By Bob Gaydos
I began my most recent column lamenting that this all-Trump-all-the-time insanity we are experiencing has sucked much of the joy out of life and made it difficult to write a "normal" column. "This has become personal," I wrote.
Little did I know.
A week later, an angry white male with a shotgun and a history of threats shot and killed five people at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Annapolis, Md. For a brief time in my career, I was managing editor of the Evening Capital, which the Baltimore Sun later bought and merged with the Capital's sister paper, the Maryland Gazette.
When I saw the first report on the shooting, I had an "Oh my God" moment. Who? But I quickly did the math and realized that, having left Annapolis more than 40 years ago, the odds that anyone I worked with was still there were slim to none. Also, the paper had long moved from its old offices on West Street -- a convenient walk to the State Capitol, Governor's Mansion, Historic District, the Naval Academy and City Dock -- to a modern building farther from downtown.
Still. People were shot at The Capital, I said, processing the information, and Donald Trump keeps calling the press "the enemy of the people" and conservative commentators and "pundits" keep issuing warnings about the media's "time being up."
This is not only not normal, this is dangerous because the most rabid followers of Trump and the media-bashers include some people with a violent nature who are looking for any excuse to use the guns they are hoarding to attack the "enemy" as fingered by their leader. That includes, at the top of the list, those who report the
