“For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light.”
– Luke 8:17 –

Si Newhouse with Donald Trump in 1987. Sonia Moskowitz

The Big Picture –
By Glynn Wilson –

COULTERVILLE, Calif. – I’ve been singing a song by The Animals my whole life.

“We Gotta Get Out of This Place.”

For years it was my home town of Birmingham, Alabama. Education provided the way. I landed in Tuscaloosa, home of Bear Bryant’s Crimson Tide, a junior and senior in his last two years alive, and as head coach and number one Football God.

After a few twists and turns, including winning a major precedent setting federal lawsuit and a business of my own back in Birmingham, that connection ultimately led to West Beach in Gulf Shores. There I was happy and content for awhile, driving a 1979 FIAT Spider convertible, classic midnight blue sparkle with a canvas top, up and down the 10 mile beach covering all manner of news. From the Pink Pony Pub in Gulf Shores to the Flora-Bama Lounge. Some tried to promote it as Pleasure Island then. Others referred to as the Redneck Riviera. Whatever. That was my beat. I even wrote a column called The Beach Beat. It was widely read, even in Gross Point, Michigan, from where many Snowbirds flew down every winter for the warm climate, sunshine, the warm Gulf of Mexico waters with its pristine white sand beaches then. It’s ruined now, in many places, like so many things in this 2025 world. It’s right out of a song or a book.

Its was a great run, until I pissed off Naval Intelligence, military brass, a few Republicans and Chamber of Commerce types, by breaking a very big story. As all good runs end – they say nothing good lasts forever – it required fleeing back to Tuscaloosa one more time. Another stepping stone for a rolling stone, who tries never to gather moss.

Havana Syndrome Clearly Caused by Directed Energy Weapon

Then it happened.

Teaching got me out of Alabama to Georgia, then Tennessee and then down the Mississippi to New Orleans. But I had a long hankering to see, photograph and write about things in Washington, D.C. Too see it up close. Our nation’s oft maligned yet magnificent capital city. The citadel of Democracy around the world. I finally made it 11 years ago, and spent the better part of a decade there, thanks in a big way to the National Park Service.

But after visiting the White House on Father’s Day, 2024, I knew that run in life must come to an end, somehow, someway…

Father’s Day from the White House

After one more foray back to the Deep South for a Rock and Roll diversion, I made it back to Washington one more time. After cataract surgery, I delivered one final park ranger volunteer program, then headed west.

Interpreting Our Heritage in Words and Pictures

It had long been my dream to make the trip all the way across the country to California.

Heading West to Join the Opposition to Trump in the Shadow of Yosemite

I finally made it in October.

California Dreamin’ On a Beautiful October Day

And visited Yosemite for the first time.

The Cathedral of Yosemite National Park

A new friend I met in the big campground in Greenbelt National Park offered me a free apartment in San Francisco, and a bungalow on Venice Beach near LA. But I told him I did not travel and camp all the way across the country to live in another crowded big city. Since Covid, being around masses of people no longer appeals at this point in my life. I’ve come to love the mountains, not so much the beaches anymore. Close to national parks. The Smokies. Shenandoah. Catoctin Mountain. Now the cathedral of them all, Yosemite.

As it happens, life, a long time friend and fan had also finally gotten out of Birmingham, Alabama and landed in the small, historic town of Coulterville, California. He seemed to need some help getting a new FM radio station going. There was a need. In a historic place. Where the sun shines most of the time. So that’s where I’ve landed too.

I’ve only been here less than a month, but it’s happening.

Yosemite Radio

If this doesn’t work out I may just have to leave the damn country. I knew Donald Trump was going to fuck everything up. Demolishing the East Wing of the White House to make way for a giant, gold-plated ballroom with his name on it is just the latest colossal disaster of his election. I did not want to remain in D.C. and end up in jail or dead, like Charlie Kirk.

So here I am, making the best of it, spending my time getting setup here and listening to great music, trying not to think about Donald F. (Fucking) Trump all day long every day. His time will come. His Faustian Bargain with the devil to become the world’s best and most famous grifter in the history of the world of cons must come to an end soon, one way or another. We will join with the millions of Americans who will dance on his grave on that day.

As I told a Christian Conservative Republican cousin of mine recently, who took a public stance on Facebook against Trump’s evil ways, I’ve covered politics as a journalist for 45 years, and I’ve never seen anything as corrupt as this. Richard Nixon was bad. Ronald Reagan started us down this bad road. Both Bushes made it worse.

But nothing prepared the American people for this.

As someone who came to understand how to make a difference in the news business, and for a decade conducting academic research in this vein, I knew media influence on public opinion was being understated. I published research proving it.

It was Si Newhouse who gave us Trump by publishing the first big magazine news feature about him, and then paying him a half a million for the fictitious PR con job of all time, Art of the Deal. Newhouse was a close childhood friend of Communist chaser Roy Cohn, who got his start in politics with the Un-American Activities Committee chaired by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Cohn went on to become a Mob fixer attorney in New York and adviser to Trump.

Newhouse owned The Birmingham News, the Mobile Press-Register and the Huntsville Times in my home state, the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, as well as Condé Nast magazines. I only recently found out the extent to which the owner of my home town paper was so mob connected and corrupt. Damn him.

NYT: The Concorde-and-Caviar Era of Condé Nast, When Magazines Ruled the Earth

NPR: Inside Condé Nast’s decline

People in California know how bad William Randolph Hearst was, the mass circulation daily newspaper chain publisher depicted by Orson Wells in “Citizen Kane.”

But it was Si Newhouse who held me down, along with other good people and writers who did not fit his mold. It is ultimately why I had to get out of my home town to make it in this sometimes very mixed up world.

If truth is truth, and truth is light, eventually all things will by god come to light.

“For nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light.”
– Luke 8:17

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