Lyz Lenz Terminated by The Gazette

Lyz Lenz announced yesterday on Twitter that The Gazette terminated her employment.  

“The paper fired me this morning,” the columnist wrote in a post on the social media network shortly before noon today.

Lenz joined the paper in 2019 replacing columnist Lynda Waddington who departed to pursue a new career direction after five years as a columnist.

Predictably, of the over six hundred comments, overwhelmingly people replied with shock, sadness, and encouraging words.  Jody Avirgan, formerly of the fivethirtyeight politics podcast wrote, “Ugh, so sorry Lyz.” Just a few cheered her termination. Posting four happy crying emojis @matryoskadoll typed, “I love it! What took them so long?”  

The opinion writer earned Marionite ire by characterizing the community as a hotbed of racism in a July 10, 2020 editorial.  She described a KCRG television forum entitled, “Black Lives Matter: What Now?” where KCRG reporter Taylor Reed ask the four panelists if there are, “parts of Iowa where you guys don’t feel safe?”  DREEAM Sports owner Brandon Taylor identified Marion while Meisha Studios, Inc. owner Meisha Walker said, “You can’t even walk through there.”

Lenz, a white woman wrote she, “was told to drive slowly through Marion, because the police there were always looking for reasons to pull people over.” 

Police Chief Mike Kitsmiller, a former federal agent recently hired to lead the Marion Police Department agreed with that characterization.  Even the current city mayor, Nick Abouassaly said Marion’s past traffic enforcement reputation was well deserved.

But there was no indication patrol officers were racially profiling.  Marion police officers stopped everyone.

But Lenz’s composition failed to acknowledge the law enforcement consistency.

But Marion’s experience wasn’t unique.

In the thread of reactions to Lenz’s termination announcement was a not insignificant number of claims she was a bigot or racist and deserved her firing.  “Buh bye bigot,” wrote @zeebap2 using the name Kamala Harris Gives me Hope MVP.  Holly (@Fiachat114) pointed out, “only ‘journalists’ pretending she isn’t racist.”  Travelblues (@blueammon) commented, “All these blue checks jumping in to defend one of the most problemmatic white womein in journalism.  Gross,” and @MadisonKittay said, “Karma’s been hoveirng over your house for a year,” and linking to a mediaite.com video of Lenz’s questions posed to Senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren at the Coe College 2019 LGBTQ presidential candidate forum.  

This vitriol’s genesis was the aforementioned forum where preselected interviewers posed predetermined questions to individual candidates.  Each candidate was granted a short period of time on stage where a single questioner solicitied the politican’s point of view on an issue.  Lenz did at least three of these sessions.  One with Joe Biden, another with Kamala Harris, and one with Elizabeth Warren.

Lenz’s tone and approach with each canidate was uneven.  She brusquely interrogated both Biden and Harris on their points of view but slow pitched nerf balls Warren. 

Lenz incensed Harris supporters by interrogating their candidate about gender affirming surgery while giving Warren a pass on her flip flop.  As Attorney General Harris defended the California Department of Corrections policy against gender affirming surgery leading Lenz to ask, “How can trans people turst you to advocate for them?”

But Senator Warren, who opposed financial support for that same surgery in 2012 and reversed her point of view in 2019, was not asked about the contradiction.  Lenz wonder how Warren would help change the minds of Americans who did not agree with the procedure.

Like many in Marion, the crowd noticed and supporters didn’t forget.

Lenz continues writing for her site on Substack and does freelance work. An inquiry to her regarding the circumstances of her termination was not answered.