RNC speaker and Angeleno Jamiel Shaw talks about his conversations about Trump with other people of color, plus the CA delegate who started the second day of the RNC with a Sikh prayer; who could see their Covered CA insurance rates jump this year; and in light of the conversation swirling about Roger Ailes - has the way we talk about sexual harassment allegations changed over the last thirty years?
CA Republican Vice Chair: ‘Reporters are ignoring RNC’s diversity’
A writer for Donald Trump's company apologized this morning for using passages from a 2008 Michelle Obama speech in Melania Trump's speech Monday night.
Meredith McIver said she offered to resign, but Donald Trump refused to accept it. McIver previously worked on some of Donald Trump's books and was reportedly brought in to work with Melania after she rejected the draft written by two veteran speechwriters.
While the controversy over Melania Trump’s speech has dominated the narrative of the Republican Convention, other stories have been breaking in Cleveland as well.
Concerns have been raised about delegations’ poor attendance, as well as the perceived lack of diverse voices on the floor.
AirTalk asked two Californians at the convention, Harmeet Dhillon and Jamiel Shaw, to weigh in.
Dhillon is a Trump delegate and Vice Chairwoman of the California Republican party. She is also is the 2016 RNC National Committeewoman-elect from California.
On Tuesday she began the convention proceedings with a Sikh prayer, and she emphasized that the delegations in Cleveland do contain a multitude of perspectives.
Interview highlights
Dhillon: I’ve seen reporters make such a big deal about the lack of diversity here, while studiously ignoring the fact that you had a Sikh prayer opening the events yesterday then you had a Muslim prayer closing them. [There is] a very diverse California delegation, for example. I don’t see that being reported. I see attempts to make stories out of stuff that aren’t really stories.
One of the stories that came out is that there were a lot of empty seats last night for the speeches and the event. What’s your sense comparing the mood in the hall [last] night versus four years ago in Tampa?
Dhillon: So I’m constantly monitoring my Twitter feed, and I saw that story come across, and it was completely false. I looked up into the stands and took a photograph myself; the stands were packed. If you take a photograph of the area behind the stage, that’s the only area that was empty last night. That is an exact example of my frustration with the false narrative.
Jamiel Shaw Sr. is an immigration activist whose son Jamiel Jr. was shot to death in Arlington Heights in 2008. His killer, Pedro Espinoza, was in the United States illegally.
Shaw, a self-identified Independent, spoke about being an African-American Trump supporter, and how politicians’ responses to his son’s death led him away from the Democratic Party.
Interview highlights
African-American voter registration is overwhelmingly Democratic. As an African-American supporter of Donald Trump, have you gotten a lot of criticism from Southern California African-Americans that you would support him?
Shaw: Of course. It goes both ways. You’ve got the people who are just anti-white people to the people who are just black Republicans. It’s a big spectrum, and I’m focused on the ones who support what I’m trying to do. I don’t have time to try and change people’s minds. I just tell them what happened. ‘This is what happened to me.’ If that [doesn’t] affect you, then, technically, screw you, because I’m telling you what happened. Somebody died. In real life. No matter what you heard about on TV. In real life there was a kid who was walking down the street and was shot dead in the street because he was black by somebody illegally in the country. You can’t spin that.
I thought I heard you say that after the killer of your son was identified as being in the country illegally, that all these politicians who had rallied around you and provided support for you as a grieving father...disappeared at that point.
Shaw: I thought I was at a David Copperfield show. It was like ‘now you see me, now you don’t.’ On the serious side, yeah, when it first happened I thought positively that I would get a lot of support from black people just because my son was black, and he was killed by an illegal [immigrant]...I personally went to [Herb Wesson’s] office and talked to him, and the first thing he said to me is that I ‘opened a hornet’s nest.’ I was like, ‘Me, what did I do?’ He said, ‘They're gonna be protesting, and this and that.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, my son is dead.’
This story has been updated and the interview edited for clarity. Listen to the full discussion by clicking the playhead above.
