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Freedom of speech needs some leeway

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Peoria Times Columnist

Today’s revelation should surprise exactly no one: There is a difference between what each of us says in public and what we say in private to friends.

In public, in the workplace helping a customer or via Zoom with a client, we clean things up. We avoid controversy, mind our language and sand the edges off opinions.

This is not a fictional self; it is an aspect of who we are. I view it as part of the social contract. In public, most of us agree to put forward our best selves.

Then there’s what happens in private.

I’ve had beers with conservative politicians who drop f-bombs. Played golf with “woker than thou” progressives who comment on the cart girl’s chest. I’ve been emailed a thousand obscene memes and a thousand jokes about Jews and every other ethnicity on the planet.

I’ve said countless things in private that, should I express them in this column, would surely get me fired.

Which brings us to suddenly former Las Vegas Raiders football coach Jon Gruden, embattled comedian Dave Chappelle and the confusing state of life in 2021.

Gruden resigned last week after a trove of years-old personal emails between him and some guy friends, including Bruce Allen, then-President of the Washington Football Team, became public as part of an NFL investigation into Washington’s toxic workplace culture. Gruden played no part in that culture, having never worked for the team, but he did “casually and frequently (unleash) misogynistic and homophobic language over several years to denigrate people,” according to the New York Times. Among those people? NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, labeled by Gruden as a “clueless anti football (jerk)” and DeMaurice Smith, head of the NFL players union, a Black man Gruden said “has lips the size of michellin [sic] tires.”

The NFL immediately condemned that email – which Gruden wrote in 2010 – as “appalling, abhorrent and wholly contrary to the NFL’s values.”

Then the league went right back to gridiron games involving highly compensated domestic abusers, sexual violators and assorted other miscreants.

Little shocks me about Gruden, a macho (jerk) in private who kept his offensive ideas to himself for his 8-year run on “Monday Night Football.” Had Gruden voiced unleashed a tirade on air, I would have supported firing him.

What I don’t support is the Opinion Police coming for him based on decade-old private emails.

There’s a difference between repugnant opinions kept to ourselves or shared with friends, and what we do and say around everyone else. If the new American social contract demands pristine behavior 24/7, who among us can meet that standard?

Then there’s Chappelle. The very definition of a comedian is someone who has no filter, who says in public that which none of us dares speak.

Comedians’ jokes offend, but they also serve as human WD-40, a lubricant between people and ideas. If Chappelle’s joking about the gay and trans community offends, well, that’s literally in his job description.

SEE SPEECH PAGE 9

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Political ‘press-ure’ demeans Trump

BY J.D. HAYWORTH Peoria Times Columnist

Call it “Build Back Bitter.” Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending “sharknado” apparently watered down by members of his own party. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew just who to blame: The reporters who cover the proceedings under the Capitol dome.

“I think you all could do a better job of selling it, to be frank with you,” Pelosi said.

Got that?

Pelosi believes that the press corps is just an unelected part of her House Democrat caucus, on hand to advocate for the left — not to report stories objectively.

And based on recent history, she’s absolutely right.

Corporate media made a collective decision in 2016: our nation needed its first female president, and with their unremittingly sympathetic reporting, Hillary Clinton would make history “her story.”

Besides, those filling the newsrooms and executive suites regarded Donald Trump as an egomaniacal outsider. To their collective surprise, he became the Republican nominee. From the day in 2015 when he took a Trump Tower escalator to speak to a waiting crowd and announce his candidacy, the press escalated its attacks on the intriguing political novice, growing increasingly flummoxed as Trump soon became the GOP frontrunner.

Then, on election night, the unthinkable happened: Donald John Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States. Not only did the alphabet networks have trouble minding their p’s and q’s, but the taxpayer-financed Voice of America (VOA) dissolved into the tears of a clown. Radio/ TV insiders relayed a revealing tale from deep inside the broadcast bureaucracy.

Amanda Bennett, then the VOA director, ordered the production of a celebratory documentary, “America’s First Woman President,” to be aired once the votes were counted and the inevitable had occurred.

When the inevitable yielded to the improbable, Bennett cried and other staffers scrambled, scurrying to fill the gap with somber live coverage that supplanted the joyous pre-produced, planned programming.

Though the press partisans came emotionally undone over the 2016

SEE POLITICAL PAGE 11

SPEECH FROM PAGE 8

The unwritten rule seems to be that it’s fine for Chappelle to joke about Black people, because he’s Black. In the same vein, I can joke about Jews because my name is Leibowitz.

But stray out of your lane, be offensive about a group to which you don’t belong, and you’ll be canceled, pronto.

I’d advocate for a different standard, a culture where freedom of speech includes leeway for time and place, private versus public. I’d also prefer a culture that can still take a joke. Under the new rules, it’s only a matter of time before the Opinion Police come for all of us, no matter how polite we think, act or speak.

David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@ leibowitzsolo.com.

