Don’t Silence and Whitewash: Cokie Roberts, 1943-2019


Whenever there’s a mass shooting, fanatics will inevitably say, “This is no time to talk about gun control!” Au contraire, that’s precisely the time, when people’s memories are freshest and they’re thinking about it.  If you wait until later, people will forget and not pay attention even though your argument is valid.

The same goes when someone famous dies.  Demanding silence isn’t about “respect for the dead”, it’s about preventing examination of their life.

Telling the truth is neither insult nor character assassination.  Hundreds of “tributes and accolades” to her won’t be silenced by one blog post.

Roberts’s father was Hale Boggs, founder of what became Squire Patton Boggs law firm, and so was her brother Thomas Boggs, a lawyer and lobbyist.  SPB lobbied Washington to pass the anti-democratic “trans pacific partnership” (TPP).  Cokie Roberts was in favour of TPP.

Roberts inferred that Dianna Ortiz and other catholic nuns lied about being raped and tortured by the Guatemalan military’s death squads during the late 1980s (which was being funded by the US government). Ortiz won her lawsuit against a Guatemalan general who oversaw the death squads.

Roberts was paid by tobacco companies to appear at events and speak on their behalf.

Roberts advocated cuts to medicare and social security, but not the military budget.

I cannot find video of it on youtube or elsewhere, but do remember when ABC “news” got caught with their pants down by having Roberts caught with her winter coat on? They pretended she was “live, in front of the white house” when she was actually in the studio, using a green screen.


An example of silencing and whitewashing happened as I was writing this.  On Roberts’s wikipedia page, the section marked “Criticism” suddenly disappeared, the contents buried in the “Career” section.  Check the page’s edit history.