CNN Anchor Don Lemon Says There Should Be More LGBT People of Color Inclusion by Gay Establishment

I met Don Lemon last night at The Trevor Project fundraiser
Don Lemon presenting last night

Don Lemon, the CNN anchor who came out as an openly gay man in May, was a presenter at this year’s The Trevor Project fundraiser gala in New York last night. Lemon, who is African American, spoke truth to power when he suggested on stage that the LGBT establishment should include more LGBT people of color.

The man has a very valid point!!

I am very proud that Lemon used his time on stage to highlight the issue of the lack of ethnic diversity by certain LGBT media outlets, organizations and leadership roles. I think he was generally speaking, and not necessarily about The Trevor Project.

Also, all the images of women of transsexual history I see on TV are all white.
Many transgender (not to be confused with transsexual) images on TV are either “gay male drag queens gone transgenderist impersonator”, or “heterosexual white male transvestite fetishists who cross dress”.

Can we have some actual women who are just women who happen to have a transsexual medical condition, not only drag queen and transvestite males?

Despite what the TV show Glee tells the world, there are actually LGBT/TS/Intersex people of color in society.

Way to take a stand Lemon!

What Makes Good Journalism?

Journalists and others concerned about the status of the news industry in North America and Europe keep arguing that we are getting poorer journalism because of the economic state of the industry. But when you ask them “what makes good journalism?” they find it nearly impossible to articulate the concept.

Those trying to articulate the elements good journalism tend to use comforting and immeasurable platitudes and to describe it through attributes based on professional practices: pursuit of truth, fairness, completeness, accuracy, verification, and coherence. These are not a definition of quality, but a listing of contributors to or elements of quality practices. Each attribute alone is not sufficient for good journalism and degree to which each contributes is unclear.

In practice, most of us settle on identifying journalistic quality by its absence or by its comparison to poor or average quality journalism. Thus we know it when we don’t see it or we describe by giving examples of excellent journalism.

Other industries are far better in establishing their definitions of quality. If you ask what is quality in washing machines, the answer is that it quality machines clean clothing more effectively, operate quietly, are safe, and are durable and reliable. All of those can be measured by specific indicators of dirt and stain removal, water and energy use, noise decibels generate, user injury rates, and breakdown rates. A quality manufacturer strives for better performance on those measures, provides effective support and service, handles feedback and complaints well, and strives for high customer satisfaction.

The reason quality journalism is difficult to describe is because it involves a body of practices and the mental activity that goes into those practices. Good journalism results from the information gathering and processing activities, PLUS the knowledge and mental processes applied to it.

It is thus labor intensive; it involves collecting, analysing, structuring and presenting information. The best journalism comes from knowledgeable and critical individuals determining what information is significant, backgrounding and contextualizing it, and thinking about and explaining its meaning. It is a creative and cognitive activity. It is difficult to articulate what makes good creative and cognitive activity and nearly impossible to measure these mental processes. Thus, we are forced to use surrogate measures of quality journalism.

Good journalism involves engaging language and fluid prose, but it is not merely a well written and good story; it is not necessarily evident in stories that make the most popular list of stories or are most shared on social media. Good journalism involves stories that have import, impact, and elements of exclusivity and uniqueness; it wrestles with issues of the day, elucidates social conditions, facilitates society in finding solutions to challenges, and is independent of all forms of power. Good journalism is rational and critical; it is infused with scepticism, but not cynicism.

Although it is difficult to effectively measure such attributes of quality journalism, it should be much easier to define and identify quality journalism providers. There are some surrogate and attribute measures available to rate them, such as the percentage of total costs devoted to editorial costs, the amount of serious news content, the percentage of content originated rather than acquired, the amount and handling of errors, levels of reader satisfaction, and brand reputation.

In the end, however, the question of what makes good journalism has to be answered by answering the queries: Good or valuable to WHOM? Good or valuable for WHAT? Only then can one begin to establish direct measures that determine the effectiveness of journalism in achieving those objectives.

Margaret Wente and the “elites”

Here's Margaret Wente writing a puff piece about billionaire Peter Munk:

Wente: “’I arrived in this place not speaking the language, not knowing a dog,’ he says. He was 18 – an alien, a foreigner, a Jew in a funny-looking suit. In Europe, people were living in the ruins, like rats”. 



Hmnn, that’s a quite a contrast from this bio in the Globe by Andy Hoffman, in April 2008:



“He was born Nov. 8, 1927 in Budapest, Hungary to a Jewish family rich with real-estate holdings...” 



(The article informs us that Munk’s family spent much of that fortune to escape to Switzerland where life wasn’t so bad).

But 
“young Peter failed to gain admission to a top university and in 1948 it was decided that he would be sent to Toronto for his education, and live with his aunt and uncle...Peter and his friends met to consider his fate in a Zurich café. He didn't want to leave Switzerland. ‘In Zurich it was gorgeous. There were bars and we could drive down to the casino and see the dancing girls. It was a cultured, civilized place,’ he recalls.”



So Munk may ‘not have known a dog’ in Toronto, but he did know his relatives. And while Wente wants us to think the poor man was scurrying around the ruins with rats, he was apparently living the high life in Zurich’s bars and casinos.

My Article in Curve Magazine: What Does Pride Month Mean for the TS/TG/IS communities?

Tula: "I Am A Woman"- not 3rd gender, not transvestite, not gay male drag queen, not gender queer activist, not transgender

Caroline (Tula was her modeling name) fought very hard for women born with a transsexual medical condition to be recognized as women, and have the same rights as any other woman. She never sought to be “othered and misgendered” or marginalized in a 3rd gender/Transgender box, yet that is precisely what many cross dressing males and gender queer activists, backed by Gay Inc, and some in the religious far right, are trying to do in the newer transgender/transgenderist movement.

From Wikipedia: “Caroline "Tula" Cossey (born 31 August 1954) is an English model. She is one of the world's most well-known transsexual women, having appeared in a James Bond film and been the first to pose for Playboy. Since being outed by British tabloid News of the World, Cossey has fought for her right to legally marry and to be recognized by the law as a woman.”

Caroline left the spotlight because she just wanted to live her life in peace, as a woman, not a spectacle. Today we have a couple noted transgenderist individuals who enjoy being spectacles, even at the cost of stigmatizing and misgendering the people with transsexualism that they are (mis)speaking for.I’m curious how people think Caroline feels about her community being co-opted onto some “3rd gender, or fetishist, or gay male drag queen” reservation against their will?

Why is it that the gender deconstructionist communities (of whcih those with a TS/IS condition are not a part of, for TS/IS people have a physical birth challenge, not a "gender identity issue") are quick to exploit and use high profile feminine and assimilated women with a transsexual condition to garner mainstream acceptance, legitimacy and visibility, but then turn around and compromise, belittle and jeopardize the different needs of people with a transsexual and/or intersex condition?

Gay Inc and TG Inc can try to censor and devalue the crisis of TS/IS people being alienated, ridiculed, offended, missgendered, misrepresented and objectified, yet I don't see the transsexual uprising backing down today, or tomorrow

Caroline now lives in America. I feel Caroline is happy that American women and men with transsexualism are speaking out against the current miseducation that is harming them, because just like Caroline’s title of her book said, “I Am A Woman” [not a 3rd gender, not a transvestite, not a gay male drag queen, not a gender queer activist, not transgender]
.

Attribution Correction?

After bringing this to the attention of Globe editors, the following notice appeared in today’s print version, (June 3, Page A2). Now, why not the rest?

The words “Americans…are fighting and dying, while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them” in the Focus section of March 12 should have been attributed to Dexter Filkins in the New York Times.