Ding-Dong! Bob Ross is Dead!
1934-2003

We love the good witches, but Bob Ross was NO Glinda. As editor and publisher of the Bay Area Reporter, Bob Ross supported straight conservatives and big business interests over community leaders and progressive values. He consistently opposed every tenants rights ordinance on the ballot. In May 1992, Police Chief Richard Hongisto declared martial law and arrested nearly 2000 people in the Rodney King sweeps. Hongisto then illegally ordered an issue of the Bay Times confiscated when the paper ran a critical cover story. Bob Ross went on to endorse Richard Hongisto for Mayor. Bob Ross endorsed Willie Brown over Tom Ammiano and acted as an avid Gavin Newsom devotee, supporting all of Newsom's racist and anti-poor campaigns.

Newspaper obituaries invoke the distant memory of Bob Ross's friendship with Harvey Milk in order to resuscitate Bob Ross as a gay hero. It's convenient that these obituaries ignore Bob Ross's twenty-year legacy of working against everything for which Harvey Milk stood.

We'll be dancing on Bob Ross's grave.

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