Rehabilitating the reputation of a bigoted creep
Rehabilitating the reputation of a bigoted creep
Why run a puff piece about a toxic far-right demagogue that provides no context and presents her as an “inspirational” figure trying to help out her community?
Before we get into the main topic for today, I wanted to mention this story from Friday about Enrique Delgado-Garcia, the Massachusetts State Police trainee who died after he was injured during what the department said was a training exercise.
A week after the death of a state police recruit injured while training at the academy, the ACLU of Massachusetts is calling for a federal investigation.
Enrique Delgado-Garcia, 25, was badly injured last Thursday at the Massachusetts State Police Academy in New Braintree. He died the following day at a hospital.
…
"Enrique Delgado-Garcia died last Friday [September 13]," said Jessie Rossman, legal director for the ACLU of Massachusetts. "His family, his friends and the public deserve independent, thorough and timely investigation, and yet, seven days later, no state-led law enforcement actor has stepped up to say that they can lead an independent investigation."
The ACLU is absolutely correct. The feds are the ones who should be investigating this case.
The Attorney General’s Office and district attorneys’ offices are too entangled with the State Police. These offices work closely with the State Police on a daily basis — too closely to be trusted here.
In recent years, the US Department of Justice has shown itself willing to go after corruption in the State Police, including prosecuting troopers overtime fraud and bribery and prosecuting the former head of the troopers’ union for corruption. It also inserted itself into the case of Karen Read, the woman accused of killing her Boston cop boyfriend, and provided her defense with exculpatory evidence that local law enforcement tried to conceal.
The feds have prosecuted Boston police officers for overtime fraud, conducted an extensive investigation of the Springfield Police Department that led to it entering into a consent decree, and are in the middle of a similar investigation of the Worcester Police Department.
I’m no simp for the feds, but a federal investigation is our best chance of getting answers about Delgado-Garcia’s death.
From the “Are You Fucking Kidding Me?” Department
I’m admittedly a little late here, but on Thursday I noticed that back in June, MassLive ran a piece naming Rayla Campbell as someone “readers have identified as inspirational.” The piece goes on to say Campbell was one of several Black leaders MassLive was “recogniz[ing] for their accomplishments, leadership and commitment to inspire change.”
Interestingly, the piece makes no mention of Campbell’s grotesque, bigoted comments about trans and nonbinary people or her inflammatory lies about public school teachers and librarians.
Instead, the MassLive piece quotes Campbell as saying she grew up with a “strong sense of truth and common sense.”
I’m familiar with Campbell because I covered her when she was the Republican candidate for Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth in 2022. As I reported at the time, here’s what Campbell said when she accepted the party’s nomination:
You can’t just sit and go, “Oh, that’s terrible. Maybe somebody else will take care of it. Oh, that’s not so nice.” Well, I don’t think it’s nice when they’re telling your five-year-old that he can go and suck another five-year-old’s dick. Do you? This is what they’re doing. … And I’m going to give it to you like it is, because that’s what’s happening in your schools.
Yes, she really claimed that teachers are instructing young children to perform oral sex on each other. You can listen to those comments here.
These comments weren’t isolated. She made similar remarks on her radio show:
“They’re completely destroying their innocence. As I’ve said it before, they’re raping your child from the brain,” she said on her June 2 show. “They want them to go out and masturbate and play with other kids in sexual ways. … We’re talking about telling 10- and 12-year-olds and younger that they should try anal sex using a dental dam.”
She wants to see sex-ed teachers locked up: “This is criminal behavior and anybody teaching and OKing this type of curriculum to be in schools with underage children should be in jail.”
Campbell also made vile, disparaging comments about trans and nonbinary people:
On her May 12 show, Campbell falsely blamed discussions of gender identity in public schools for adolescent suicides. As the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline notes, supportive families and schools reduce depression and suicide by LGBTQ people.
“I’m gonna call them freaks, because that’s exactly what they are,” Campbell said. “I mean, they look like weirdos. They have black eyes. They’re sitting there with, like, multicolored hair, telling your kid that the doctor made a mistake and they don’t know what gender they are. … [If] you’re teaching this type of [thing in public schools]—that right there is child abuse. It’s grooming. It’s sex trafficking.”
On her June 2 show, the candidate spoke about “preschool teachers that are nonbinary, whatever they want to call themselves,” again referring to them as “freaks” and “weirdos.”
“[If] you tell kids, little three- and four-year-olds about your sexual life, [there’s] something wrong with you. You should not be anywhere near kids,” she said.
Campbell obsessively spoke about Gender Queer, an award-winning comic book memoir by a nonbinary artist. She falsely claimed that librarians were putting it in the children’s sections of local libraries to groom children. She repeatedly called the book “child porn,” which eventually led to a police officer speaking with her after she showed off some of the illustrations at a rally. The officer determined that the book was not, in fact, “child porn” — which was good news for her since she was carrying it around.
Campbell also took out a TV ad accusing libraries of making “child pornography” available to children. It was so outrageous that the station that ran the ad took the highly unusual step of including a disclaimer saying it was legally obligated to run political ads and did not endorse Campbell’s message.
Campbell also showed up at a family-friendly Pride Month event at a library and disrupted an event for children until the police were called and asked her to leave.
None of this is mentioned in the MassLive profile.
Instead, Campbell is described as someone who “has worked to be a conservative African American voice in politics, advocating for policies that align with principles of freedom, individual responsibility and limited government.”
I have to ask: Why? Why run a puff piece about a toxic far-right demagogue that provides no context and presents her as an “inspirational” figure trying to help out her community? Why present this absolute loser as someone for people to look up to?
It’s shameful for MassLive to try to rehabilitate the reputation of a bigoted creep. Did they even do any research before publishing this piece? It’s irresponsible and pathetic.
What else is there to say?
Yuck!
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Finally, here are a couple other recent news stories worth your time.
First, this story from Boston 25’s Ted Daniel about the Sandra Birchmore case:
An audio recording obtained by 25 Investigates reveals what former Abington Police Chief David Del Papa knew about one of his officers, months before that officer’s name was leaked in an explosive report about the manipulation and sexual grooming of Sandra Birchmore by members of Stoughton Police.
And WHDH has this update about the case of Fred Weichel:
The Town of Braintree reached a $14.9 million settlement with Frederick Weichel, who was wrongfully imprisoned for 36 years.
Weichel was convicted of murder in 1980, after the death of Robert LaMonica, and he spent decades behind bars.
New evidence, however, was uncovered in 2010, leading to Weichel being released from prison and exonerated in 2017.
That’s all for now.