By Chris Satullo
As I do two or three times a year, this week I hosted a story slam – a story-telling festival – in Philadelphia. This one, sponsored by a B-Corp video production company called PWP Video, was titled “The Message.” As is the tradition, I capped the night with a story of my own, one very much of this political moment – harking back to a somewhat similar moment nearly two decades ago. Here’s the story I told:
You’ve heard of the podcast called “Serial,” right? Back in 2014, its first season – about the murder of a high school girl in Baltimore – launched the podcast boom.
Nowadays, we’re flooded with podcasts, from the silly to the weighty to the sublime, so it might have escaped your notice that, a few days ago, “Serial” just wrapped its latest season. This one was about Guantanamo, America’s Cuban detention camp for alleged terrorists, and the whole sordid mess of torture, waterboarding, black sites, and infinite legal delays that went with it.
That got me thinking back to a time when I tried to send folks a message about Guantanamo, only to get a chilling, threatening message in return. Then, finally, to receive a supportive message that I still cherish. Let me take you back to the summer of 2008:
I’m working as a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. For my column on July 1 of that year, I get it into my head to write something challenging about Independence Day. Some fresh distressing news has just come out about the CIA black sites where supposed terrorists had been taken in black hoods to be tortured over and over and over. Disturbing stuff. The nation’s collective response? A shrug.
So I write: This year, cancel the parades. Keep the flags in the hallway closet. Stuff the fireworks back in the box, the hot dogs back in the fridge.
This year, I intone, we don’t deserve to celebrate the shining ideal of human freedom sketched by our Declaration of Independence. Why? We’ve violated the July 4 creed. We apparently don’t really believe that all people are endowed with certain inalienable rights. Inalienable – that means they can’t be taken away, no matter what a person has done or is suspected to have done. Unlike the brave men of 1776 in that hot hall a few blocks from where we gather tonight, we’ve taken the coward’s way. We’ve told our leaders: We’re scared, so do whatever you can dream up, no matter how vile, to keep us safe.
This piece lands on the Metro page of the Inky that Tuesday. That morning, I go about my work routine, then head out to a scheduled lunch outside the building. By the time I get back, 1:30-ish, the red light on my office phone is blinking frantically, telling me it’s full of new messages. My email inbox also has hundreds of new missives, from all over this land of ours.
What’s going on? Well, while I was out, a talk radio host by the name of Rush Limbaugh has done me the dubious honor of reading my piece over the air to his legion of loyal listeners.
For any young’uns out there who might not know, Rush Limbaugh was the first and biggest of the right-wing talk show hosts to become a national force. The big dog of his day. He was Joe Rogen, Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro all rolled into one. His fans were known as Dittoheads, because they did what he told them.
In this case, that was: Call this unpatriotic jerk Satullo and send him a message. Call that rag he works for and demand he be fired.
Which the Dittoheads have been doing this day, by the hundreds, maybe thousands. A key theme of their messages, along with stock profanities and insults, is to tell me that, since I hate America so much, I should go back to where I came from.
They have a vivid and varied imagination as to where that might be. Interestingly, no one calls upon me to return to my actual place of birth…Cleveland, Ohio.
Besides some of the usual suspects – Cuba, Russia, Iran, Iraq – they propose some curious destinations: Japan? Canada? Sweden? Jamaica? And my favorite: Albania.
Whatever. Getting nastygrams is part of the deal for a newspaper columnist. As Tay-Tay advises, shake it off. What’s more, I’m feeling a bit of glee that I may have gotten Rush Limbaugh’s goat.
Still, honestly, there’s some cause for alarm: Those messages to the paper’s owner saying that I should be fired.
You see, the Inky owner never liked me. Before he’d bought the paper a few years before, he’d been a Republican mouthpiece, someone I tangled with often. At this point, he’s already tried to fire me once, though the union foiled him. Boy, I think to myself, hope all those messages to the paper’s main number never reach him.
No such luck.
A couple days later, I awake to a nasty, public message. From him. He’s ordered the paper’s editorial page, my old province, to unleash a cascade of reader letters castigating me. No positive ones, though I know from my friends on that side of the wall there’ve been some. And in the middle of this package, in a big black box, is a letter from the owner himself, disavowing my column – and me.
Now, in the world of newspapers, this just isn’t done – a paper’s publisher tossing one of his own under the bus. Newsroom colleagues are appalled. Wow, they tell me. Rough one. What a bullshit move.
But none of them is exactly racing to the ramparts to defend me publicly. I get it. People have mouths to feed, tuitions to pay. I am not a hill anyone wants to die on.
That night, I go on a talk radio show based in…I think it was Seattle…only to discover that they’ve already had my publisher on their air, skewering me. The host’s questions to me boil down to: “And why shouldn’t you be fired?”
The next day, feeling battered and frazzled, I drive to the Jersey shore to meet up with my family. When I join them on the beach, my daughter says, “Dad, what’s up? You seem down.” My wife jumps in, “Your father’s going through some things. Tell her, Chris.”
I do, upon which my wife and daughter bless me with a message that eases my stress in the moment and still uplifts me to this day.
Rendered in mock Latin, it would be this: Illegitimi non carborundum.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
“Dad,” my daughter tells me, “We believe in you. We love you. We’re proud of how you try to fight the good fight.”
So that, in a winding way, leads to my concluding message to you:
Keep fighting the good fight.
Because these days, the merchants of division and counterfactual bullshit are even more toxic than old Rush used to be.
And the stakes for our democracy, our values, for the rule of law and the idea that some rights are indeed inalienable, not dependent on whether you look like me, sound like me, believe like me or screw like me…well, the current threats to that July 4 creed are far more dire than they were in 2008.
So, all of us, over the next five months, must stick with the good fight.
This means: Do what you can where you can. Do not give into despair or apathy. Do not nestle into cynicism. Do not get distracted. Do not spare your wallet. Do not dodge the uncomfortable conversations. Do not get tired. Do not give up.
Do not give up.
Do not give up.
Yes, yes, it’s true, this country of ours sometimes does very bad things. “Yeah, It’s the worst nation ever.”
Except, of course. for all the others.
Because it’s the only one founded not just on a lust for land or power, but also on a glorious idea, one that, every once in a glorious while, we actually live up to.
An idea it’s now up to us to defend with all our might.
So…Do not give up. Do not get tired.
Don’t give up.
Fight the good fight.
And that, dear Philadelphians, is the message.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia