Let’s Go To Press!
“The same thing happened today that happened yesterday,
Only to different people….
We must not indulge in unfavorable views of mankind,
since by doing it we make bad men believe they are no worse than others,
and we teach the good that they are good in vain….
Too many people expect wonders from democracy,
when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it….”
Walter Winchell
The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, he started off as a vaudeville hoofer.
[“Vaudeville hoofer.” With two words we’ve betrayed our age. “Vaudeville” - a late 19th and early 20th Century theatrical genre, generally “song and dance” with a range of comedy, nothing serious or heavy - began in France and found a home in New York. “Hoofer” – a professional dancer; in the 1920s the term most frequently referred to a tap dancer.]
Moving from vaudeville to the The Daily Mirror and nationwide syndication, he specialized in slang-filled gossip and thinly-veiled rumors and held – and used - the power to make or break reputations and lives.
Commentator Kurt Andersen described him as “all about the grotty exercise of power. Relentlessly and specifically, day after day doling out bits of patronage or punishment in response to the greedy murmur of little men.” In print and on radio and with searing attacks, he specialized in giving “Mr. and Mrs. America” a sense that they were receiving special insight into bureaucratic injustices and an understanding of the secrets of the rich and powerful.
After a 1933 meeting with Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was recruited to promote the incoming president’s agenda for America; he became the first major commentator to directly attack Adolf Hitler and American pro-fascist organizations like the German American Bund.
In the years after World War II and Roosevelt’s death, his professional and personal lives spun out of control – broken marriages, failed relationships, the death of his young daughter, the suicide of his adult son, and an inability to make the transition to television. He cozied-up to Al Capone and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and championed rightwing extremist Senator Joseph McCarthy. Herman Klurfeld, his biographer and ghostwriter, wrote that he “was an egomaniac, he was stubborn and in the end he was fooled by an evil devil named Roy Cohn,” who – from 1973 through the early 1980s - would become the personal lawyer and fixer for a New York City developer and the future 45th president of the United States.
Biographer Neal Gabler described him as “not only present at the creation of modern journalism, in many respects he was the creation.”
During World War II, with his gravelly voice and a fake telegraph sounding in the background, he was known worldwide by the salutation: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all ships at sea. Let’s go to press.”
With that background and the assistance of the spirit of the late, great Walter Winchell, we present the latest pro-birth/anti-life news from across the country.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all ships at sea. Let’s go to press:
First to Tennessee, where – in 1965 - the General Assembly officially declared “Tennessee – America at its Best” the state slogan. Volunteer State legislators in the House Justice Committee have been debating new options for executions and allowing inmates to choose electrocution instead of lethal injection.
Representative Paul Sherrell of Sparta wanted to offer another possibility. Sherrell has a 100 percent approval rating from the Family Action Committee of Tennessee (FACT), which proclaims it “recognizes and honors the intrinsic value of all human life. The law should protect the life of every person - no matter how old, young or disabled. Over the past few decades, some in our culture have waged war on human life: legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade, destroying human embryos in the name of scientific research, and seeking to legalize ‘mercy’ killing through ‘death with dignity.’ We seek to reverse these life-denying trends and to foster a culture that respects human life.”
Addressing the firing squad alternative proposed by Dennis H. Powers, Sherrell announced, “I was just wondering about, could I put [an] amendment on that that would include hanging by a tree also and also I would like to sign onto your bill, sir. Thank you.”
Sherrell was already on record proposing renaming Nashville’s John Lewis Way – a tribute to the famed Civil Rights advocate - to a boulevard honoring the twice-impeached 45th president of the United States. Sherrell eventually withdrew that legislation without comment.
On March 24, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed HB 18 authorizing firing squads for executions, making his the first state to mandatorily impose the firing squad on a death row prisoner since 1976. The rule goes into effect on July 1 and gives the director of the state’s Department of Corrections up to five days after a death warrant is issued to determine if lethal injection is available; if it is not, the execution will be performed by firing squad.
The state has twice stayed execution dates for Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. because it could not obtain lethal injection drugs and will need to spend $750,000 to renovate/build facilities to make execution by firing squad possible.
Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah authorize firing squads as a backup method of execution.
In Texas, on Mach 9, Arthur Brown, Jr. became the fifth person executed by the state and the ninth in the U.S. this year; his was the second in the state that week. That same week, five women and two physicians sued the state after the women were denied abortions – despite having been told that they were facing serious risks to their health and the health of their fetuses. “I will never forget one specialist tore off his mask and threw it in the trash. ‘I can’t help you anymore. You need to leave the state,’” the specialist told her, according to Lauren Miller. Continuing to carry two fetuses – one with the rare Trisomy 18 chromosome disorder – could put her health and the health of the other fetus at risk. She eventually had an abortion in Colorado. The plaintiffs reported they were denied abortions because their conditions were either not considered life-threatening or because “cardiac activity” could be detected in the fetus but it had no chance of surviving outside the womb. The lawsuit alleges that there is confusion among Texas physicians, care providers and pregnant women over what qualifies as critical care.
