A Reckoning Over Homophobia in the Democratic Party
Deconstructed
The Intercept
4.8 • 4.7K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2021
⏱️ 41 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to Deconstructed. I'm Ryan Grimm. Last Wednesday, the University of Massachusetts |
| 0:10.5 | released the findings of an extraordinarily unusual investigation. The school had decided |
| 0:16.0 | to probe the dating life of one Alex Morse, a former adjunct at the college who as a candidate |
| 0:22.4 | for Congress had been accused of inappropriate behavior by the local college Democrats who |
| 0:27.2 | had turned out were largely supportive of his opponent, the powerful ways in means chair |
| 0:31.8 | Richie Neal, one of the more outspoken foes of Medicare for all in the Democratic caucus. |
| 0:38.0 | Upon closer examination, there were no actual allegations leveled by the college Democrats |
| 0:43.1 | who had instead leaked a vague letter barring him from future events for unspecified wrongdoing. |
| 0:49.7 | As the days and weeks went on, not a single specific allegations surfaced from anywhere |
| 0:54.3 | from anyone, despite the University offering the public a hotline to call with any damning |
| 0:59.2 | information about Morse. Yet despite not having an allegation to investigate, the school |
| 1:03.6 | hired a law firm to investigate anyway. The report concluded that Morse had violated |
| 1:08.3 | no school policies. Now Morse was elected mayor of Holyoke at the age of 21. Holyoke |
| 1:15.6 | is about 30 minutes away from UMass Amherst, a school that has around 30,000 students. |
| 1:20.9 | That's nearly the size of Holyoke. Morse, for several semesters while in his 20s, |
| 1:25.8 | taught a single course on government that met once a week. The school bars relationships |
| 1:30.4 | between teachers and students in entirely reasonable policy. It does not bar an adjunct from |
| 1:36.1 | dating every single one of the 30,000 graduate or undergraduate adults at the University. |
| 1:42.0 | The report confirmed our earlier reporting that the Massachusetts Democratic Party was |
| 1:45.7 | involved in writing and publicizing the college Democrats' letter, which the party had |
| 1:50.0 | denied at the time. But the report also found that Morse did nothing wrong. Yet the school |
| 1:54.8 | still published intimate details of his dating life anyway. The whole thing smacked of retrograde |
... |
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