Dana Loesch Busted (short version)

If you'd like to read the long version, click here.

A few days ago, I criticized Dana Loesch for, among other things, falsely accusing County Counselor Patricia Reddington's office of not reviewing Kenneth Gladney's medical records before filing charges in the case. I had pointed out back in December that this was false as the hospital records had been sent over with the police report. Loesch wrote an angry response claiming that when she said "didn't access medical records," what she really meant was, "didn't access the full medical records." I didn't really buy her response, but that doesn't even matter now. Because it turns out that Loesch made statements that were even more clearly false and revealed the true meaning of her other claims. Loesch on Twitter:

Loesch on her blog:

In fact, the hospital records were precisely what the County Counselor's office did have. Her attempts at hiding behind a claim that "medical records" actually means "full medical records" are now irrelevant.

Dana Loesch used false information to smear County Counselor Patricia Reddington. She owes Reddington an apology and owes all of us a correction.

How Embarrassing! Dana Loesch Didn't Even Know About Additional Medical Records She Used for Self-Righteous Rant

Last week, Dana Loesch attacked a blogger who made an innocent mistake and corrected it. I called Loecsh out, pointing out that if she was going to call herself a "journalist" and attack others, then she needs to correct the multiple falsehoods she has put out. My story was written about in a blog post at Media Matters, and Loesch attacked them in an extremely cowardly way. I detailed multiple false claims of hers and she responded by focusing only on one: the fact that she falsely reported in November that County Counselor Patricia Reddington's office had filed charges against Kenneth Gladney "without looking at his medical records."

Now I pointed out yesterday why Loesch is still wrong, but what's really embarrassing for her is that her defense is completely undermined by the primary blogger she relied on to make her case. According to Loesch, her claim that they filed charges "without looking at the medical records" was true because they didn't see the full medical records. As I pointed out, her previous statements were still false, since they didn't just say that the full medical records hadn't been accessed: they said that the medical records hadn't been accessed. Actually, before I even pointed this out, @theboneblog on Twitter did a nice job of laying it out:




Now it sure looks like Dana Loesch's husband Chris came by the blog to call me an "idiot" and make a metaphysics argument about how Loesch's original statement was actually correct:

Why do I think that that this comment was from Chris Loesch? Because his Twitter avatar, Shock City Music, was making the exact same point about "financial records:"

Whoops! Anyway, though I'm sure the Loeschs would love to turn this into a philosophical debate about how many parts of a ship you need to take away before it's no longer a ship, the clear intent of Dana Loesch's original post was to suggest that the prosecutors hadn't even checked on the extent of Gladney's injuries. But they had checked on his injuries by getting information from St. John's Hospital, so her claim was false.

Even worse for the Loeschs, however, is the fact that Dana did not even know about the additional medical records when she made her claim, and in fact was making it based on a misleading document. Loesch based her defense on the report of blogger Jim Durbin at 24thstate. But Durbin makes it clear that he but not Dana Loesch knew about the additional records. He writes that Loesch's original claim was based entirely on this letter:
Records Letter
Here's the quote from Durbin:

Kenneth Gladney went to the hospital where he was treated and got a signed copy from the hospital stating that no one had accessed the records...That document is presented here, and is the basis of that aspect of Dana's report.

But the problem is that the implication of the statement is inaccurate. Kenneth Gladney went to St. Johns the night of the altercation, and that information was included in the records that were sent. In other words, the phrase following, "To my knowledge" (which was already a hedge phrase) was incorrect. The hospital already had sent over Gladney's information. So Dana Loesch's whole report was based on a document with misleading information, and she used it in a way that was false.

Furthermore, you can see this is the case by observing Jim Durbin's statements. Durbin, if you recall, says that he knew that the information was false but he didn't want to issue a correction because it might help SEIU "concoct a new story." But he makes it very clear on two occasions that Dana Loesch did not know about the additional medical visits when she wrote her original story. Here's Durbin in his blog post:

So we'll call it three and a half correct accusations by Dana, and one that could have been worded better, but couldn't be defended without tipping off SEIU to information that I chose to not reveal. I provided that information to Dana, and so any fault is mine - but a correction could not be provided until now.