Guests:
Lisa Mascaro, reporter for the Los Angeles Times; she covers Congress in Washington D.C and is attending the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Lynn Vavreck, professor of political science at UCLA; she tweets
Zach Courser, Research Director of the Dreier Roundtable and visiting Assistant Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College; he tweets
Harmeet Dhillon, vice chair of the California Republican Party and 2016 RNC National Committeewoman-elect; she is also a delegate
Jamiel Shaw, speaker at the RNC this week; in 2008, his 17-year old son was fatally shot by Pedro Espinoza, who was in the country illegally
Why your insurance may be going up by 13 percent this year
If you’re enrolled in Covered California, you might experience a bit of sticker shock come 2017.
Premiums are expected to rise 13 percent in 2017, an increase that is more than triple the rate at which premiums went up in the previous two years. In 2015, rates rose 4.2 percent, and 4 percent the year after. Experts say the increase is thanks to rising costs in healthcare, pricey specialty drugs, and the end of a program that kept rates fairly stable for the first three years of the Affordable Care Act’s implementation.
Just how much extra does that mean you’ll have to pay next year? That depends on where you live and who is your insurance provider. Those whose premiums end up too high because of the hike could look to switch to another plan, but that could create more trouble than it’s worth for some patients who have chronic conditions that require long-term care from a consistent medical team.
What does the Covered CA rate hike mean for your wallet? Can enrollees expect more hikes like this in years down the road? What does this say about the Affordable Care Act as a whole?
Guests:
Stephanie O’Neill, KPCC health correspondent; she tweets from
Dylan Roby, assistant professor of health services administration at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and an adjunct assistant professor at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health
Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute
Cause and Effect: How did Venezuela end up in a crisis?
The vast majority of Venezuelans are experiencing severe political calamity and economic distress.
Talks of recalling President Nicolás Maduro, food scarcity, oil dependency and social divide are just some of the focuses in the media, but how did Venezuela’s crisis develop?
Miguel Tinker Salas, an expert on Venezuela and professor of Latin American History at Pomona College, said Venezuela has a structural dependency on a single product that accounts for 96 percent of foreign revenue--oil, “As a result, when oil prices declined dramatically between 2012 and 2014, from $100 a barrel to the current $39 a barrel. Venezuela exports heavy crude, so they don’t receive the same price as say, Western Texas...so when the revenues are cut back, that means that Venezuela --who is a net importer of food-- is unable to import food at the same level it had previously.”
Tinker Salas added that the dependency on oil has been the main contributor to the basic and manufactured goods shortage.
Can the crisis be alleviated?
Guest:
Miguel Tinker Salas, Professor of Latin American History and Chicano Latino studies at Pomona College; his expertise includes culture and politics in Venezuela. Tinker Salas is also the author of three books on Venezuela, including, “Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford University Press, 2015)
From Anita Hill to Gretchen Carlson, what's changed in the way we talk about sexual harassment?
Reaction has been mixed ever since former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson brought a sexual harassment lawsuit against her former boss and Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes.
More women have made similar allegations against Ailes since Carlson came forward, while other observers have questioned her motives, such as radio talk show host John Ziegler, who wrote on Mediaite, “The fact that this [lawsuit] comes after Carlson was no longer employed and at a point in her career where she has very limited job options and very little to lose, makes me a little bit suspicious.”
That kind of questioning reminds some of the suspicion Anita Hill met in the 1980s when she made allegations against her then boss, Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. At the time, many questioned why, if her allegations were true, she would continue to work for him.
The media industry remains dominated by male executives, and some say the dearth of female decision-makers and fear of retaliation are major hurdles in getting women to report harassment or abuse.
Has the way we talk about and treat sexual harassment changed in the three decades since Anita Hill? Have you personally experienced sexual harassment? And if so, did you report it? Do you regret your decision?
AirTalk listeners called us to share their experiences:
Christina in Inglewood: I asked a coworker several times not to harass me, but he continued. When I told him to stop, he giggled and dismissed me. To him, it didn’t matter what I thought or what I felt. So I wrote a report and turned it into my manager and personally contacted human resources.
