Leonard Pitts Jr.
Salt Lake Tribune
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Recent articles by Leonard:
Leonard Pitts: An open letter to all of you privately disgusted Republicans
This is an open letter to all of you privately disgusted Republicans. → Read More
Leonard Pitts Jr.: No place like home for the holidays
Oh, there’s no place like home for the holidays.We know because Perry Como reminds us incessantly every year about this time. And because the airport → Read More
'This is America. ... And here, right matters' [Opinion]
Leonard Pitts says stirring words by Lt. Col. Vindman remind us of who we strive to be. → Read More
Leonard Pitts: Barriers zigzag across America like a scar
A few words about walls. → Read More
Pitts: Barriers zigzag across America like a scar [Opinion]
A few words about walls. Unsurprisingly, the one Donald Trump is trying to build on the southern border — the one he swore Mexico would pay for — has proven, like most things he touches, an embarrassing failure. First came news early this month that smugglers have been able to cut through the barrier with a simple reciprocating saw, available at Home Depot for prices starting at less than $100.… → Read More
Leonard Pitts Jr.: Our penchant for conspiracy theories elevates the absurd
You may trust that Evan Halper is in his own personal hell right now.It’s a place to which all good journalists go when they make mistakes. Which is → Read More
Leonard Pitts Jr. column: Looking ahead to Election 2020, voters need to act with foresight or regret with hindsight
I'm here to offer you an action list. With last week's balloting behind us, we now have just less than a year before one of the most momentous elections → Read More
Pitts: Election 2020: Act with foresight or regret with hindsight [Opinion]
I’m here to offer you an action list. With last week’s balloting behind us, we now have just less than a year before one of the most momentous elections in American history. As voters in 1860 had to decide between Union and secession, we face a stark choice of our own: America or Trump. There is no middle ground. This is democracy at its Armageddon. The good news is, there are far more of us who… → Read More
Leonard Pitts Jr. column: Social media platforms and the fate of truth
It may be too much. And also too little. Meaning last week's announcement by Twitter that it is banning all political advertising over concerns that the → Read More
Pitts: Social media platforms and the fate of truth [Opinion]
It may be too much. And also too little. Meaning last week’s announcement by Twitter that it is banning all political advertising over concerns that the medium gives politicians too much reach, too much power to deceive. News of the ban, which takes effect later this month, comes as that other social media giant — Facebook — struggles with fallout from its refusal to reject untrue political ads.… → Read More
Pitts: Women are not the ones who need fixing [Opinion]
Women are not the problem. There has always been something grotesque about the idea that they are. But to embrace that idea in the #MeToo era is not just grotesque, but clueless. It suggests that you slept through a reckoning that has shifted the Zeitgeist. So somebody please tell Ernst & Young to wake up and smell the 2019. The London-based multinational business services firm has been… → Read More
Leonard Pitts Jr.: If we can’t be free within ourselves, then we cannot be free
“If you’re white, you’re all right. If you’re brown, stick around. If you’re black, get back.” — African-American → Read More
Leonard Pitts Jr. column: The ongoing struggle over shades of beauty
An African-American folk saying goes, "If you're white, you're all right. If you're brown, stick around. If you're black, get back."I was about to give a speech -- I can't remember when or even where -- when this teacher brought a student up, hoping I could help her.The teacher was white, and her student was a black girl, perhaps 13 or so, of painfully shy demeanor and very dark skin. The woman… → Read More
Commentary: Echoing Langston Hughes, Lupita Nyong’o offers a new take on the ‘dark and beautiful, bright and strong’
“Sulwe,” a new children’s book by Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o, is forcing a welcome and long overdue reconsideration of how beauty is conceived. → Read More
Commentary: Fascism in America? It can happen here.
The power of a democracy, you see, lies less in the force of its laws and customs than in mutual, unspoken agreement to be bound by those laws and customs. → Read More
Leonard Pitts Jr.: How the times have changed
You may, if you are old enough, recall a TV actor named Foster Brooks.He was a guest star on such classics of boomer kitsch as “The Monkees,” → Read More
Commentary: Donald Trump warns of civil war. Aren’t we already there?
In 2019, we find ourselves broken along lines of politics (the eternal red and blue grudge match) and human rights. → Read More
Leonard Pitts Jr. column: Troubled by 'Civil War' talk
"If Democrats are successful in removing the president from office (which they never will be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal." -- Donald Trump, roughly quoting Robert Jeffress, a conservative Dallas preacherWhat if he's right?Granted, no militias are massing. No declarations of separation have been read.So one is tempted to dismiss… → Read More
Commentary: We are a nation rotting from within
We are a nation rotting from within. And finally, finally, maybe, we’ve had enough. → Read More
Pitts: We were told our institutions would save us
Once upon a time, there was an ideal. It was called the United States of America. And in 2016, the presidency of the United States was captured by the flamboyantly incompetent star of a TV reality show, a man who doesn’t believe in any ideal beyond his own enrichment and aggrandizement. Some shaken observers assured us everything would yet be all right. The institutions of democracy — the… → Read More