A few thoughts on the lonely death of Naika Venant. As you may have heard, Naika, a Miami teenager, hanged herself in the dark hours of a Sunday morning. She did this live on Facebook. We’ll likely never know why she chose to do it that way. Perhaps she felt invisible. Perhaps she wanted to […]
Leonard Pitts Jr.
Posted inOp-Eds
Call ‘alternative facts’ what they are
This president lies. Granted, every president tells the occasional politically expedient untruth. But this guy is different. He lies constantly. He lies about relatively unimportant things. He lies when the truth can be easily verified. None of this comes as a surprise, of course. It’s been obvious since long before Donald Trump took the oath […]
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Posted inLetters
Which American?
Leonard Pitts may not speak for Erin Graham (letter, Jan. 17), but he speaks profoundly to our condition and for us. Graham declares that after Obama’s “ride,” “it is time to be American.” Indeed it is time. But which American do we choose to be? The interred Japanese-American during World War II? The dispossessed Native […]
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Proud to be maladjusted to Donald Trump
Sometimes, you’ve got to go through it to get to it. That’s a personal motto with which I have occasionally consoled myself since I was a teenager. It means that for as much as we naturally seek to avoid the unpleasant situation, to find a way over or around it, there are times in this […]
Posted inLetters
Pitts column off the mark
I write in response to the Leonard Pitts Jr. column (Jan. 14). Pitts certainly does not speak for me. President Barack Obama did not do me proud — quite the opposite. While I am glad that Pitts enjoyed Obama’s ride, it is time to be Americans now. I am an American who supports Donald Trump. […]
Posted inOp-Eds
President Obama — you did us proud
Dear Mr. President: “Barack Obama is not Jesus.” Those were the first words of the first column I ever wrote about you — a poke in the eye to Democrats who were singing rhapsodic hosannas about a certain highly regarded young senator. “Yes,” I griped, “he has great potential. But is it asking too much […]
Posted inOp-Eds
Trump’s mouth connected to his soul
How about if we let Jesus answer Kellyanne Conway? Donald Trump’s indefatigable apologist was at it again Monday on CNN, defending her boss against, of all people, Meryl Streep. The 19-time Oscar nominee got under Trump’s famously thin skin with a speech at Sunday night’s Golden Globes. In it, she chastised him for, among other […]
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Mrs. Obama: Charming and gorgeous
Dear Michelle Obama: This is just a note to say that I think you’re gorgeous. I’ll thank you not to share that with your husband, given that I have no desire to open my door and find a predator drone waiting for me. Or, worse, an IRS auditor. And yes, as a 21st-century U.S. male, […]
Posted inOp-Eds
Journalists must take a moral stand
“Five minutes for Hitler, five minutes for the Jews.” That, according to legend — and a Facebook page for alumni of The Miami Herald — was the routine response of an ’80s-era editor whenever some hapless reporter was working overly hard to bring “balance” to a story where none should exist, where the moral high […]
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Tired of hammering at America’s ideals
“There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. “Make me want to holler, way they do my life.” — Marvin Gaye I find myself burdened by the faith of my elders. They were generations of cooks and farmers, poets and laborers, of porters and housekeepers, soldiers […]