After I reported him, I felt bad at first because I didn’t want to be responsible for someone losing their job, but I felt it was the right thing to do because I wasn’t the only one who was being treated that way. In a way, I feel like I stood up for myself and for other women. Human resources conducted an investigation and it turned out that he was not only doing it to me, but to other coworkers. They suspended him and I’m not sure if he got fired, but I never saw him again.
Susan in downtown Los Angeles: I was sexually harassed by a superior soon after I started working at the organization. I actually saw him as a mentor — he presented himself that way. He actually talked about how he came to the defense of another woman who had been sexually harassed by a high-level person in the organization. I later realized that I was being manipulated, but I didn’t see that because I was still very young.
It became a quid pro quo kind of harassment. The overall culture in the organization was to say all sorts of sexually explicit things and things that made me very uncomfortable. But it was an older generation, and everyone just said that’s the way it is. I was on probation at the time and was afraid of losing my job, so I didn’t want to report it. I finally did because it kept continuing and I kept hoping it would end, and it didn’t end. When I went and spoke to the boss at the top, who was a woman, she told me to “suck it up” because if I wanted my career to be successful, that’s what I needed to do.
I filed with the EEOC, but it was a very traumatic experience. Things did change slowly, but it was at the cost at my standing in the organization and my ability to advance there. I don’t regret it because I do believe I made a difference. It does make me sad though because it took something away from me that I’ll never get back, within myself.
Mariam from Beverly Hills: I was an on-air talent for a very big news organization and at the end of my contract, my boss took me to dinner to explain to me that the views were low, so they probably wouldn’t be able to move forward with renewing my contract unless I slept with him. It was the quintessential Los Angeles story. I was shocked, I was hurt, I cried later that evening and the reason why I didn’t move forward with my case and call this man out was because if I didn’t sleep with him, my contract would not get renewed. If I sued him or contacted his bosses, my contract would not get renewed and I would possibly become blacklisted as a talent in that network and its sister networks. The only incentive I had at the time to address the situation was to maybe stop him from doing this to other women, but I didn’t know for a fact that he was sexually harassing any other talent. And I knew he had kids, I knew he had a wife, so I thought there might not be a net gain, but a net loss by me calling this man out because I’d definitely destroy his family, his marriage, his kids and not necessarily for something tangible.
Sexual harassment affects your intellect. I thought, "I’m a millennial, I’ve grown up listening to these stories, I’ll never be a victim to one." And I thought, for a year, this man had been manipulating me and making me feel like we were friends and we could trust each other and the entire thing was just to arrive to that one vulnerable moment at the end of my contract. So I felt like an idiot. Not to mention, when he prefaces that sexual invitation with, “Hey, your views are low. I don’t think we can renew your contract,” it already makes you feel like a failure.
David in Anaheim: I’ve been sexually harassed and raped before, both were obviously extremely unpleasant experiences. But what was probably the most horrible experience was having a woman use her power against me by saying I had done something I didn’t do. Just being accused of sexual harassment can ruin someone’s life. I almost lost more than one job because a woman decided she was going to accuse me of something I didn’t do, either because of bitterness or because of something else.
Guest:
Jennifer Drobac, a professor at Indiana University's Robert H. McKinney School of Law, who has authored a textbook about sexual-harassment law
Filmmaker Garry Marshall took middlebrow entertainment to great heights
He was beloved, talented, prolific, and influential. Garry Marshall, the long-time writer-director of popular movies and long-running television sitcoms died at age 81 in a Burbank hospital Tuesday of complications from pneumonia after having a stroke.
Marshall's massive television hits included "Mork & Mindy," "Laverne & Shirley," "The Odd Couple," and "Happy Days." On the big screen, his credits included "Pretty Woman," "Runaway Bride," "Frankie and Johnny," and too many others to recount here.
His films always had a roster of A-list actors because they loved working with and learning from Garry Marshall.
He is survived by his wife, Barbara, and the couple's three children, Lori, Kathleen and Scott.
What are your favorites among his credits, and why?
Guest:
Wade Major, Film Critic for KPCC and host for IGN’s DigiGods.com