James Zimmermann

And I was like, this is, it was so stupid, but I handed him the golden dagger and, uh,

Three weeks later, after he won the blind audition and I stuck up for him, he stabbed me right in the back with it because he was so desperate to find some sign of racism and distract from the fact that after two years of playing with us and winning a blind audition, we still tried to get rid of him.

I mean, have some sympathy for the guy.

How humiliating is that?

After two years of playing with somebody, you go through the meritocratic process of a blind audition, and all of your colleagues except me and the conductor are like, yeah, I don't want to play with this guy.

That's got to hurt.

So he took it out on me.

I mean, you're looking at me like this is too ridiculous to be what happened, but that's exactly what happened.

The guy moved into my neighborhood.

This other player, not the oboist, another DEI social justice warrior type of violist, a very troubled young man.

And I asked him the same question that I ask every new person that's joined the orchestra.

Hey, man, welcome to town.

Where'd you move to?

And he moved right around the corner from me.

I drove by his house every day before he even lived there.

And he reported me as a stalker for that.

You think I'm kidding, but this is how desperate these people are.

And when I heard that they – so they reported that to management, and management didn't even waste my time.

They didn't even bring me in for that.

They said, this is so preposterous what these guys are doing to James.