And on Loesch's May 17 Radio Show at about the 6:30 Mark of Hour #2:

Jim Durbin: We thought, well surely this must be a mistake and when we looked into it Kenneth actually went to the hospital and said, "has anyone accessed my records?", and they said, "no." And we got a piece of paper, and they signed it, and that was the original source of the report...But there are also other medical records that were out there...that we didn't want to...I personally, it was my fault...and I didn't want to....it was my fault, so if you take flak about them saying that you lied, it's my fault because I didn't want to publish that as we talked about.

In other words, Durbin knew about the other records. Loesch didn't, as is clear from the fact that her original claim was based on the misleading letter.

But if anyone has made it this far and somehow still doesn't believe that Dana Loesch put out false information about the County Counselor's office and owes them an apology and a correction, I now present the smoking guns. Dana Loesch, on November 30, tweeted and wrote a blog post claiming that Reddinton's office did not check the hospital records.


But this, as even Loesch and Durbin have admitted is not true. The hospital records were exactly the records that were requested and received. Game. Set. Match. Dana Loesch, you owe Patricia Reddington an apology and you owe all of us a correction. That is, if you want to call yourself a journalist with a straight face.

Yes, Dana Loesch Still Owes Seven Corrections

Yesterday, I wrote a post titled "Seven Corrections Dana Loesch Needs to Make Before She Can Talk About Journalism (with a straight face)" in response to Loesch's personal attacks against Karoli at the blog Crooks and Liars. Well, Loesch responded in her typical fashion today. Namely, she:

Was too scared to link to the original post.

Attacked Eric Boehlert at Media Matters rather than addressing my claims directly, even though Boehlert's post doesn't even talk about the Gladney case and his tweet linked to my article. Obviously Boehlert is a more high-profile target than I am (witness Breitbart's strange obsession with him), but Loesch should have some decency and actually address the source article rather than trying to promote her career.

She responds to only one out the seven points, and then offers up excuses why she doesn't need to correct her other blatant falsehoods.

She doesn't actually justify her claim even on the one issue she addresses, as will be shown below.

Dana Loesch's response was to focus on this claim from my post:

1. The closest example to the case of Karoli (which the right-wing called a "smear job" even though it was clearly a unintentional mistake) is Loesch's false smears against St. Louis County Counselor Patricia Reddington. Loesch claimed on Breitbart's Big Government site that Reddington filed charges in the Gladney/McCowan dispute without looking at Gladney's medical records (which would indicate serious negligence on Reddington's part). This is false. The records had been included with the police report, as is standard practice. In fact, a fellow Tea Partier visited Reddington's office and got the same account. Yet Dana Loesch has never corrected her story. She owes Patricia Reddington an apology and owes all of us a correction.

Loesch, relying on a post by Jim Durbin at 24thstate, now admits that Reddington did look at the medical records from Gladney's visit to the emergency room. But she claims that Reddington didn't look at additional medical records, which Durbin supports by presenting a letter from St. John's Mercy Medical Center that says, "To my knowledge, St. John's Mercy Medical Center as of November 30, 2009 has not recieved a request for medical records on patient: Gladney, Kenneth...from anyone other than the patient himself" [emphasis mine]. It's worth noting right off the bat that "To my knowledge" is a hedge phrase that leaves open the possibility that the records had been requested. In other words, all the letter says is that the person didn't know of anyone else requesting the records. But even if we accept that additional medical records had not been requested on November 30, would that make Loesch's claim true?

No, because Loesch said the following:

County Prosecutors Downgrade Charges without Checking Medical Record in Gladney Case

and

It has been discovered that no one from Patricia Redington’s office ever accessed Gladney’s medical records for use in determining the charges filed in the case.

Loesch claimed that Reddington's office never looked at the medical records. But Reddington did look at medical records. A little Logic 101 for the tea partiers: if the statement "Patricia Reddington looked at the medical records." is true, then the statement, "Patricia Reddington did not look at the medical records" has to be false. Pretty simple. Therefore, Loesch's claim was false, and she still needs to correct her story if she seriously considers herself a journalist.

Now, if Loesch had said Reddington didn't check the full records, then what she said might be true. Unfortunately for her, that's not what she said. But this is Dana Loesch we're talking about, so naturally she tries in her current post to present it as if she said that. Check out the amazingly cynical slight of hand in this screenshot of her post:


Loesch starts by saying, "I wrote this in December of last year" then quotes herself. She then writes, "Continuing:" and quotes herself again. But then she writes, "Again:" followed by this quote:

Thus prior to the charges being brought, Redington’s office couldn’t check the full medical records. They didn’t know of the existence of the full medical record.

