Ten Bold Cover Tunes, Part XV: Imagine Edition

Have not posted one of these in a while. For parts 1-14 in the Ten Bold Cover Tunes series, click this link and scroll down. 

Watching television this past New Year's Eve, I was reminded once again of just how awful the broadcast and cable shows leading up to midnight have become. As Times Square became more corporate, these highly contrived "celebrations" devolved into three hours of commercial product placement, narcissistic and not-so-funny hosts, excessively lip-synced musical guests, and cringeworthy patriotic displays.  

Be that as it may, every year there is one highlight: at 5-minutes before midnight in New York, an artist performs John Lennon's "Imagine."  The most recent New Year's Eve performance of the song, by Australian Indie-Pop artist Tones and I, was one of the best covers of the tune I have heard. Born Toni Watson, Tones and I has one of the most unique vocal styles among contemporary singers. That in addition to the somber tone with which she delivers the song--perhaps in recognition of the tragic state of the world right now--makes it very engaging. 

Here are nine additional covers of  "Imagine," in no particular order: 

*The pop-rock group Train performed one of the most rockin' versions of the song at the 2013 New Year's Eve festivities. The addition of a youth choir was a nice touch. 

*Lady Gaga's performance of "Imagine" at the opening ceremonies of the 2015 European Games is truly breathtaking. She starts off with a subdued style and then at around the half-way mark becomes an operatic force. 

*I remember watching Neil Young's performance of "Imagine" live on television on Sept. 21, 2001 as part of the "Tribute to Heroes" celebration of first responders and others. I found it profoundly moving at the time. 

*If Neil Young's version of Imagine is a classic Baby Boomer treatment, then Jessie J.'s has to be a Millennial Generation archetype. I love the passion in her version. 

*Rachel Platten thinks that song can change the world. I do too. 

*Another excellent version of "Imagine" features alternative rock band X Ambassadors and their great vocalist Sam Nelson Harris. 

*I find Garth Brooks' and Trisha Yearwood's version of "Imagine," performed at President Jimmy Carter's funeral, somewhat subversive given that their immediate audience are members of the political and institutionalized religion class(es) that John Lennon rebelled against. 

*I'm sure John Lennon looked fondly on his son Julian's version of "Imagine" featuring the great guitarist Nuno Bettencourt. 

*My personal favorite cover of "Imagine" is probably Shakira's, performed at the UN General Assembly in 2015. The General Assembly, filled as it is with a large share of Machiavellian political apparatchiks, religious posers, and assorted other disreputable characters, should be forced to listen to political protest songs every now and then. 

The 2025 Tony Awards

Welcome to the 2025 edition of the Tony Awards for Excellence in Media.  Every year these awards are completely subjective; I try to recognize works that--FOR ME--represent powerful alternatives to the too often lazy and morally compromised corporate press. When possible, I also recognize journalists/pundits working IN the corporate press who have the courage to serve the public interest and resist intense pressure to produce clickbait, false balance, and the view from nowhere. 

This year's Tony Awards post is dedicated to all the international journalists killed or detained in 2025 for the "crime" of doing their jobs. According to Reporters Without Borders, 2025 was one of the deadliest years on record for journalists. As noted by Reporters Without Borders Director General Thibaut Bruttin: 

“This is where the hatred of journalists leads! It led to the death of 67 journalists this year – not by accident, and they weren’t collateral victims. They were killed, targeted for their work. It is perfectly legitimate to criticize the media — criticism should serve as a catalyst for change that ensures the survival of the free press, a public good. But it must never descend into hatred of journalists, which is largely born out of — or deliberately stoked by — the tactics of armed forces and criminal organizations . . . Key witnesses to history, journalists have gradually become collateral victims, inconvenient eyewitnesses, bargaining chips, pawns in diplomatic games, men and women to be ‘eliminated.’ We must be wary of false notions about reporters: no one gives their lives for journalism — it is taken from them; journalists do not just die — they are killed.”

And now, in no particular order, the 2025 Tony Awards. Drum roll please. 

*Saying NO to Oligarchy: The Wisconsin Voter.  In my 35+ years living in Wisconsin, I have never been as proud of my Badger brothers and sisters as I was on the night of April 1, 2025. That was when a majority of the state's voters loudly and proudly said NO to Elon Musk's overt and despicable attempt to buy a supreme court seat. While the corporate media kept insisting the race would be close--and uncritically reported Musk's attempts to seduce voters with million dollar bribes as a "large payout"--when all the votes were tallied liberal justice Susan Crawford secured a double-digit victory. 

Yes it is true that the oligarchic "donor class" wields huge influence in most state and federal elections, in both Republican and Democratic primaries and in general elections. But rarely are the oligarchs as open about their intentions as Mr. Musk. On a livestream reaching more than 10,000 people shortly before the election, Wisconsin's Republican US Senator Ron Johnson openly praised Musk's interference: 

"This is entirely winnable, and you know, if we do win it, again, we have to thank Elon for all the support he's given this race, and I was really glad to see President Trump throw in his endorsement as well." 

Thankfully Wisconsinites saw through the self-serving nonsense coming from Musk and the corporate media that enabled him. When MAGA eventually fades into oblivion, I firmly believe historians of the future will see the behavior of badger voters in April of 2025 as one of the major factors leading to that outcome. 

Elon Musk's absurd attempt to buy a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat was such a fiasco for the state's Republican party that pretty much the entire state swung blue--a striking rejection of oligarchy. 

The Wisconsin Republican Party claimed that billionaire George Soros' contributions to Dems were the equivalent of Musk's to the GOP. Yet as this chart clearly shows, Musk's money dwarfed all other rich donors. When you add in the additional dollars donated by GOP puppet masters Hendricks and Uihlein, Susan Crawford's victory looks even more impressive.

*Principled Pundits of the Year: Ann Telnaes and Karen Attiah. Speaking of entitled oligarchs, in 2025 Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post) competed with Musk for some kind of bizarre Asshole of the Year title. Late in 2024 Bezos refused to allow the Post to endorse Kamala Harris in the presidential election. Then in February of 2025 he announced that the Washington Post opinion page would now feature marketplace propaganda instead of a marketplace of ideas: 

"I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others." 

[Note: In 2013 I write a Media Rants post called Bradlees For Bezos that ended up being more spot on than even I could have ever imagined.]. 

Bezos' dickheaded dictum mandating free market supremacy on the opinion page did not actually come as a surprise, in large part because of cartoonist Ann Telnaes' resignation from the Post about one-month earlier. Her cartoon lampooning Bezos and other entitled billionaire tech broligarchs paying off Trump was censored. She resigned in protest. In a substack post explaining her actions, she said: 

"As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, 'Democracy dies in darkness'." 

The draft of the cartoon that led to Ann Telnaes resignation from the Washington Post. By censoring 
it, Jeff Bezos like Elon Musk attained the Broligarch Trifecta: Asshole, Bully, and Thin Skinned. 

Much to the chagrin of Bezos and his toadies choosing to stay with the Post, Telnaes ended up winning her second Pulitizer Prize in 2025, "for delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years."  Kudos to the Pulitzer selection committee! 

As if losing Ann Telnaes was not bad enough, in 2025 the Post fired the great Karen Attiah, an award winning African-American journalist and pundit known for writing and speaking with clarity and courage on a range of global and national topics. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Post management somehow saw fit to fire Attiah for a series of thoughtful posts she made on the BlueSky platform about the media's ritualized responses to gun violence, and for merely repeating back claims Mr. Kirk had actually made about African-Americans and others. Read Ms. Attiah's powerful response: "The Washington Post Fired Me - But My Voice Will Not Be Silenced." 

Former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah

*Best New Podcast: Optimist Economy with Economist Kathryn Anne Edwards and Editor Robin Rauzi. Somehow the Tik Tok algorithm god sent "Optimist Economy" clips to my feed, and I was immediately taken with the intelligence, humor, and practical policy suggestions set forth by the hosts. Probably my favorite episode of the  year was a recent one (“Thanksgiving Prep: An Optimist’s Guide to Dinner Table Debate”) in which Kathryn Anne Edwards communicated a provocative and (for me anyway) sensible take on the issue of trans women in sports. 

Economist Kathryn Anne Edwards

*Best Media Criticism: Margaret Sullivan's "American Crisis" Substack. I've been a huge fan of Margaret Sullivan since her days as the New York Times' Public Editor (a position that the Times eliminated in 2017. That the NYT has declined in substantive and disturbing ways since then is really not even debatable at this point.). 

Sullivan explains the purpose of American Crisis this way:  "My aim is to use this newsletter (it started as a podcast in 2023) to push for the kind of journalism we need for our democracy to function — journalism that is accurate, fair, mission-driven and public-spirited. That means that I point out the media’s flaws and failures when necessary."

Two posts I found especially insightful in the past year were "Do better, Big Journalism. Please do much, much better" and "Four Essentials For the Press Right Now." In both, Sullivan describes specific ways the mainstream press is failing to meet the urgency of the moment, while also providing concrete ways they can be better. 

Media Critic Margaret Sullivan 

*Best Political Substack: Paul Krugman. Last year's entire Tony Awards post was dedicated to celebrating Dr. Krugman, the Nobel prize winning economist who in 2024 resigned from the New York Times' op-ed page that he had contributed to for more than 20 years. Any worry I and others had about not being able to get enough of Krugman after he resigned from the NYT turned out to be misguided. In fact, his substack (co-edited with his spouse Robin) ended up becoming one of the most prolific and thoughtful on the Net. He somehow finds a way to upload rigorously supported posts virtually every day of the week--most of them for free (only highly detailed, weekend wonkish pieces on economics are put behind a paywall.). 

