Chapter Four
I return to the frozen hell of DC the next morning and get back to work. It’s a busy day playing catch-up, because I was on the ground in Florida all weekend.
When I awaken Friday morning, I’m already working on a damned migraine. I’m exhausted from not sleeping well the past several nights, I haven’t taken a day off in literally six weeks, and my body is finallytelling me it’s had enough of my bullshit and is tapping out. I’m forty-two, not twenty-two. I need a break.
Fuck the network, I’m going on-air in glasses today. Fuck those shitty blue contacts they want me to wear.
Fuck my job, fuck my life.
No, I don’t mean those last two, not really. I know how lucky I am. But when I feel this worn out physically, emotionally, and mentally, it means I’mprobably going to spend a good portion of my day puking until I can get rid of the fucking migraine before I go on air.
Calling in sick today isn’t an option, though. I won’t take the coward’s way out.
Today, SCOTUS is hearing oral arguments on yet another damn religious-based challenge toObergefell v. Hodges, the case whose ruling killed gay marriage bans in the United States and finally allowedfor marriage equality. I’d already planned to do a segment on it in the A-block on tonight’s show. Fridays are great, in some ways, because that’s the night I usually have the lowest number of viewers. Whenever I’m going to drop into “lecture mode,” as me and my staff think of it, I do it on a Friday. Usually, everyone’s mostly forgotten about it by Monday, the network tolerates it becauseI have the highest-ranked show on FNB and USNN combined—and frequently higher than Fox’s ratings for that same hour—and it allows me to vent my spleen a little.
With all that in mind, I’ve prepared a monologue for tonight’s show, to read during the cold open. That will then, after the first break, lead in to me interviewing a highly respected constitutional lawyer who will help me illustratehow fucking ridiculously expensive these bullshit religious-based challenges are to taxpayers.
Then it’s not my opinion—it’s hardfacts. I want to make peopleangry. Angry that their money is being wasted like that, angry that a small minority of special interests are holding our courts hostage and delaying real cases from being heard. Angry that the legal system is being weaponized against vulnerableminorities.
Except…
Best-laid plans, and all that bullshit.
Late last night, before I went to bed, disturbing news broke locally that destroyed any chance I might have had for restful sleep.
Two young, gay, black men were attacked outside a DC bar. They’re barely out of college, both of them junior staffers on the Hill. They were attacked by two white guys for not giving up their bar stools,because the fucking white assholes wanted to watch the hockey game.
The white men’s drunken, racist, homophobic rant was videotaped by multiple patrons, and they were thrown out of the bar to rousing applause for the bar owner and bartender who stepped in and told them “their kind” wasn’t allowed in their bar. That they had aNo Nazispolicy.
Unfortunately, the two men waited outside for thetwo black staffers, where they ambushed them.
One of the staffers was treated and released, but the other, Dayonte Ramone, remains in critical condition in ICU with severe head trauma, and it’s not known if he’ll even survive.
I know it’s not a lot, that it won’tsolveanything, but I can’tnotspeak out about this. I have to take a stand. I’ve played it safe for too damned long, and absolutelythe two topics are connected. Our founding fathers wanted religion kept separate from secular laws, and it’s that very religious fervor that frequently fuels these kinds of hate crimes. “Othering” people who aren’t white cishet Christians. Trying to deny equal rights to people just because they’re “different.”
One of the things I always wanted to do by being an on-air journalist was to have thechance to help people. To open minds. Make the world a better place. I have privilege, and I know this. Unfortunately, I spend too much time bowing to the dark money that really funds FNB and not enough time pushing the envelope to speak what’s really on my mind.
Thus before I go on the air tonight, I’ll rewrite what I was going to say. Instead, I will spend my cold open for tonight’s show speakingout aboutallof this, not just the SCOTUS case. I know I can’t go as far as coming out right now, because I’m sure the network will find a way to shit-can me if I do that.
But I need to say something. Anything. If I can reach one person and pry their mind and perspective open even a little bit, it’ll be worth all the angry e-mails and tweets and other bullshit I’ll have to deal with over theweekend.
I’m heartsick about those two staffers, who weren’t harming anyone, who were minding their own business. They only wanted to sit in a bar and have a good time. They were attacked because they were gay black men. They aren’t much older than Christopher and I were when we met. They didnothingwrong. They were living their lives and enjoying a night out.
In the past, I’ve held my tongueunless there was an intersection between politics or lawmaking and current events that precipitated the perfect segue for me to work commentary in without it looking like commentary.
I can’t do that tonight. Not and still look myself in the mirror later.
* * * *
When I make it in to work twenty minutes late because my vision is starting to go blurry in my right eye and I’m not convinced I won’tpuke, I’m immediately summoned up to network VP Charlie Corter’s office.
Fuck.
Charlie Corter and I have a hate/hate relationship. He’s only been at the network for five years, and he’s about fifteen years older than me. He was born rich and never had to work a day in his life. His family can trace their money back to blockade running back in the Civil War, northern sympathizers of the Southwho apparently engaged in fuckery so they didn’t have to release their slaves and could keep running their tobacco farm. Charged them rent or something, threatened to toss them in debtor’s prison if they didn’t work to clear the debt.
Later, they made a new fortune as bootleggers, and other various criminal enterprises.
Charlie’s older brother, Bob, is big in the waste-management sector in theNortheast.