This makes it seems as if the quote about the "full medical records" came from Loesch. But it didn't. In fact, that quote was from Jim Durbin's blog, despite Loesch's misleading presentation of the matter. To make it even more misleading, after presenting Durbin's quote, Loesch then starts the next paragraph with:

From 24thState, who also has signed documentation from the hospital:

Her series of | I wrote this in December of last year...| Continuing,...| Again... | and then | From 24thState... | implies that only the material after the last phrase was from 24thstate, but not the material before, reinforcing the false impression that Loesch herself referred to the "full medical records" in her previous writing. But she never did. Epic. Friggin. Fail.

Also damning to Loesch's ridiculous arguments is the fact that Durbin himself admits there should have been a correction! From Durbin's post:

The existence of a second pair of medical records, as well as additional testimony from eyewitnesses on their dealings with Pat Redington's office was the reason I decided not to publish a correction about the emergency room records being in the reviewing prosecutor's hands.

And later:

So we'll call it three and a half correct accusations by Dana, and one that could have been worded better, but couldn't be defended without tipping off SEIU to information that I chose to not reveal. I provided that information to Dana, and so any fault is mine - but a correction could not be provided until now.

Earlier in his post, he provides a fuller explanation for withholding the info:

And it's also fair to say that I haven't published everything, precisely because SEIU's blatant lies about that night have led them to twist information, selectively present recorded video, and twist the testimony of eyewitnesses into some fictional account of Elston McCowan being the victim, with Perry Molens being an innocent bystander...What I knew is that publishing the information I had would make it easy for SEIU to concoct yet another version of the beating of Kenneth Gladney.

In other words, Jim Durbin is admitting that he knew that the information that he and Dana Loesch had put out in November was false yet he withheld information for 5 months because he was worried that it would help SEIU "concoct" another story. And this is what Dana Loesch is trying to spin as victory over Media Matters. Uh... wow.

So anyway, yes, Dana Loesch still owes us all at least seven corrections before she can talk about journalism with a straight face. It's probably much more than that, but nobody has time to fact check all the falsehoods she puts out.

St. Louis Activist Events for May 17-23

This week's events:

All weeks long, check out the amazing schedule for Harvey Milk Week! Join the facebook event here.

Monday, May 17, the very cool film "Beyond the Motor City" will be screened at the Tivoli at 7 PM. The director Aaron Woolf will be there, and Congressman Carnahan will be joining Woolf and Tom Shrout of Citizens for Better Transit for a panel discussion afterwards. Also, Woolf and Shrout will be leading a discussion at Pi Pizza before the event at 5 PM.

Also Monday, as part of Harvey Milk Week, there will be a St. Louis Queer History Presentation at the Wine Press (4436 Olive St.) from 7 to 9 PM.

Also Monday, there will be a discussion of Understanding Health Care Reform and the 2010 Midterm Elections at the Hill House (514 Gray Ave. in Webster Groves) from 7 to 9 PM.

Tuesday, May 18, there will be a Building Inclusive Communities Workshop at the Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club (2901 N. Grand) from 9 AM to 5 PM.

Also Tuesday, as part of Harvey Milk Week, local LGBT leaders will be talking about St. Louis during the Harvey Milk era at Rustin's Place (625 N. Euclid) at 7 PM.

Wednesday, May 19, Urban Eats Cafe (3301 Meramec) will be hosting a KivaWalk Awareness Event, raising money for microfinancing around the globe, from 5 to 8 PM.

Also Wednesday, is the 5th Anniversary of Green Drinks, a social gathering for environmentally minded folks from the St. Louis region. The party will be at The Green Center (8025 Blackberry) from 6:30 to 9:30 PM.

Also Wednesday, author Jean Kwok discusses her book Girl in Translation at Left Bank Books (399 N. Euclid) at 7 PM.

Thursday, May 20, this month's YWCA "so reel" Racial Justice lecture will focus on the Interment of Japanese Americans in WW II from 5:30 to 7 PM at the YWCA Phyllis Wheatley Heritage Center (2711 Locust).

Also Thursday, Safe Connections will hold Breaking the Cycle of Domestic Violence Through the Arts at 6 PM at the 560 Music Center (560 Trinity in U-City).