Paul Krugman

In less than a year Krugman's substack became one of the top-ten on the platform in terms of paid subscriptions. Writing about his experience, Krugman says: 

I never envisaged this Substack as a full-time job. It was supposed to be just a way to keep my voice out there post-NYT. But as it turns out, both Robin and I are working longer hours than we ever did in the past.

And the truth is that it’s great. I just hope that readers find what we’re doing useful in these scary times.

Speaking just for me, I find Krugman's daily posts extremely useful in these scary times. In fact his end of the year post on "Immigrant Derangement Syndrome" is the perfect segue into the next couple of Tony awards. 

*Best Letter to the Editor: Martin Oppenheimer in the New York Times. Dr. Oppenheimer is an emeritus professor of sociology at Rutgers University and a refugee from Nazi Germany. In response to a New York Times report on the USA's not-so-slow drift into authoritarianism, he submitted this short, eloquent letter: 

As a refugee from Nazi Germany, I noticed that there is one indicator of authoritarianism that you did not mention: the use of masked agents grabbing people off the streets and from their workplaces, invading their homes in the wee hours and “disappearing” them without hearings or even allowing them to contact their relatives. I believe that the danger of this tactic outstrips all the others.

Martin Oppenheimer
Franklin Township, N.J.

Maybe it's just me, but I think we really should be listening very closely these days to what refugees from Nazi Germany have to say. 

*Best Immigration Reporting From a Wisconsin Media Source: Sophie Carson's and Jovanny Hernandez's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Reports on the Case of Yessenia Ruano. 

Kudos to Wisconsin's largest newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel--and especially reporter Sophie Carson--for providing some outstanding coverage of the real world consequences of the Trump Administration's mass deportation program. Ms. Carson's in-depth reporting on the specific case of Yessenia Ruano, a married Salvadoran immigrant with twins, a job as a teacher's aide and no criminal record during 14 happy years in Milwaukee, is as infuriating as it is heartbreaking.  Please read "14 Years in Wisconsin, A New Life in El Salvador" for a gut-wrenching example of the truly shameful actions that are currently being carried out in our names. After Yessenia made the decision to self-deport rather than continue being bullied and harassed by agents of the federal government, the Milwaukee Common Council observed 14-minutes of silence in solidarity with her. 

Fun Fact: After graduating from college, Sophie Carson worked briefly for the Oshkosh Northwestern as a reporter covering crime and the courts. 

Photojournalist Jovanny Hernandez traveled to El Salvador for video coverage of Yessenia's new life in that country. 

*Best Data Driven Media Criticism: Media Matters For America's Report on "The Right Dominates the Online Media Ecosystem, Seeping Into Sports, Comedy, and Other Supposedly Nonpolitical Spaces." 

This in-depth and important study, written by MMFA's research director Kayla Gogarty with the help of a team of data collecting researchers, should be a wake-up call for the alleged progressive activists who still don't fully grasp or appreciate the role of digital social media in normalizing reactionary, anti-(small d) democratic viewpoints for millions of people.  

Media Matters For America Research Director Kayla Gogarty.

When presented with the reality of right wing dominance of the online media ecosystem, the stupid response from so-called progressives is along the lines of "we need a left wing Joe Rogan," as if progressive policy ideas would gain more traction if we would just dumb them down, communicate them in a Trumpian troll fashion, or turn them into rage bait. Good luck with that. 

Here's a thought: what if progressives actually started practicing what they preach? Specifically, why not create a spirit of SOLIDARITY among left/grassroots/progressive digital content creators? We (i.e. progressive content creators) do a piss-poor job of promoting each other's work. This Tony Awards column is just one tiny example of what should be done on a much larger scale: RECOGNITION of--and an attempt to get wider EXPOSURE for, content creators who operate in good faith and respect the intelligence of their audience(s). You know, the OPPOSITE of dumbing down, trolling, and rage baiting. 

*Media Rants Interview Of The Year: A Conversation With Mike McCabe About "Miracles Along County Q."

In an attempt to practice what I have personally been preaching for a long time, I created two YoutTube podcasts in 2025 to bring attention to people and ideas I perceive as aiding humane and valuable work. The 498 Show podcast features conversations with former UW Oshkosh students I've been blessed to work with over many years. The Media Rants podcast is a complement to this blog, featuring guests who shed light on anything media related. 

I thoroughly enjoyed every interview I was fortunate to conduct in 2025, and received some uplifting feedback along the way. One interview that stood out for me was Part One of my August of 2025 conversation with democracy activist, substacker, and novelist Mike McCabe. In that interview, which covered Mike's inspirational novel Miracles Along County Q, we discussed a number of ways in which some of the book's core themes challenge contemporary values, especially the tendency to think positive change is impossible and forgiveness is passe'. The book introduces readers to Ebiyan House, described in Mike's Substack as "A place like no other, off the beaten path, where cruelty meets its match and despair goes to die." It occurred to me that worthwhile public affairs media should be similar: a space where cruelty meets its match and despair goes to die. I submit to you that when progressive media content creators collectively adopt Ebiyan House values, they will have uncovered the secret to becoming trusted sources that masses of people actually care about.  

