George Gascon, James Queally deceive about mean tweets

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon has removed the official account for the DA's office from Twitter, using mean tweets as a pretext. The real reason he's shutting it down is because he can't deal with constant criticism from the residents of the County who are tired of his very pro-criminal policies.

And, James Queally of the Los Angeles Times is helping run cover for Gascon, deceiving about the tweets in question. From "Los Angeles County D.A.'s office quits Twitter amid flood of anti-LGBTQ+ comments" [1]:

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office said this week it would no longer post to Twitter after website moderators ignored requests to delete a torrent of bigoted and hateful comments left under a post about employees attending the West Hollywood Pride parade.

The office's account tweeted a picture of about two dozen employees holding gay pride flags after they marched in the annual parade Sunday. Both Joseph Iniguez [2], George Gascón's chief of staff who is gay, and director of communications Tiffiny Blacknell, were shown in the image.

Among the 90 replies to the tweet were those calling the employees photographed "pedophiles" or "groomers," as well as grotesque images of deformed male genitalia and, in one case, a swastika.

Blacknell said the office reported a number of the hateful comments to Twitter but received no response.

"The Pride Parade post was met with a barrage of vicious and offensive comments that left us deeply troubled. The comments ranged from homophobic and transphobic slurs to sexually explicit and graphic images, and even after reporting them to Twitter, they remained visible on our account for more than 24 hours," she said in a statement to The Times. "The district attorney's office will not be complicit and utilize a platform that promotes such hateful rhetoric."

While the account @LADAOffice no longer exists, the individual tweet pages still do. The tweets in question are on twitter -dot- com/LADAOffice/status/1665505500094689283 and video of that page is embedded below [3].

As you can see, the "deformed" image is of faces, not genitals; Queally needs an anatomy lesson. While he's at it, he should look in any medical textbook to see worse. Also, the impacts of sexually-transmitted disease have been shown in countless works of art going back millennia [4]. As for the swastika, Queally is deceiving about that too: he wants you to think it was from someone who's pro-Nazi when it was from someone accusing some gay activists of being like the Nazis. You can disagree with how that point is made, but the fact is that a lot of SJWs and gay activists are extreme authoritarians, keen to silence anyone who disagrees with them. Few if any of the tweets are actually "anti-LGBTQ+", they just object to its negative aspects.

The wider issues include the fact that Gascon is reviled by large swaths of Los Angeles County (except by career criminals and the L.A. Times, they think he's great). And, unlike Hollywood actress Emma Stone and other celebrities, he can't deal with a few mean tweets. Gascon's office deals with some of the worst criminals around but he's completely flabbergasted by critics suggesting he resign.

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[1] news · yahoo · com/los-angeles-d-office-quits-014347942.html
[2] "Los Angeles DA Gascon's chief of staff 'threatened to put cop who cited him for public intoxication on “dishonest police officer“ list'", https://www.dailymail · co · uk/news/article-10338711/Los-Angeles-DA-Gascons-chief-staff-threatened-cop-cited-intoxication-list.html
[3] The video was retrieved on June 8, 2023 while not logged in. Note that replies after 'More Replies' are censored; Twitter calls them "LowQuality" in their AJAX. Most people probably don't bother to click the 'show more replies' link. Gascon wants Twitter to censor more than they do already.
[4] repositorio-aberto.up · pt/bitstream/10216/142352/2/570028.pdf