It was just a subplot of a subplot in the big plot of our presidential election campaign.
But it almost had a life-altering effect on a local TV personality.
On the evening of Thursday, June 2, news junkies like me were catching wind of outrageous behavior by anti-Donald Trump protesters in San Jose, Calif. Some protesters attacked Trump supporters, punching or kicking them. And one Trump-supporting woman was egged by protesters in an incident captured by cameras.
On Twitter, NBC News correspondent Jacob Rascon posted a picture of the woman with egg in her hair and wrote, “Woman who supports Trump surrounded by protesters, who taunt her, then throw eggs and bottles at her.”
Lots of people responded to the tweet, most of them angry at the protesters. But a few hours later, at 12:58 a.m., KVOA sports anchor Paul Cicala responded, “Hey Brother.. you aren’t reporting that she was taunting protesters moments before -ointing (here he apparently meant “pointing”) to her Trump shirt etc Please be fair.”
Eighteen minutes later, Cicala responded to a Twitter critic by explaining himself this way: “not OK my friend those protesters are definitely wrong. But, she has to be careful egging them on or she sets herself up for that.”
The tweets were pretty tame by social-media standards. But Cicala did seem to blame the victim, this Trump-supporting woman, for being hit with eggs and a sign. Especially in the context of more serious violence against Trump supporters at the same rally, it didn’t look good. Soon, online critics were comparing his tweet to a justification of rape.
By morning, the usual had happened in these internet outrages: Cicala was being attacked on social media, family members’ pictures were being posted, death threats were coming in, KVOA was being bombarded with calls. The station took a few hours then came up with a response: It posted a statement apologizing for the tweets, and Cicala gave one himself on air later.
I thought Cicala’s tweeted arguments were wrong — no matter how you slice it, it was the protesters’ responsibility that they threw eggs at the Trump supporter. However, I defended Cicala online because his error was relatively modest and I know overreaction is the norm in these cases. As I documented in a column last year about former Tucsonan Adam Smith, people get fired and have their personal lives ruined over these stupid online incidents.
Cicala, whom I know a bit personally, has been a good person locally, donating a lot of time to charities and schools, and doing side projects like work on the film “49 Angels,” which opened here last week. In fact, it was opening night in Tucson for that film, about the daycare fire in Hermosillo that killed 49 children, when Cicala made his misguided tweets. It bothers me when people try to get a person fired for a single social-media misstep without knowing anything about their greater body of work.
Cicala was out of town on a pre-planned vacation this week, I’m told, and declined to speak with me. Station leaders didn’t answer my questions either. But I’m encouraged that Cicala still has a job here — firing him would have been wildly disproportional to the offense, especially considering Cicala’s other contributions.
Then there was this: The woman who was egged, Rachel Casey, acknowledged on “Inside Edition” this week that she flipped off one protester and went out into the crowd to confront other demonstrators. That, of course, was Cicala’s point in the first place: that there was a greater context to the attack that should be reported, though it came out sounding like a defense of the egging.
“They started it with me. I stood up for myself like any other American would,” she said.
Confronting the protesters was her right, of course. She shouldn’t have been egged for it. But neither should Cicala be crucified for pointing out there was a broader context to that specific attack.
McSally questions FBI flights
On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Martha McSally responded to my column in Sunday’s paper about FBI flights over the Tucson area, by writing a letter to the bureau’s director, James Comey. In the letter, she acknowledged the importance of counterterrorism and other security efforts but said: “Carrying out this mission must not come at the expense of Americans’ privacy rights.”
“The reported frequency and nature of the recent flights around Tucson raise significant concerns about the preservation of my constituents’ Fourth Amendment rights.”
McSally goes on, in the letter, to request an explanation of the flights, in as classified a setting as needed. Let’s hope she gets that briefing soon and reports back to the district.
Grijalva sticks with Sanders
U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva was an early endorser of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ bid to be president, and this week he showed he’s still feeling the Bern. In an op-ed for USA Today, Grijalva addressed those who are asking Sanders to drop out for the sake of Democratic Party unity.
“Unity doesn’t mean Sanders closes up shop tomorrow and takes back everything he said,” Grijalva wrote. “It means including people who have responded to Sanders’ call for a new way of doing things.”
I’m sure Hillary Clinton’s supporters will be thrilled to hear that.
More JP candidates
Last week I wrote about the unusually competitive races for Justice of the Peace. You can’t quite appreciate how competitive they are until you fail to mention one of the candidates’ names.
In JP District 4, I quoted two of the Democratic candidates for the office, Priscilla Frisby and Jim Driscoll, but failed to reach or mention the other one, former state senator Charlene Pesquiera. She has a business negotiating and managing contracts, called the National Institute of Contract Management.
Due to space constraints, I didn’t name any candidates for JP in District 2. They are Patrick Moran, Alfonso Ramirez and Erica Cornejo, all Democrats. In fact, only one of the five races this year will have a general election, and that one will be in district 9, where Green Party candidate Nancy A. Knox-Bierman takes on incumbent Democrat Maria Felix.