*The Tom Paxton/Phil Ochs Award For Best Topical Folk Music: Jesse Welles. In the 1960s Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs, both of whom were inspired by Bob Dylan, became (IMHO) the two greatest topical folk singers of their generation. Paxton's 1964 "Ramblin' Boy" album and Ochs' 1964 "All the News That's Fit to Sing" remain as groundbreaking works in the folk protest genre. Ochs tragically took his own life in 1976, but 88-year-old Paxton is still out there fighting the good fight: check out his wonderful 2025 song "No Kings Here."

Originally from Ozark, Arkansas, 33-year-old Jesse Welles is carrying on the Paxton/Ochs tradition in the digital age. YouTube recordings of his songs, often featuring just Jesse in a field with his guitar, have the passion, wit, and moral clarity of the best of the 1960s protest singers. One excellent example from 2025 is "The Department of War":

I realize the my Tony Award recipients represent only a fraction of the works that are deserving. If you are aware of media products that I should definitely be checking out, I would love to hear about them. 

If you got this far, thank for reading. And Happy New Year! Let's hope in 2026 our country can begin to find it's way back to sanity and solidarity. 

America's 15 Minutes of Famish and Other Hot Takes

I think you'd have to go back to the last year of the George W. Bush presidency (2008) for a time when the United States seemed as completely on the brink of collapse as it does right now. Mr. Bush and his late VP Dick Cheney presided over two failed wars, assaults on civil liberties in the name of protecting national security, an ill-defined and never ending "war on terror," a housing crash, the worst economic crisis since the great depression, and taxpayer bailouts of corporate crooks who should have been prosecuted for wrecking the economy. It's no exaggeration to say that the Bush/Cheney Administration created the conditions making the emergence of a faux populist like Donald Trump inevitable. Historians of the future will have a field day trying to explain how the political rehabilitation of Bush Cheney and the whitewashing of their crimes was carried out not by Republicans, but by establishment Democrats who required from them only tepid and hypocritical criticisms of Trump. 

As America crumbles, here are four hot takes to help you cope. 

Hot Take #1: America's Fifteen Minutes of Famish. The late countercultural icon Andy Warhol once famously (pardon the pun) declared "in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." During the recent government shutdown, which set a longevity record of 43 days, we learned just how much of a hunger crisis exists in the United States. Even though bad faith actors on the right, from Donald Trump on up, lied continuously about who actually gets food assistance, it became impossible for any sane person to deny the problem. Not surprisingly, when the shutdown ended the [already limited] serious conversation about hunger in America ended with it. The result? The 43-day shutdown did not lead to any new policy ideas to address hunger, the Republicans persisted in providing hunger misinformation and disinformation even when called out on it, and establishment Democrats did little more than virtue signal and eventually cave to end the shutdown. In Warholian fashion, the shutdown reduced hunger in America to a spectacle; the food insecure got their "15 minutes of famish." Sad. 

The Oshkosh Area Community Pantry assists around 2,800 families per month at the 2551 Jackson St. location. 

Hot Take #2: Trump's East Wing Edict. So apparently a president of the United States can unilaterally tear down a historic addition to the White House without having to go through even a minimal review process. Who knew? An ABC News poll showed the general public is not happy about it. In Wisconsin, 59 percent of respondents in the Marquette Poll said the East Wing should have been preserved, which included 69 percent of Independents and 90 percent of Democrats. 

75 percent of Republicans told the Marquette poll that the East Wing demolition was an "appropriate modernization." The Republican response got me thinking. Back during the first Trump term, I had an African-American student who enrolled in multiple classes with me at UW Oshkosh. After every Trump excess, he would approach me after class and say, "seriously, do you think Obama would have gotten away with that shit?" I'd usually laugh and say something like "probably not," but if that student were around today and had asked me the question after Trump's East Wing edict, my response probably would be "FUCK NO." 

In all seriousness: does anyone honestly think that if Obama had torn down the East Wing, without any meaningful review of the architectural plans or opportunity for public comment--while doing it with private money from oligarchs with clear interests in manipulating public policy for their own ends--does anyone really think that 75 percent of Republicans would call Obama's edict an "appropriate modernization" of the White House?  If you say "yes" you are either a liar or delusional. A more likely result would have been the Republicans in the House and in right wing media spaces accusing Obama of domestic terrorism and immediately opening up an impeachment inquiry. I can hear Sean Hannity: "In taking the wrecking ball to our beloved East Wing, Barack Hussein Obama was able to accomplish the one thing Osama bin Laden could not on September 11: demolishing the People's White House." 

The Washington Post provided a partial list (behind paywall) of the donors to President Trump's ballroom project. What do they oligarchs expect in return? 

