You know how old people can remember where they were when they heard that President Kennedy was assassinated. Younger people usually remember where they were when they heard about the planes hitting the World Trade Center.
I remember where I was when I heard that Harvey Milk had been assassinated. I was walking up the steps to my office in Business Tower at San José State when one of my students stopped me to tell me that Milk had been gunned down in San Francisco City Hall. I did not believe him.
To liberals in the Bay Area, Harvey Milk was a hero. Even in tolerant San Francisco, the first openly gay candidate to win an election was an amazing breakthrough. If you haven’t seen the movie “Milk,” starring Sean Penn, I urge you to do watch it.
Today Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that a ship named for Milk, a Korean War vet, would be stripped of his name. I heard they also did the same thing with Medgar Evers.
I always thought that men who hated gays were themselves unsure of their masculinity. I heard that Hegseth exercises with soldiers. I’ve seen pictures of his tattoos. This is a guy with real problems with both sexuality and race. We knew this before he was appointed. Blame the Republican Senators. They knew they were approving an incompetent jerk.
In a saner time, merely nominating Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense should be enough for a charge of treason.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Sean Penn's "Milk" was very good. I watched it the same month I watched Netflix's "The Trial of the Chicago 7," which was another political theme.
I was really, really angry when I heard that. They're also planning to remove Harriet Tubman, Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, among others. With all the problems in the world, THIS is what Hegseth is focused on.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Alex Wagner, a former Pentagon official, told Newsweek: "These are the preoccupations of a man who finds himself without the experience, skills, or team to navigate the weighty issues demanded by the position of Secretary of Defense." Amen.