One of the many reasons I'm really so glad you're here is it's your role model. As I told you the other day when we met for our students, and you, you represent a couple of underrepresented groups, and political journalism has been dominated even more than regular journalism by straight white men. And I just wanted to ask you, what difference does it make? Do you think for you, and other people from other underrepresented groups to be on TV at the table?
I mean, I didn't see a lot of people that, you know, skin color look like me that were gay, like me on television as I grew up. And so I didn't really know it was possible, right? And so I wanted to be a lawyer and then a politician. I'd seen black people do that, right. That was, it was like, "Oh, I can do that!" And then I had a journalism class and a teacher who I loved who made a huge difference. Her name is Pam Jackson and helped me realize like this was what I wanted to do.
And I think when you see someone that looks like you, someone that has a similar background to you, it opens up doors that you didn't know existed in your in your mind yeah, doors in your mind, like not even the physical doors, but like actually thinking, "Oh, wait, I could do that too! Why not?"
And I you know, one of my favorite things that happens is I've heard from teachers and parents who say like, you know, "My son saw -- my son or my teacher -- or my students saw you wearing nail polish. They wear nail polish. They get bullied for it, can you send like a picture or send them a little note? My son always wanted an Afro and people made fun of him and now he sees you on TV."
So it came out very late in life at 27 and I told myself like I'm not doing this again. I spent 27 years in the closet pretending to be someone I wasn't. So I'm just gonna kick the closet door down. I'm walking out. I'm going to wear my black and white pants apparently. And...
They call it embracing whoever you are.
Exactly, right? And just kind of, and once I kind of let go of all of the things that were like that I was in the closet for it kind of freed me to all this space -- mental space -- to like work and think about my job and my both my like personal life and career changed dramatically after that.