Also Thursday, as part of Harvey Milk Week, TransHaven Missouri and PROMO will be hosting a LGBT Town Hall about Gender Identity/Expression at the Central Reform Congregation (5020 Waterman Blvd) from 7 to 9 PM.

Also Thursday, there will be a discussion of Understanding Health Care Reform and helping the 2010 candidates from 7 to 9 PM at St. Phillips United Church of Christ (10708 Lavinia Dr.).

Also Thursday, this month's Drinking Liberally for St. Louis City will be at Premium Lounge (4199 Manchester) from 7 to 10 PM.

Friday, May 21, Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu will be giving the Commencement Address at Washington University at 8:30 AM. You can watch the live streaming video on the internet.

Also Friday, as part of Harvey Milk Week, there will be a Benefit for Growing American Youth with Acid Betty and Epiphany Get Paid from NYC along with several local performers at the Complex Nightclub (3515 Chouteau) from 10 PM to 3 AM.

Saturday, May 22, as the apex of Harvey Milk Week, there will be a March and Rally in honor of Harvey Milk starting at 9 AM at the Novak's Bar and Grill (4121 Manchester) and going to City Hall for an 11:30 rally. Alderman Shane Cohn and many others will be speaking at the rally.

Also Saturday, there will be a non-corporate craft fair at Gallery 101 (101 East Main, Colinsville, IL) from 9 AM to 3 PM.

Also Saturday, there will be an Organizing for America Meeting about health care and the 2010 elections at the Barr Branch Library (1701 Jefferson) from 10 AM to 11 AM.

Also Saturday, NARAL will be holding a Clinic Escort Training at 1210 S. Vandeventer from 2 to 4 PM.

Also Saturday, as part of Harvey Milk Week, there will be a screening of the documentary The Times of Harvey Milk at The Complex, 3511 Chouteau, at 7 PM.

Also Saturday, there will be a Anti-Wrecking Ball Hootenany by the Friends of the San Luis at the Historic Stahl Stables (2412 Menard) from 8 PM to 1 AM.

Sunday, May 23, as part of Harvey Milk Week, Growing American Youth will be holding a Benefit Brunch at Mokabe's (Grand and Arsenal) from 9 AM to 1 PM, with a discussion around the theme, "Am I the Next Harvey Milk?"

Also Sunday, Barbara Fraser is holding a Office Grand Opening at 8420 Delmar as part of her bid for the MO Senate from 10:30 AM to 12:30 PM.

Also Sunday, Interfaith Legal Services for Immigrants is holding an International Buffet from 3:30 to 5:30 PM at Nerinx High School (590 E. Lockwood in Webster Groves).

Also Sunday, the Missouri Coalition for the Environment is holding their Annual Meeting as well as a Jeopardy competition from 4:30 to 6:30 at the Highlands Golf and Tennis Center in Forest Park (5163 Clayton).

Also Sunday, as part of Harvey Milk Week, there will be a St. Louis Queer History Tour from 4 to 6 PM starting in the CWE.

Also Sunday, and every Sunday, there will be a vigil for peace at the corner of Grand and Lindell at 7 PM.

Also Sunday, Pride St. Louis is having a Broadway Bash in Colinsville at 10:30 PM.

76 Corrections Dana Loesch Needs to Make Before She Can Talk About Journalism (with a straight face)-Updated

Dana Loesch spent a good portion of the last few days viscously attacking the blogger Karoli at Crooks and Liars after Karoli made an error and had to correct her story. Karoli had written that a person, Scott Baker, who paid for a billboard that said, "I need a freakin job. Period." also worked for Breitbart TV. It turned out that they were different Scott Bakers, and when Karoli learned this she updated her post and issued apologies to all of the people involved.

Loesch smelled blood and went after Karoli, tweeting the following:

Seriously? Crooks and Liars really ran whole hog with the WRONG IDENTITY in their @andrewbreitbart hitjob? They finally became their title.

And:

@eddiebear generally not sucking out loud at the written word and rational thought isn't their strong suit, either

And

It's not "owning up" to a half-cocked smear on a person when other people catch you. No courage no balls. Embarrassing for @karoli .

And

Is that the same blue-eyed genius who claimed to know me and call me a racist when no one knows who the hell she is? (Rhetorical.)

Loesch's husband Chris Loesch also joined in on the attacks but, as is his calling card, quickly ran away once I challanged him to back up his claims.