Texas has already executed five men – four Black or Hispanic – this year and another execution is scheduled for April 26. On Thursday, March 9, strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber and staring at the ceiling, Arthur Brown, Jr. declared, “What is occurring here tonight is not justice, it’s murder of an innocent man for a murder that occurred in 1992. My co-defendant was executed in 2006 and if I’m innocent he was innocent and they killed an innocent man, and the state doesn’t want the truth to come out. Tonight, Texas will kill a second innocent man for a murder that occurred in 1992. I have no further words.”
In a 2019 social media post, Daniel Perry lamented “to [sic] bad we can’t get paid for hunting Muslims…” On June 1, 2020, he wrote, “It is official I am a racist because I do not agree with people acting like animals at the zoo. I was on the side of the protestors until they started with the looting and the violence.” He compared the “black lives matter movement to a zoo full of monkeys that are freaking out flinging their sh*t.”
In the weeks before a July 25, 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, Perry, a Fort Hood Army sergeant, posted social media comments that included “I might have to kill a few people on my way to work, they are rioting outside my apartment complex” and “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”
That night, Perry was working as an Uber driver; he carried as handgun in his car for protection. According to the prosecutor, after dropping off a passenger, Perry, 35, ran a red light and turned into a crowd of BLM protestors. Garrett Foster, protesting alongside his girlfriend for 50 straight days, approached Perry’s car armed with an assault rifle. Perry opened fire and later claimed Foster had raised his weapon. Although evidence presented at trial showed that both men were legally armed, witnesses reported that Foster had not raised his weapon.
Nearly three years later, Perry was convicted of murder; the jury found him not guilty on a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and a deadly conduct charge is still pending. With the jury’s verdict, Perry faces up to life in prison.
But…
Both Texas governor Greg Abbott appears to aspire to higher office – 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - and one day after the jury’s initial verdict Abbott called on the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to approve Perry’s pardon “as swiftly as Texas law allows” based on the state’s “Stand Your Ground” laws: ““I look forward to approving the Board’s pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk.”
Three years of investigations, a two-weeks trial in which jurors heard from 40 witnesses and deliberated 15 hours before rendering a guilty verdict and the promise of a gubernatorial pardon in the name of “stand your ground.”
Sounds like as vote getter for a man who would like to be president
In Florida, where gunman Nikolas Cruz, who shot and killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School in Parkland, dodged the death penalty because a jury deadlocked 11-1 in the sentencing phase of deliberation, Senate Bill 450 would require only eight out of 12 jurors to vote for a death sentence. In addition, House bill – HB 1297 – and Senate bill – SB 1342 – would allow the death penalty for people who commit sexual batteries on children under age 12.
The proposals are responses to the Cruz jury’s decision and a 1981 Florida Supreme Court and a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court cases declaring it was unconstitutional to execute defendants in rape cases. No one has been executed for a non-murder crime in the United States since 1964.
Florida has already executed two men – Donald Dillback, February 23, and Louis Gaskin, April 12 – this year. Another execution is scheduled for May 4.
On April 13, Florida’s desperate-to-be-president governor signed legislation outlawing abortions after six weeks – long before most women would ever know they are pregnant.
During the legislative session that passed the new six-weeks law and almost simultaneously with the most recent Florida execution, Representative Webster Barnaby (R., Deltona) – an immigrant (1991) from Birmingham, England and self-described “proud Christian conservative Republican” – used his position on the Florida House Commerce Commission to assail transgender men and women, while also declaring his “righteous indignation.” In his peroration, Barnaby equated transgender men and women with mutant creatures from comic books and action movies before declaring:
“We have people that live among us today on planet Earth that are happy to display themselves as if they were mutants from another planet. This is the planet Earth where God created men male and women female. I’m a proud Christian conservative Republican. I’m not on the fence, not on the fence, not on the fence. There is so much darkness in our world today, so much evil in our world today. And so many people who are afraid to address the evil, the dysphoria, the dysfunction. I’m not afraid to address the dysphoria or the disfunction. The Lord rebuke you, Satan and all of your demons and all of your imps who come and parade before us. That’s right. I called you demons and imps and pretend that you are part of this world. So, I’m saying my righteous indignation is stirred. I am sick and tired of this. I’m not going to put up with it. You can test me and try to take me on. But I promise you I’ll win every time.”
The next nineteen months will be marked by marked by legislatures and their governors-who-want-to-be-president racing to out-“pro-birth and pro-execute-‘em-as-many-and-quickly-as-possible” each other. Oxymoronically, they will declare themselves “pro-life” as though somehow signing execution warrants and calling for death by firing squads is “pro-life.”
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America from border to border and coast to coast and all ships at sea. Let’s go to press!”