I take this attack personally

It’s been known for a long time that I’m liberal, an atheist, and I generally let you know what I’m thinking. I speak for those who can’t. I speak openly about my own mental health issues and try to raise awareness when I can. Yet, I’ve always strived to be respectful to people who think differently and I let other people voice their opinions.

I also know that there are people in this town who hate me because I am different from them, I won’t back down when the truth is on my side, and because they believe the rhetoric that I am “fake news.”

Other than nasty phone calls, emails, and letters over the last four and a half years, I’ve had my car keyed three times in the past year. Management has stressed that if I ever felt in danger to not hesitate to let them know or, if it was an immediate danger, to skip them and go right to 9-1-1 or the police.

Yet, I rarely think about the dangers of my job. I know people wish I would go away, keep my mouth shut, know my place and all that ridiculousness to keep a person quiet. I never really worried about it until today.

Yesterday, I read what Milo Yiannopoulos said about journalists. According to The Hill, “Yiannopoulos reportedly sent Davis Richardson, a reporter for the Observer, a text message this week, saying: ‘I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.’”

Regardless of whether he was saying to one journalist or all of them, to try to excuse yourself later of being a troll to get away with it is despicable. You shouldn’t be saying it in the first place.

I don’t remember, I was just kidding, I’ve asked for God’s forgiveness and put this behind me are all bullshit phrases. They are half-apologizes that would never pass muster with my grandma, but these non-apology apologies allow almost anyone to get away with anything. It certainly got Bill O’Reilly released from any responsibility from inciting the death of Dr. Tiller.

Words have power and Yiannopoulos knows exactly what he did. He seemingly has had a change of heart after the horrific shootings at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Maryland.

I thought about the reporter asking for help via Twitter. I read the disgusting responses to him, some with apparent glee, and his situation. Some criticized his actions.

A single shooter shot multiple people at my office, some of whom are dead.

— Phil Davis (@PhilDavis_CG) June 28, 2018

There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you're under your desk and then hear the gunman reload

— Phil Davis (@PhilDavis_CG) June 28, 2018

I never met the five journalists who died today, but they are colleagues. We will all be defiant in the face of the everyday dangers we encounter.

Chase Cook, a reporter at the Capital Gazette, said on Twitter, “I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.”

I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow.

— Chase Cook (@chaseacook) June 28, 2018

Brian Thompson, of NBC, had the only response needed.

We are not the enemy of the people. We are the voice of the people. Sincere condolences, my heart weeps for you.

— Brian Thompson (@brian4NY) June 28, 2018

I thought about our newsroom and what would happen if such a thing were to happen at the Star-Herald.

While I know I could be a target because of who I am, I also know that anyone I work with could be a target for whatever stupid reason, including someone who may have some issue – real or imagined – with the newspaper.

We work in an open office at the Star-Herald. It would be trivial for someone to come into the building and murder more people because of the freedom of movement and the openness.

Yiannopoulos tried to excuse himself from his behavior not long after the shootings at the Capital Gazette.

I sent a troll about “vigilante death squads” as a *private* response to a few hostile journalists who were asking me for comment, basically as a way of saying, “Fuck off.” They then published it. Amazed they were pretending to take my joke as a “threat,” I reposted these stories on Instagram to mock them — and to make it clear that I wasn’t being serious.

Headlines soon appeared claiming that I was “inciting” people to murder journalists. This is wholly false. The only people whipping up hysteria about killing reporters this week were Will Sommer at the Daily Beast and Davis Richardson at the New York Observer.

No, Milo. You don’t get to walk away from this. If you said it to one reporter, they all take it personally. Wouldn’t have been easier to just tell those reporters to “fuck off” instead of calling for their deaths? That is an incitement to murder. Your words carry weight no matter who you are. People look up to you. I don’t understand because you seem to be such a hateful person, but they do. Whether you want it or not, there is a responsibility that goes with that.

You do not get to turn around and claim to be the victim, Milo.

We do not know the full motives of the shooter yet, other than an apparent grudge with the newspaper. We should wait for all the facts to be gathered before jumping to conclusion.

Still, it’s hard for me to separate the two issues in these few hours after the shooting. Right or wrong, my mind connected the two. That’s human nature, especially when it appears there has been a personal attack.

When you attack journalists, you are attacking me. When you call for one journalist to be killed via vigilante death squads, you are calling for my death also. When I hear about journalists being murdered where they work, I think of the people I sit next to and goof around with every day at work. It is not hard to put myself in their place.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, the thought has been there, particularly since the 2016 presidential election when hate was given a green light, that something like this could happen. The president incites it as do many of his underlings.

I’ve always hoped that the good people of western Nebraska would be okay with just hating me, maybe calling me a few names. I hope I’m not wrong.