I tend to agree with 82-year-old Ron Winter of Appleton, WI who recently wrote this letter to the Appleton Post Crescent: 

My fellow Americans and patriots,

It’s an outrage. At 82, I never thought I’d see the White House damaged without a shot being fired or a bomb dropped. It wasn’t done by the “enemy without” but by the “enemy within.” While presidents have redecorated the White House from time to time, this was a demolition by our own president.

When will the GOP people remind President Trump that the White House isn’t his; it’s “the people’s house” which belongs to “We the people.” Presidents get to live there temporarily for four to eight years.

President Trump’s demolition of the East Wing raises questions. Who gave him permission to do this (even though he himself initially promised the White House wouldn’t be touched)? Did he have the necessary permits? Isn’t damaging government property a crime? It’s doubtful the average citizen would’ve gotten away with this.

Hot Take #3:There Are NO Poor Major League Baseball Teams. After the Los Angeles Dodgers won their second straight World Series crown, we heard some of the predictable grumbling about how "large market" teams like the Dodgers and Yankees have so much of an advantage over "small market" teams like the Brewers and Guardians. I'm always amused by this discussion, because it unwittingly adopts the narrative of greedy owners--who refuse to pursue high priced free agent stars or invest sufficiently in player development while singing the small market blues and hardly providing affordable tickets for families. Meanwhile the average Major League team is worth $2.62 billion, and in the 2024 season team revenues ranged from a low of $296 million (Miami Marlins) to $705 million (New York Yankees). The Milwaukee Brewers, who like many other teams received substantial taxpayer support to build their stadium, are now valued at $1.7 billion and pulled in $337 million in 2024. In 2021, Brewers owner Mark Attanasio had a net worth of $700 million. Today, according to Forbes he is worth $1.9 billion. 

I think Matt Snyder of CBS Sports said it best in 2023: 

"Owners have every right to run their business as they see fit. They are, after all, the owners. I will submit, however, that if there is an owner out there proclaiming that his/her group can't afford to keep up with the salaries if Major League Baseball, there's a very simple answer: Put up the team for sale. Every single team sale in major professional sports results in a veritable killing for the previous owner. Remember the small market that is Kansas City? David Glass bought the team for $96 million in 2000 and sold it for $1 billion in 2019." 

Forbes published the valuation data for each Major League Baseball team. The "poorest" team is still valued at $1.05 billion. 

Hot Take #4: Bill Gates Finally Gets on Trump's Good Side? For me the defining moment of Donald Trump's second inauguration was the outsized presence of oligarchs. All the super rich (and super entitled) tech bros, from Jeff Bezos (worth $239 billion) to Mark Zuckerberg ($211 billion) to Elon Musk (might soon be the world's first trillionaire) looked on lovingly at Trump (except for Zuckerberg, who seemed more concerned with Lauren Sanchez's chest.). Other tech giants taking in the festivities included Google co-founder Sergey Brin ($154 billion), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ($1.1 billion), and Apple CEO Tim Cook ($2.2 billion). This sickening spectacle reminded me of those moments during televised pro football games, when the director all of a sudden orders the cameras to show the reaction of the team owner in the stands. Those camera shots always serve as a not-so-subtle metaphor of who really owns America. 

As I watched the oligarch fiesta, I wondered what Bill Gates ($115 billion) might have been thinking: "Hey, I'm a tech bro! I should be there too! What do I have to do to get on Trump's good side?" Well, he finally figured it out: Tell "Three tough truths about climate" which toned down almost everything he had said about climate change for the last 20 years. Gates released his missive right before the start of the COP30 conference, ensuring that the UN Secretary General's warning that humanity faced "devastating consequences" from lack of sufficient climate action would get lost in the media firestorm over a billionaire's change of heart. 

Climate scientists were not thrilled with Gates' about face, but you know who was? You guessed it: Donald Trump. On Truth Social he wrote: "I (WE) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue." Of course Gates admitted no such thing, but he wrote his piece in such a way so that a bad faith actor could easily portray his "shift" in the worst possible light. 

So congratulations Mr. Gates, you finally got Donald Trump to hate you less. Who knows, maybe if you make a big enough contribution to the Ballroom construction you might get invited to what's left of the White House. 

Somehow Bill Gates calculated that by undermining his own well established views on the climate, he would be taken more seriously by the tech bro oligarch enabler in the White House. Good luck with that. 

Resolution Designating November 4, 2025 as the "National Day of Remembrance for Victoria Leigh Soto"

Not long after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, US Senator Rick Scott of Florida put forth a resolution designating Mr. Kirk's birthday (October 14, 2025) as the "National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk."

As is well known, Charlie Kirk was a staunch defender of gun rights, even going so far as to rationalize the deaths of innocents as a price for protecting the Second Amendment: "It's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights." In a tragic irony, Charlie Kirk was killed while answering a question about gun violence.

While I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on virtually every major issue, I take no joy in his passing. Indeed, the tendency of people across the political spectrum to gloat about the deaths of their real or perceived enemies, or make glib statements about how the deceased "got what they deserved" or "the world is a better place without them," is part of the profound sickness of our time. People so wrapped up in echo chambers and so robbed of their basic human decency that they cannot see how their righteous cruelty feeds into the digital hate culture makes more murders inevitable--including murders of people that they admire and approve of.