Aside from the general nastiness of the Loeschs blabbering, I want to draw particular attention to what Dana Loesch said in her blog post on the subject. She wrote about Karoli:

Fantastic journalism!

Loesch of course fancies herself to be a journalist and a media critic. She is a frequent contributer to Big Journalism, and was on a panel about the media at the Shoe Me Institute's Blogger Conference.

But in order to be a real "journalist," you have to have at least some commitment to the truth, and Loesch's recent career has demonstrated anything but that. I don't have time to pay attention to even half of the information Loesch puts out, but I've documented numerous blatant falsehoods from her, which she never corrects. In fact, I'd like to offer a challenge. In order for Dana Loesch to continue to call herself a "journalist," I'm presenting sevensix false claims she's made that she needs to correct (or explain how they're not false). Considering how viciously she attacked Karoli, who actually corrected her story once she saw her mistake, Loesch at least owes the world this much. So, I now present, the 76 corrections Dana Loesch needs to make before she can talk about journalism with a straight face:

1. The closest example to the case of Karoli (which the right-wing called a "smear job" even though it was clearly a unintentional mistake) is Loesch's false smears against St. Louis County Counselor Patricia Reddington. Loesch claimed on Breitbart's Big Government site that Reddington filed charges in the Gladney/McCowan dispute without looking at Gladney's medical records (which would indicate serious negligence on Reddington's part). This is false. The records had been included with the police report, as is standard practice. In fact, a fellow Tea Partier visited Reddington's office and got the same account. Yet Dana Loesch has never corrected her story. She owes Patricia Reddington an apology and owes all of us a correction. Update: Worth noting that Loesch tried and failed to defend herself against this claim.

Loesch also claimed on Big Government that the government run website Serve.gov was, "Filtering Activists to ACORN." and that they were, "using federal funding to advertise for volunteer opportunities to promote the President’s health care legislation." However, rather than "filtering" people to a partisan agenda, the site was simply set up so that anyone could enter any events they wanted. Thus, there were anti-ACORN events and pro-tea party events listed on the site. If Dana Loesch or Big Government cared at all about the truth, they would correct this story.

Then there was the time she wrote a blog post claiming that union "thugs" had started violence against patriotic tea partiers at the weekly K & N rallies. However, it actually turned out that the "patriot" tea partier grabbed a woman by the throat and threw her to the ground, and the tea partier was booked for assault. Loesch's response? She simply deleted her previous blog post without any comment or explanation, sending out misinformation and then striking it all from the record once it no longer matched her narrative. Loesch owes us a public correction of her post and an apology to the woman she called a "thug."

Loesch also posted a video that she claimed proved that a Health Care For America Now rally was "astroturf," saying, "This is the protest about which I wrote earlier," and linking to a post about HCAN. But, the video she posted was actually from a Organizing for America rally three weeks earlier, and not the HCAN rally, which explains why there were a lot of Obama signs there. Even Fox News apologizes when they use video from the wrong rally. Dana Loesch owes us a correction and an apology.

Loesch recently repeated Jim Gateway Pundit Hoft's false claim that two people were attacked in New Orleans for "wearing Palin buttons." That turned out to be false. If she considers herself a journalist, she should correct her story.

Recently, Dana Loesch embarrassed St. Louis with her appearance on Bill O'Reiley, making BillO look like Socrates. When O'Reilly pushed back against Loesch's claims that Congressman Cleaver was lying , Loesch responded by saying, "I'm not saying that he's lying, I'm saying there's no proof that supports what he said." But in fact, this was completley untrue, given that she had said on Twitter the exact opposite: "Also waiting for a statement of apology from those who boldfaced lied about tp slurs when ALL video & eyewitness accts. proved it false." She should issue a correction and an apology to Congressman Cleaver for lying about lying.

Finally, and most recently, Loesch claimed that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has, "never argued a case before the Supreme Court." But this is completely false. In fact, Kagan has argued six cases in front of the Supreme Court. Dana Loesch needs to correct her piece and owes an apology to Kagan.Update: Upon a second reading, it turns out that Loesch's claim seems to be technically true, despite being clearly misleading (after all, Kagan has argued in front of the Supreme Court, she just hadn't done so before her time as Solicitor General. In other words, the comparison to Myers who never argued a case in front of the Supreme Court makes no sense.)

