skating free of consequences for his puerile misbehaviors and diarrheal mouth, he likely found it something of a shock. Seven decades is a long time, after all, and if the so-called president has learned nothing else in those years, he has learned […]
Posted inOp-Eds, sj-web, Uncategorized
Politicians don't understand the reality of poverty
Suddenly, there was just blood everywhere. It erupted from my father’s mouth as we sat watching television. I was still struggling to process this horror when my mother, too shaken to drive, asked me — 17 years old and still on my learner’s permit — to get us to the emergency room. Somehow, we made […]