On Using the LGBTQ Community & Desperation Politics: An Open Letter to Ward 3 Council Member Travis Radina

by Patricia Lesko

When I ran for office against John Hieftje in 2010, a man named Phil Volk, then a leading member of Ann Arbor’s gay community, published an opinion piece in which he said I was an “embarrassment to the gay community.” He didn’t say why, just that I was. Since I didn’t know Volk, it shocked me. It wasn’t until I ran into Volk at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market the next summer that I discovered what had happened. Volk came up to me and apologized. He said that John Hieftje, angry because the police and firefighters’ unions had endorsed me, had threatened to withhold funding from an LGBT group Volk headed unless Volk published the piece, and unless the gay community endorsed Hieftje. Volk said he was ashamed of what he had done, ashamed of the Hieftje endorsement, and begged my pardon. It was a lesson in the brutality of politics. More than that, it was a lesson in how gays and lesbians are pressured into using gayness and the gay community to solve the political problems of straight people, their “allies,” who “stand with them,” as Mayor Taylor recently wrote on Facebook.

Council member Travis Radina (D-Ward) is doing just that at the moment. I am not the least bit surprised that history is repeating itself. Straight, white, rich people in power need help fishing their political friends and fannies out of a blazing fire, and Travis Radina has stepped right up to help, immolating his credibility in the process.

This all starts with Raoul Duke and his use of the word “faggot.”

Travis Radina has taken to social media to express his outrage that a screenshot of a Facebook post showed Jeff Hayner (D-Ward 1) using a quote from Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel (1998 movie) “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” an homage to the Gonzo Journalism which Thompson pioneered. In his book, Thompson’s protagonist Raoul Dukes says, “The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.” In the 60s and 70s, writers including Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe and Joan Didion published features that borrowed stylistic techniques from fiction. It was a renaissance of sorts. Fear and Loathing is said to be a seminal work of Gonzo Journalism.

Radina was outraged at Hayner’s use of the Thompson quote, above. Radina wrote in an email to an Ann Arbor resident who questioned why he was outraged about the Thompson quote, but has remained silent in the face of the victimization of a dozen women by a fellow Council member, and systemic racism by city staff: “As a gay man, I have been a target of homophobic vitriol for most of my life. I have been derisively called a ‘fag’ and ‘faggot’ more times that I can remember. As a result, I don’t need or appreciate a lecture from you about the appropriateness of my outrage when a colleague, with whom I am supposed to work, amplifies a hateful and homophobic slur in the course of deriding others.” Radina also said in his email, “your email is a master class in ‘whataboutism,’ it is harmful to suggest that bad behavior somehow excuses bad behavior and/or makes homophobia less objectionable.” Radina went on to say, “I call out homophobia and bigotry when I see it — even when it comes from friends/colleagues.”

I beg to disagree. In an email to Radina I wrote: “As a gay woman, I’m sure you know I’ve been subject to homophobic vitriol for most of my life, including from people whom you call friends, whose Facebook posts you like, whose Tweets you heart, whose money you took when you ran for office and next to whom you stand in photos, smiling.” A campaign donor to Radina recently Tweeted @A2Indy with the #a2council hashtag a link to the 11-year-old Phil Volk “op-ed.” Radina was silent.

I doubt the sincerity of Radina’s motives for a number of reasons, starting with the reason above, and take exception to his using the LGBTQ community and rainbow warning flags to rail at a quote from a 50-year-old novel. What’s next? Will Radina organize a march against Humbert Humbert and protest his predation of Lolita? Will Radina make a raft, row himself up the Huron River in a straw hat and urge librarians everywhere to burn copies of Huck Finn, Harry Potter, and the poems of T.S. Elliot? Council member Hayner is a provocateur, and sometimes has the political instincts of a blood orange, but actions speak louder than words. Hayner has been involved in supporting Ann Arbor’s gay community since the 1980s, decades before Travis Radina moved here.

I doubt Radina’s sincerity, because while preaching civility and collegiality as he ran for office in 2020, he didn’t bother to contact Hayner directly to discuss his strong feelings. Radina immediately took to the social media airwaves, to attack Hayner personally, to make demands, assign motives and demonstrate the kind of civility and political collegiality Donald Trump demonstrated in his Tweets calling ______________ (fill in the blank) a ________________ (fill in the blank).

Finally and most importantly, Radina and his Council colleagues are desperate to turn the spotlight away from Jen Eyer Irwin (D-Ward 4). Eyer Irwin has been under intense scrutiny from media around the state. The Lansing City Pulse reported that Eyer Irwin knew about and enabled TJ Bucholtz in his sexual harassment of up to a dozen young women at Vanguard Public Affairs. Eyer Irwin has repeatedly claimed all the women are lying and only she is teling the truth. In addition, the City Attorney is being accused of corruption for allegedly illegally withholding from MLive public records in their entirety to benefit Eyer Irwin, her husband Mitch Irwin and Irwin’s son, State Senator Jeff Irwin. There are calls from Council members Ramlawi (D-Ward 5) and Hayner (D-Ward 1) for an investigation, and rightly so.

The serial predation Eyer Irwin is said by the women to have enabled reportedly included sexual harassment of a queer woman (Emily Dievendorf), who wrote about her harassment in a March 2021 Facebook post. An Ann Arbor resident asked Radina why he had not spoken out in support of the dozen woman and against sexual harassment.

The resident wrote, “I was curious as to why you did not call out the Sexual Harassment that occurred at Vanguard, especially to a Queer woman Emily Dievendorf? I assume you believe Sexual Harassment is wrong?”

Hayner, in quoting “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” was complaining about bias in the local media. Hayner is not alone in his concerns about biases in local media. Local media reveal what they want, and decide what the public “needs to know.” John Counts is the News Leader at MLive. In response to an email from a reader concerned about omissions and inaccuracies in an article about a crime committed by former Michigan State Senator Mitch Irwin, Counts writes, “We give a lot of thought about how we report on domestic violence cases and other sensitive criminal cases, focusing on what we believe the public needs to know.” This is paternalism, not journalism and results in a system that protects certain people, but not others.

Let’s be clear: the word faggot is a slur. Was Hayner’s use of the quote containing the word a slur? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it’s deliberately provocative (Thompson’s goal in having his character say the words). No, in the sense that literature reflects the work of the authors, not the views of every reader. If one quotes Virginia Woolf’s anti-semitic language from her works, is one an anti-semite? If one quotes the sexist views of Ernest Hemingway, is one a sexist? Context is everything, and Travis Radina chose to ignore context and jump to a conclusion so quickly I’m concerned he may have thrown out his back.

As I wrote to Radina: “Using the word ‘faggot’ aimed at an effeminate man (or any man or woman) is reprehensible. Go burn Hunter S. Thompson’s publishing house to the ground. Have a book barbeque with Julie [Grand] and Chris [Taylor] of “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” in Burns Park. Pass a symbolic resolution to jail people who use literary quotations you don’t like. The First Amendment gives every monster who has harassed you, every monster (including your friends) who has harassed me, and the millions of other LGBTQ people in this country, the freedom to speak against us, insult us and belittle us. I loathe and fear homophobia, but understand the First Amendment. I can also smell political desperation.” 

The other reason I question Radina’s sincerity is that just the previous day, Radina’s colleague Julie Grand (D-Ward 3) posted a Tweet sharply attacking MLive for seeking access to a public record and reporting on it. Radina said nothing about Grand’s Tweet which not only derided MLive for committing the high crime of utilizing the Freedom of Information Act, but also, implicitly, threatened the Ann Arbor City Administrator whom Council directly supervises, for his high crime of releasing the public record, as Michigan law required him to do. Radina said nothing about Grand’s criticism of MLive, nor did he express outrage of her public intimidation and harassment of the employee whom they both supervise. Mayor Taylor, likewise, attacked MLive and the City Administrator in a Facebook post filled with lies.

What more insidious way to change the subject away from the bad news buffet that is Eyer Irwin and governmental corruption perpetrated on her behalf, than to get the only out, gay member of Council to accuse Hayner of “saying” a slur that Hunter S. Thompson had a character utter 50 years ago, to accuse Hayner of something that’s not illegal. Radina’s outrage has nothing to do with the alleged corruption in city government Hayner is demanding be investigated. Radina’s digital arm-flapping and social media heavy-breathing would have us believe using a quote from a 50-year-old made up character in a Gonzo Journalism classic is worse than Jen Eyer’s actual victimization of a dozen very real young women, or governmental corruption that sought to benefit a Council member, her husband, a Michigan state senator, and his father.

As I wrote Travis Radina: “Crime. Cover up. Corruption. Faggot. Which word has nothing to do with threats against Tom Crawford by Chris Taylor, and Julie Grand, illegal withholding of public records by Stephen Postema to benefit Jen Eyer, Mitch Irwin and Jeff Irwin, and a serious crime that was covered up to benefit elected officials?”

We’ll let Travis Radina have the last word. He said in his email to an Ann Arbor resident, “Please, educate yourself on allyship [sic]. It’s more than saying you ‘stand with’ someone.” Amen, Travis.