If the Republicans want a national day of remembrance for Charlie Kirk, so be it. They have the right to recognize individuals they consider to be heroic.

If I were in the United States Senate, I would move to designate a national day of remembrance for my hero: Victoria Leigh Soto. Ms. Soto was a 27-year-old first grade teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary School who died shielding her students from the bullets of a crazed assassin who never, ever should have had access to guns. As a classroom teacher myself, I wonder every day if I would have the courage, integrity, and unconditional love for my students to do what Ms. Soto did on December 14, 2012.How unfortunate that we live in a society that makes all teachers (along with all mall shoppers, religious ceremony attendees, movie goers, and pretty much everyone who leaves their home for any reason) wonder about this. 

Victoria Leigh Soto received a number of accolades after her death, but a national day of remembrance would perhaps force our society to have meaningful conversations about whether it is in fact "worth it" to have a number of gun deaths each year to protect an interpretation of the Second Amendment that the founders (who lived during a time when single-shot, muzzle-loading muskets and flintlock pistols were the most common types of guns) would have found absurd.   

For information on how to keep the heroic Victoria Soto's memory alive, visit Teamvickisoto.com.    

Victoria Leigh Soto, American Hero, died tragically while shielding her first-grad students from the bullets fired by a disturbed young man who never should have had access to guns in the first place. 

RESOLUTION

Expressing support for the designation of November 4, 2025, as the ‘‘National Day of Remembrance for Victoria Leigh Soto’’.

Whereas Victoria Leigh Soto was a champion of education, personal integrity, and unconditional love;

Whereas Ms. Soto consistently promoted the values of kindness, love of neighbor, the importance of civic engagement, and the defense of innocent children;

Whereas Victoria Leigh Soto was recognized by her first-grade students at Sandy Hook Elementary as a dedicated, creative, and endlessly caring teacher who made learning an adventure;

Whereas Victoria Leigh Soto left a lasting impact on every child who had the privilege of being in her classroom;

Whereas Victoria Leigh Soto had a firm belief in the transformative power of early childhood literacy, and understood that books were tools that unlocked imagination, fostered understanding, and opened doors to new opportunities;

Whereas Victoria Leigh Soto willingly and heroically sacrificed her life in an attempt to shield her precious students from an unimaginable act of violence;

Whereas Ms. Soto’s life’s work has contributed to reminding our society of the folly of placing the love and protection of weapons above the love and protection of children; and

Whereas Ms. Soto’s life work, especially her passion for education and her unconditional love for her students, cost her her life by means of an assassin’s bullet on December 14, 2012: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Senate—

(1) supports the designation of November 4, 2025, as the ‘‘National Day of Remembrance for Victoria Leigh Soto’’;

(2) recognizes Victoria Leigh Soto for her contributions to childhood education and public service; and

(3) encourages educational institutions, civic organizations, and citizens across the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs, activities, prayers, and ceremonies that promote civic engagement and the principles of faith, love, and family that Victoria Leigh Soto championed.

Free Press In Crisis

Note: I had the good fortune of being asked to participate in "A Constitution Challenged," a September 18, 2025 Constitution Day panel at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. My role was to talk about current challenges to the free press. Below is a summary of my remarks. --Tony Palmeri 

In 1787 the Founders gave us a First Amendment that made it against the law for the Congress to abridge the freedom of the press. Yet just a decade later, in 1798, the Congress abridged the freedom of the press. The Sedition Act made it a crime for American citizens to "print, utter, or publish...any false, scandalous, and malicious writing" about the government.

A number of dissenters were prosecuted under the Sedition Act, but it did expire in 1800. Still, for much of American history the press practiced self-censorship. That was because the First Amendment was interpreted as only limiting what the Congress in Washington could do; states and local communities thus felt empowered to abridge the press as much as they wanted. Even after the Supreme Court ruled, in the 1925 Gitlow v. New York decision, that the First Amendment did apply to the states, political leaders' threats of libel and defamation lawsuits continued to muzzle the press significantly. 

That all changed in 1964 with the landmark case of New York Times v.Sullivan. Justice Brennan wrote that "we consider this case against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” Further, "an unconditional right to say what one pleases about public affairs is what I consider to be the minimum guarantee of the First Amendment.” 

NYT v. Sullivan created a high bar for public officials to be able to prevail in defamation lawsuits against the press. The official would have to prove "Actual Malice," meaning that the accused press knew what they published was false, or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. The hard hitting, sometimes blistering journalism and punditry we came to know (and take for granted) from the 1960s until today was only possible because of NYT v. Sullivan. 