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AROUND THE BLUHMIN’ TOWN ‘Love’ is a four-legged word

BY JUDY BLUHM Peoria Times Columnist

Do all dogs go to heaven? Yes, of course they do, along with all of our other beloved pets. Sometimes, they just get there too quickly, leaving us bereft and broken. Maybe we love our dogs so much because they love us unconditionally and completely — flaws and all.

They don’t seem to notice our bad moods and never hold a grudge if we are ever short with them. They show unbridled excitement every time we walk in the door! They eat the same (boring) food all the time, but never complain. They love walks and rides and anything that involves us. They are the children who get older, but never grow up. And they know how to make our days slightly better.

My daughter, Kelly, is disabled and her son has autism. They had a small shih tzu dog named Chopper. He just died at age 18. His sole purpose in life was to protect Kelly and Brandon. He “guarded” Kelly by sitting under her wheelchair, barking (perhaps growling) if people come too close and watched her carefully when she moved around the house. Not sure exactly what he thought he would do if Kelly fell, but he certainly acted as though he would break her fall. He was 10 pounds of fierce devotion.

Sometimes our pets give us inspiration. My friend, Jane, found a small black abandoned kitten sitting by a dumpster outside of a Japanese restaurant. Jane was going through a divorce and not interested in a kitty. But she brought the kitten home, named her Sushi and for the next 16 years had a “kindred spirit” who slept with her every night. Sushi had the habit of snatching items and putting them in odd places around the house. Jane would find a sock from the laundry basket under the bed, or one of Sushi’s numerous soft toys stuffed under pillows. When Sushi died, Jane was in the middle of a career change.

One week after Sushi passed, Jane was sitting in the lobby of a new law firm, waiting for her second interview, feeling despondent and sad. Nervously Jane reached into her briefcase and she was stunned to feel a soft, gray mouse toy that Sushi must have hidden there. Jane said a calm came over her, she felt so loved and confidently walked into the conference room to nail the interview, get the job and seize the moment. After being offered the job, one of the senior partners asked Jane if she would like to stay for lunch and asked if she liked sushi. So, in an amazing twist of fate, Jane’s first words in her new position were, “I love Sushi.”

Life is better when we have had the love of a pet. All that licking, running, jumping, wagging tails, cuddling, purring, barking, yipping and playing is the gift that keeps on giving. We can be alone with a pet, but never lonely. They offer us everything they have to give and ask for very little in return. Sadly, they leave us too soon. Our pets teach us that true love is a four-legged word.

Judy Bluhm is a writer and a local Realtor. Have a comment or a story? Email Judy at judy@judybluhm.com. lators like to mak

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Judy Bluhm is a writer and a local Realtor. Have a comment or a story? Email Judy at judy@judybluhm.com.

October 21, 2021 POLITICAL FROM PAGE 9 election results, they were far from done with Donald Trump. He may have been sworn in, but he became a figure to be sworn at, with journalistic coverage full of sound, fury, and falsehoods.

Russiagate. Kids in cages. Two weeks to flatten the curve. Voter ID is racist. Vote fraud is rare. The 2020 Eelection was secure.

To those journalistic themes and scores more, Trump offered a twoword response — fake news.

Others, with a different political perspective, offered a similar, earlier message in much more sophisticated prose. Trump’s presidential predecessor retained the services of a “late thirtysomething” Ben Rhodes, a one-time aspiring novelist who was given a title too long for a book cover: “Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications.”

The fact that Ben Rhodes’ brother, David, was president of CBS News at the time made Ben’s hiring a “two-fer” in the eyes of Barack Obama: a “creative writer” in the White House with a sibling presiding over a bevy of “creative communicators.” Sure enough, Ben confessed to the New York Times Magazine that the successful messaging of the U.S.-Iran nuke deal and the diplomatic recognition of Communist Cuba depended upon the creation of compelling narratives. Not necessarily factual, nor true, but “compelling.”

And those narratives were served up to a group of sympathetic reporters gullible enough to swallow them hook, line and sinker. Rhodes didn’t call those journalists “gullible”— he called them know nothings. In that same worshipful New York Times Magazine profile, he described the average reporter in the White House Press Corps as someone “27 years old” whose “only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns.”

“They literally know nothing,” Rhodes concluded.

Americans have learned a little something about the politicization of the press: it is real, it is rabid, and it is radical.

What’s more, it has prompted a reaction of revulsion.

July brought these results from a Gallup Poll: Americans with “quite a lot” or a “great deal” of confidence in newspapers totaled just 21%. For television, it was even lower: only 16%.

The prevailing political view of the press — Orange man bad, senile man superb — jeopardizes American journalism, which badly needs reform— except in the eyes of journalists.

They regard it as the “Build Back Bummer.”

J.D. Hayworth worked as a sportscaster at Channel 10, Phoenix, from 1987 until 1994 and represented Arizona in Congress from 1995-2007.

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