NYT highlights Homewood coach with heart for football and philanthropy
A Homewood Middle School football coach and teacher recently found himself in the national spotlight as his efforts to make an impact on local youth were highlighted by the New York Times (NYT). Steve Sills, “an evangelist for the gospel of encouragement, which he’s been preaching for 13 years at this economically and demographically diverse middle school in suburban Birmingham,” works hard to teach the middle school students he works with the importance of giving it your all. “Don’t matter if you are big or small, if you are fast or slow. If you give us the very best of you, together we can do great things,” Sills told the Homewood Patriots football team during a recent Monday night game according to the NYT. Sills, who envisioned a career in football after receiving a scholarship to play at Tennessee Tech and later played in the indoor Arena Football League, didn’t follow his expected life path. Instead he found himself teaching and coaching at Homewood Middle School. There, he teaches his students career and character where he endeavors to pass along his “look good, feel good, do good” mantra. But Sills takes his work beyond the classroom. Nine years ago, the educator founded the Homewood Trendsetters, a school club that according to the NYT, “combines sharp dressing with dozens of service projects, like feeding the homeless at local shelters or cheering on special needs students at athletic events. It now numbers more than 300, including more than 100 girls, and has logged thousands of volunteer hours and raised tens of thousands of dollars for the community.” When they NYT asked him to reduce his teaching philosophy to its core, he paraphrased the poet Maya Angelou: “These kids will forget what I said and did, but I hope they never forget how I made them feel.”
On NYT op-ed: A White House “resistance” shouldn’t be all that surprising
The story of the day is about the anonymously posted opinion column by the New York Times (NYT) written by a “senior staffer within the Trump White House.” It seems the world is going mad about the whole thing. I’m going to narrow my thoughts on this whole ordeal to four points (in no particular order): 1. If you did not realize there are good, disciplined staffers working in the Trump White House, curbing his less than professional and diplomatic faults and weaknesses, then you haven’t been paying attention. The author called it a resistance and everyone is freaking out about that but what is wrong with resisting the impulses of a man who has almost no impulse control? The chaos around Trump comes from him bringing in people with no loyalty or experience like Omarosa Manigault-Newman or the insanity that was Anthony Scaramucci. Should we fear or condemn those who would want to protect the president from his own bad decisions? Chaos comes from the problems they have finding and retaining experienced professionals and so misfits run the halls and talk out of turn to reporters and friends and anyone who will listen to their tales of misadventures in a White House that is constantly turned on its ear. The steadiness of the ship comes from good-hearted, principled people likes Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders or those who have served our nation and consider their role to serve the office of the president more so than the man like General John Kelly. It comes from the professionals whose names you never hear because they have their nose to the grindstone working. It comes from those spread out not just throughout the White House but the entire administration. Of course, there are factions within the White House there aways has been but in this administration there is no doubt that it’s worse than ever. There’s no doubt that it’s encouraged from Trump himself and his style of management (or mismanagement at time). There’s the do nothings vs. the do gooders. The loyal to Trump vs those loyal to the nation vs. those seeing their own 15-minutes of fame and/or access to power and later money. Of the first two groups there may be some cross-over but I suspect there’s not many who don’t tolerate Trump to get the job done or who don’t like the man but dislike the way he communicates or “rules.” 2. The anonymous source is likely to be outed, and there’s very little chance that they stay anonymous for even the next week. They knew that going into this. This has already turned into an all-out witch hunt in which everybody wants to know who is responsible to penning this op-ed. From reporters to those within the White House who agree or even disagree with the sentiments, to opponents on the Hill — it’s only a matter of time before people know who this is. Secrets do not keep well in DC. Secrets do not keep well within Trump Administration. Thus it would be premature to speculate as to this person’s motives and agenda until we know what their role inside the White House is. This is a chance the author took and they had to know what they were doing and what the costs would be when they were found out. 3. The President has called writing this op-ed “treasonous.” The First Lady just put out a response saying and I’m paraphrasing here, if you’re not here to do right by the administration, you need to leave. I wouldn’t agree that it was treasonous to the nation to write the op-ed but I agree that it was unprofessional and disloyal. Politics is a world in which loyalty and honoring the team you’re a part of are of the utmost importance. From day one people in this administration have bad mouthed and back-stabbed one another and you don’t have to look much further than the Trump vs. Jeff Sessions tweets or remarks to see that it’s welcome and encouraged behavior. If Trump wants more loyalty he should lead by example. That said, see #1. There are good people in the administration and that is obvious by the fact things haven’t totally hit the fan. Yet. 4. On the NYT printing an anonymous op-ed I must say I’ve had individuals approach me since I first began Alabama Today, who wanted to pen columns anonymously. This is a very tricky part of media: You want to get the story out but you have to consider many factors including maintaining the integrity of your publication and reputation for truth and honesty. There are a lot of things than can, and probably should be said in the world and in politics, if it weren’t for fear of making people angry, burning bridges and even retaliation I feel like we’d have a lot more of these types of stories. On the Hill people know and speak in hushed tones of improprieties for months sometimes years before a reporter has enough to go on to print something. Welcoming anonymity in these cases would open up the flood gates for those with bad motives. The question here is what was the movitves of the author of the story at hand? It reads as sincere and not politically motivated in the way in which a lot of attacks are. This is why I agree that the NYT was correct in publishing the article. If everything that the staffer said that they knew and experienced is actually true. Finally, what do I think about this as a whole? The Trump Administration has done something that has not been talked about before. Which is they’ve shined a spotlight on those working behind the man. Generally when you’re looking at a President, or Governor, or even Member of Congress, there are only one or two people in their sphere that world is able to identify — the Karl Rove‘s, Dana Perino‘s, the Tony Snow‘s, David Axelrod’s, Rahm Emanuel‘s of
New York Times says no libel, no retraction, no apology for Donald Trump story
The New York Times on Thursday rejected Donald Trump‘s claim the newspaper had libeled the Republican presidential nominee, saying its story about two women who said he sexually assaulted them was “newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern.” In a letter, Times attorney David McCraw said Trump “has bragged about his non-consensual sexual touching of women” and that multiple women had already come forward. “Nothing in our article has had the slightest effect on the reputation that Mr. Trump, through his own words and actions, has already created for himself,” he wrote. The Times reported Wednesday that two women told the paper of his unwanted sexual advances. One, Jessica Leeds, said Trump groped her on an airplane more than three decades ago. The other, Rachel Crooks, said Trump kissed her without invitation in 2006 when she was a 22-year-old receptionist for a real estate firm located at Trump Tower. Trump vehemently denied the allegations, and demanded through his attorney that the story be retracted. At a rally in Ohio, Trump said the media had “slandered and lied about me with false accusations.” The Times refused to retract the story, saying its reporters worked diligently to confirm the women’s accounts. “It would have been a disservice not just to our readers but to democracy itself to silence their voices,” McCraw’s letter said. McCraw said that if Trump decides to go ahead with a lawsuit, then “we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.” Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, is threatening to sue a separate publication over another woman’s allegation of assault by her husband. Lawyers for Melania Trump demanded Thursday that People magazine retract and apologize for a story in which one of its writers, Natasha Stoynoff, describes being assaulted by Trump at their Florida home, Mar-a-Lago, in 2005. Stoynoff wrote that she had arrived to interview the couple for a story, and that when Melania Trump left the room, her husband pushed Stoynoff against a wall and assaulted her. The story also says the writer and Melania Trump later ran into each other in New York and had a conversation. Lawyers for the Republican nominee’s wife say no such encounter occurred. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