Justice William Brennan, widely recognized as one of the great free speech champions of the United States Supreme Court, wrote the majority opinion in NYT v. Sullivan

Today the free press is in crisis. The crisis did not start with the Trump Administration, but President Trump is challenging press freedoms in a way we have not seen in many years. I will briefly cover six areas of crisis: 

1. President Trump’s Defamation Lawsuits
2. Attacks on Press Independence
3. The New Federal Communications Commission
4. Dismantling of Support For National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting
5. Attacks on Public Access to Information
6. Attacks on the Student Press

 Trump Defamation Lawsuits

• In 2023 Trump sued CNN for $475 million, claiming that the network defamed him when they referred to his election results denialism as a “Big Lie” technique. A federal judge threw out the lawsuit.
• In July President Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal, claiming that the paper's story about the birthday card that Trump sent Jeffrey Epstein is false, malicious, defamatory fake news. Lawyers for the WSJ asked a judge to throw out the suit, arguing that "This meritless lawsuit threatens to chill the speech of those who dare to publish content that the President does not like." 
• President Trump filed a $20 Billion lawsuit against Paramount over the manner in which an interview with Kamala Harris was edited by “60 Minutes." Even though there was nothing at all unusual about the way the interview was edited, Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million to settle. Shari Redstone was the Chair of Paramount, and the rumor is she wanted to settle the suit so that the federal government would approve an $8 billion dollar merger between Paramount and Skydance. Paramount also announced that the Late Show With Stephen Colbert would be canceled at the end of this year. In July the Federal Communication Communication Commission approved the merger.
• Trump sued ABC News for defamation over comments made on-air by George Stephanopolous. Instead of saying that Mr. Trump had been found liable for the "sexual abuse and defamation" of E. Jean Carroll, Stephanopolous said Trump had been found liable for rape. ABC agreed to donate $15million for the Trump Library to make the defamation lawsuit go away. 
• Trump sued the Des Moines register for publishing an election poll that predicted Kamala Harris would win Iowa.
• Recently Trump sued the New York Times for $15 billion over their 2024 coverage of the presidential campaign. 

Attacks on Press Independence

• The administration banned the Associated Press from the White House press pool for not using Trump’s "Gulf of America" rebranding of the Gulf of Mexico. A federal judge ordered the White House to restore the newsroom’s access in April on the grounds that the ban violated the First Amendment. However, that decision was temporarily delayed by the D.C. Circuit with an appeal currently pending.
• Coverage of the White House. The White House Correspondents Association for 100 years managed the selection of reporters to cover the White House. In February the WHCA ceded control of that responsibility to the Trump Administration. That's why we are now treated to absurdities like a pro-Trump sycophantic "reporter" asking President Zelensky why he is not wearing a suit: 

The New Federal Communications Commission

• President Trump appointed Brendan Carr, the lead author of a chapter in Project 2025, to lead the Federal Communication Commission.
• Carr has  launched a number of investigations into media sources that president does not like, and Paramount as well as Verizon and T-Mobile ended DEI programs.

 Dismantling of Public Support For National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting

• These attacks include a $1.1 billion cut in public broadcasting funds to NPR and PBS stations in a recission bill. 
• Trump's Executive Order which accused the media outlets of failing to create “fair, accurate, or unbiased” reporting.
• The Corporation For Public Broadcasting will probably close in 2026. Ironically, the populations hit hardest by this loss will be rural areas that voted in huge numbers for Donald Trump. 

Attacks on Public Access to Information:

• More than 8,000 web pages across more than a dozen government agencies have been purged. That makes it impossible for journalists to do their jobs. This is like an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. 
• The purge is being carried out so incompetently that even images of the Enola Gay (World War II B-29 bomber) were censored, apparently because of the word "gay." 

 Attacks on Student Press:

• Rumeysa Ozturk is a Turkish national and graduate student at Tufts University in Massachusetts. After co-authoring this op-ed, she was detained by ICE. The ability to write an opinion piece without fear of arrest is at the core of what the First Amendment is about. 
• Chilling effects: The Heights, which is the Boston College student newspaper, said that international students are too afraid totalk to the paper for fear of having their visas revoked.
• In April, student media groups warned of unprecedented threats to the student press. 

We close with this depressing statement from Reporters Without Borders: "After a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing its first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history, and Donald Trump’s return to the presidency is greatly exacerbating the situation."

Finally, a piece of advice: be careful about celebrating the silencing of the press that you don't like. The next day it will be press that you DO like that will be censored. We must all work in solidarity to ensure freedom of the press remains free of government censorship and other forms of bullying. 

Minnesota Tragedy: NOT The Hate That Hate Produced

We are witnessing a fascinating and predictable transformation in the way the political right wing responds to mass shootings. For decades the strategy has been to deflect from any discussion of the kinds of gun control measures needed to reduce or eliminate such tragedies. Deflection responses have typically been along the lines of: (1) let's offer thoughts and prayers for the victims, (2) the shooter was a mentally ill person that no gun restrictions would have stopped, (3) the only real solution is to have more guns in society so that there is always a "good guy with a gun" around and ready to take out the bad guy. 

