Screw You Cenk Uygur!
I am a retired Lieutenant from the NYC Fire Department. For most of my twenty years with FDNY, I worked in the world’s busiest fire companies: Ladder 4 in Midtown Manhattan as a Firefighter; Engine Company 5 in Manhattan’s East Village as a Lieutenant. I took particular pride in Engine 5 for its diversity. We had an ethnically diverse crew. And we were amongst the best in the world at what we did: saving lives and property from fire. For about a year in 1994, I also worked as an aide and speech writer for Fire Commissioner Howard Safir.
My feelings of pride for my old profession are rooted in the work we did as firemen. However, along with my firefighting history, I had an amazing opportunity to do something special working in the Fire Commissioner’s office. I was the genisis of The Cadet Program, an inititive designed to train and increase minority applicants for FDNY. I do not know if it is still in existence. But when I last checked, over five hundred young people had taken advantage of a government incentive to increase minority Firefighters in FDNY.
I am friends with an artist, Jesse Gardner. In the early ninties, Jesse painted some extremely moving portraits of FDNY Firefighters and Officers in a series of paintings Jesse calls “Portraits in Courage”. I wanted to promote, display, one of Jesse’s paintings of Firefighter Sheldon Wright. I found the painting to be a moving depiction of the people Jesse called “Unsung Heroes”. I showed a copy of the painting to the Commissioner and Howard responded: “It’s an amazing painting. You need to find something to promote with it”.
My colleagues and I did more than find something. We created something that was needed: The Cadet Program.
I did not vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. But I am pleased with the results he has achieved with his admistration. I will most likely vote for The President in the next election.
I follow Twitter specifically to read President Trump’s tweets. But it is hard not to notice other posts on Twitter. It is a caustic environment of nasty name calling. Whatever! Twitter is now part of the world of non-stop digital information. I try to not take Twitter rants too seriously. But recently a prominently displayed tweet from an influential media celebrity Cenk Uygur caught my attention. Cenk called me a racist:
It wasn’t @realDonaldTrump chanting #SendHerBack, it was his voters. Republican voters still overwhelmingly support Trump. When people say Trump is a racist/bigot, they should realize that’s why he got selected by@GOPvoters. One party is for justice, other is definitely not.
I’m a Trump supporter. I also initiated a process that ceated a govenment program to increase the number of minorties in the New York City Fire Department, Cenk. What have you created to assist ethnic healing and diversity in our culture Cenk?
You are a name calling coward Cenk. Screw you!