So there you have it. Karoli made a mistake and issued a correction as is the practice of journalists. Loesch, on the other hand, has made numerous false claims and never bothers to correct herself, as is the practice of something other than journalists.

But Dana Loesch calls herself a journalist. If she is serious about this claim, let's see her prove it.

Tea Party Leader Pretends Prop A Didn't Happen

St. Louis Tea Party leader Bill Hennessy had an strange post yesterday. He referred to McGraw Millhaven of KTRS criticizing the Tea Party for not actively opposing the MO legislature bill that would require insurance companies to cover children with Autism (though Hennessy said he is against the bill) . He then said other people had criticized the local tea party for not working more on the Missouri Healthcare "Free Choice" Act.

What was really interesting about all of this is that Hennessy's response to the criticisms was to say:

In spite of our work on state and local projects, the Tea Party movement didn’t come about to address Autism or state referenda. The Tea Party was born, according to my records and memory, to change the federal government, first by resistance, then by changing Congress.

He also quotes himself in a different article saying:

While many local tea party organizations involve themselves in local or state issues and races, the movement’s primary interest lies in Washington.

Hmmm, really? So the St. Louis Tea Party is and has been from the start focused only on federal elections? That's funny, because I seem to recall a small group of the tea party leadership (Hennessy, Loesch, John and Gina Loudon, and John Burns) getting together in Nashville and decided to push the local membership, largely against their wishes, to lead the opposition to the Proposition A sales tax increase for Metro. They were quite proud of their involvement and were claiming that they would win even on the day before the election (they lost 63%-37%). In fact, check out this quote from John Burns, who Bill Hennessy hailed as a "star" for his role in the tea party's anti-transit effort:

"What happens on the local level is often a microcosm of what is happening nationally,'' Burns said. "The Tea Party will be meaningless unless they get involved on a local level."

Sure seems to me like this is the exact opposite of only being focused on federal elections. The tea party has an extremely selective memory. But I suppose if I led a campaign where I could only get 37% of St. Louis County voters to vote against a new tax, I'd probably try to block it out of my memory as well.

Statement on the SLU Commencement Speaker

Sent to me by Thomas Bloom:

Commencement speakers should offer a voice of wisdom and hope for graduates. They should offer insight into the world that graduates are stepping into, and inspiration for graduates to change it. They deliver the parting words of the University, reminding students of the power their education carries. For these reasons, the announcement of commencement speakers comes with great anticipation.

Saint Louis University announced on Friday, May 7th that the commencement speaker for the class of 2010 would be Archbishop Pietro Sambi.

This announcement was met with widespread disappointment. For LGBT seniors at SLU, the selection of Sambi is a slap in the face. Sambi was instrumental in the efforts to shut down an LGBT pride festival in Jerusalem in 2005. He referred to the festival as an “offence” and a “provocation.” The Church’s stance on same-sex marriage and sex are well known, and a condemnation of either of these things by Sambi would be unfortunate but expected. However, the Church has something different to say about the human dignity of LGBT people, the focus of the 2005 pride festival:

"Respect for the God-given dignity of all persons means the recognition of human rights and responsibilities. The teachings of the Church make it clear that the fundamental human rights of homosexual persons must be defended and that all of us must strive to eliminate any forms of injustice, oppression, or violence against them (cf. The Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons, 1986, no. 10). It is not sufficient only to avoid unjust discrimination. Homosexual persons "must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2358)." http://www.usccb.org/laity/always.shtml

Pietro Sambi showed no respect, compassion, or sensitivity in his opposition to the pride festival. Instead, he joined a coalition of religious clerics and released statements that can only be described as homophobic.

More recently, Pietro Sambi was alleged to have made a number of offensive remarks towards a victim of sex abuse in the Church. If true, these remarks are shocking and demonstrate a complete lack of compassion and human decency.

Since forming the Facebook group SLU Students United Against 2010 Commencement Speaker Pietro Sambi, I have seen a number of reactions. Some people feel that Sambi has not done anything wrong. Others feel like protests should be directed towards the Church rather than a commencement speaker. The most common and troubling reaction I have heard, however, is from people who are worried that protests will “ruin” their graduation. They don’t want their commencent disrupted. This troubles me because for my friends, graduation is already ruined. Instead of having a speaker who celebrates their identity and their dignity, they have a speaker who calls them offensive and tries to hide them in the closet. That makes me sick and I won’t stand for it.