Those three "arguments" remain prominent in right wing discourse, but in the last few years we have seen a fourth.  It goes like this: "we are experiencing an epidemic of mass shooters who identify as transgender, and as such have been indoctrinated into a violent cult."  The Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations have tracked how anti-trans rhetoric is used not only to deflect from discussions of gun safety, but also to sell guns. 

Not surprisingly, when the shooter in the most recent and horrific massacre in Minneapolis turned out to identify as trans, the right wing anti-trans hate machine went into overdrive. This is spite of the fact that (1) there is not an "epidemic" of trans violence in America, (2) trans people are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it, and (3) the Minneapolis shooter had apparently been obsessed with school shooters and Nazism since middle school, a much more likely motivation than gender ideology for the killing spree. 

But just as a thought experiment, let's indulge the right wing fantasy in this post. If trans people are truly becoming more violent and vindictive, what would be the cause of that? Whenever I hear the argument that trans people are inherently violent, I am reminded of Mike Wallace's infamous 1959 television special "The Hate That Hate Produced," a five-part documentary that examined the rise and popularity of the "Black Muslims" led by Elijah Muhammad (leader of the Nation of Islam) and his fiery representative Malcolm X. Even though Wallace provided no evidence that Nation of Islam members had ever committed physical violence against Whites, the message of the program to White viewers was clear: Elijah Muhammad and his followers hate you, want to separate from you, and speak in ways that make violence against you inevitable. 

Unlike the Klan, southern politicians, and other assorted racists, Wallace did not frame Black violence (real or imagined) as something inherent to people of African descent. As Wallace put it in a 1998 interview, "If they felt that hatred, it was in reaction to the hatred that they felt had been directed against them, therefore, The Hate That Hate Produced."

So if, as the right wing fantasies insist, there is a cabal of evil trans activists out there fomenting hate and violence against cisgender people, what might produce that hate?  Imagine being a trans person living in the United States this decade. Consider these facts: 

• The Human Rights Campaign has been documenting violence against trans people since 2013; attacks against trans people of color, especially, can truly be called an epidemic. 
• In 2024 the Republican Party spent over $80 million on transphobic political ads. 
• Hundreds of anti-trans bills have been proposed in state legislatures across the country.
• In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court essentially held that the principle that medical treatment is a private matter between the person seeking care, their family, and their doctors applies to everyone except trans youth and their families. 
• Donald Trump has signed a number of executive orders seeking to ban transgender people from public life. 
• In August the US Air Force denied early retirement benefits for transgender members with 15-18 years of service, escalating Trump's attempt to rid the military of any trans presence. 

Anti-trans rhetoric, legislation, and scapegoating has had significant impact on public attitudes. As of February 2025, according to Pew Research, 66% of Americans favor laws and policies that require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth. Similarly, 56% support laws or policies that ban heath care professionals from providing gender transition care to minors. The most frightening finding, however, is the one that some pro-trans people and allies saw as encouraging: "56% of adults express support for policies aimed at protecting trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces."  ONLY 56 percent?(!). Imagine in 1933 a poll of German citizens that found, "56% of adults express support for policies aimed at protecting Jews from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces." 

Given all of the above, we might expect that transgender people would be as violent as cisgender men. But that is not the case. 

Make no mistake: hate and cruelty are prominent in the contemporary United States, fomented and acted on from the highest office in the land to local communities. The Minnesota shooter without question was motivated by hate, but the evidence suggests it was a hate driven by identification with fascists and finding in the experience of prior school shooters a model of how to exact vengeance against "enemies" and get media attention while doing it. That kind of hate is all too common in the United States and is not unique to any one social class. To blame the Minnesota tragedy on something intrinsically evil about trans people, or to blame the overall rise in hate and cruelty on the trans population--a group that faces an existential threat--is the most extreme level gaslighting possible. Or as argued by Abby Vesoulis in Mother Jones Magazine, after noting that 134 of the 141 mass shootings tracked by Mother Jones from 1982-2023 were carried out by men with no known history of identifying as trans or nonbinary, "to blame the unnerving prevalence of mass shootings in America on the existence of trans people here isn’t just a dangerously stigmatizing, politically motivated take. It’s also bad math."

Interviews With Mike McCabe

I recently was fortunate to do two interviews with Wisconsin author and democracy activist Mike McCabe for the Media Rants podcast. Mike was executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign for a number of years. After leaving the organization he wrote a great book: Blue Jeans in High Places--The Coming Makeover of American Politics. He ran a spirited campaign for governor in 2018, earning almost 40,000 votes in the Democratic Party primary. He then wrote another book, Unscrewing America: Hints and Hopes From the Heartland. Mike's most recent book is his first work of fiction: Miracles Along County Q. Mike also maintains a substack called Ebiyan House. 

Part 1 of our conversation is about Miracles Along County Q: 

Part 2 is a discussion of Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers' legacy and Wisconsin politics: 

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