January 15 - 22, 1998
![[Don't Quote Me]](/standard/image/headers/dont_quote_me_header.gif)
I want to believe that Jeff Katz isn't a racist. But he's making it awfully difficult. Playing with fire
WRKO's new morning host indulges in some dicey race rhetoric. Plus, Matt Drudge's dumb luck.
by Dan Kennedy
On Monday, January 12, WRKO Radio (AM 680) handed its erstwhile late-night talk host one of its crown jewels: the morning-drive-time show, which has been lagging behind syndicated fare such as The Howard Stern Show (WBCN, 104.1 FM) and Imus in the Morning (WEEI, AM 850).
You'd think experience would have taught Katz a lesson. He lost his last job, in Sacramento, after making a crude racist joke about Mexicans ("Don't Quote Me," News, January 17, 1997). Several years before that, he left a station in Hartford after angering minority leaders.
Yet the new Katz in Your Morning, broadcast Monday through Friday from 5:30 to 9 a.m., devoted three of its first six days to ugly, stereotyped vitriol about race -- much of it from Katz himself, the rest from guests and callers who were indulged and even egged on by the host. Katz's second banana, former WHDH-TV (Channel 7) anchor Darlene McCarthy, occasionally tried to inject some sanity, but she was overpowered by the loud-mouthed star.
The race-baiting got under way on January 14, the day the Boston Herald broke the news that the Boston Housing Authority would evict three white families from the Old Colony project, in South Boston. It seems that the families had sons who'd terrorized Latino residents. Each family, according to BHA administrator Sandra Henriquez, had been warned repeatedly.
Katz's response was to put on the air Old Colony tenants council leader Willy Tierney and South Boston Information Center director John Ciccone, long-time opponents of efforts to integrate South Boston's housing projects. Both men charged the BHA with a "racist" policy of punishing whites who break the rules far more harshly than it does minorities. Even though they didn't have a shred of evidence, Katz eagerly took their side.
"That's the bottom line, then," Katz said, following up one Tierney outburst. "It is about the housing authority, and perhaps society in general, holding white people to an entirely different standard of conduct than they do minorities. Minorities commit crimes in the housing projects, they are offered other housing-authority options. The white family allegedly commits a crime -- the entire family kicked out, no other place to go."
Katz also listened with great interest to a lengthy monologue by Jean from South Boston, who ranted about "so-called minorities" and told an unlikely-sounding story about her sister's being called "a stupid white bitch" in a shopping center parking lot.
Yet when Henriquez came on to refute Tierney's claims, and to urge aggrieved white tenants to file complaints with her agency, Katz's tone changed dramatically. "The white people in the Boston housing projects in Southie don't believe you. They don't believe you!" Katz thundered. "They say that you're willing to sit here and say all of these wonderful things to myself and to Darlene and say, `Yes, we'll investigate these complaints,' but quite frankly, they don't think you're telling the truth."
The next day, Katz was live on the scene in South Boston -- "where," he said, "a family is about to be broken up courtesy of the Boston Housing Authority." For the most part, it was a repeat of the previous day's show. He did find some common ground with Minister Don Muhammad, of the Nation of Islam. And he was more respectful than he had been the day before to Black Community Information Center director Sadiki Kambon. (Not that Kambon was impressed. "The scenario in which he approached this was totally inappropriate and offensive," Kambon told the Phoenix. "He wasn't here in the '70s. He needs to do his homework. I just got the basic sense that Katz is a fool.") But Tierney was back for some more antiblack rhetoric, and Katz went so far as to issue an on-air plea for housing for the three families.
Granted, the BHA evictions are a difficult issue. A number of observers have called on the authority not to punish the families for their sons' wrongdoings. (Although both the Herald and the Globe, whose editors must have read about the situation in the Herald, editorialized in favor of the BHA's harsh action.) But that was no excuse for Katz to play with racial fire, especially in a city with a long history of conflict that he may be only dimly aware of.
Then again, perhaps he just can't help himself. On Monday, Martin Luther King Day, Katz was grousing that white people can't talk about King's character flaws without being accused of racism. When a caller suggested that Rosa Parks -- Rosa Parks -- was a communist, Katz said nothing. Katz later called Jesse Jackson a "racist" and claimed that if King were alive, he would have supported California's Proposition 209, which outlawed affirmative action.
The 33-year-old Katz, an ex-cop and former professional wrestler from Philadelphia, clearly revels in his bad-boy image. On the WRKO Web site (http://www.wrko.com), Katz poses with his fists raised in combat, in a leather vest and sunglasses, cigarette dangling from his mustache-and-goatee-ringed mouth.
To his credit, he's done a considerable amount of charity work, especially for police groups. And anyone who's had George "The Animal" Steele on his show can't be all bad.
But a persistent pattern of racial insensitivity has marred his career. He was fired in Sacramento in 1996 after joking, on the air, that drivers should get sombrero-shaped bumper stickers for every illegal alien they hit; get 10 stickers, win a free drink at Taco Bell. Although he apologized for the incident, he later resigned from the National Association of Talk Show Hosts (founded by WRKO legend Jerry Williams), complaining angrily that it hadn't come to his defense.
And three years before the Sacramento incident, Katz was fired after just 11 months at a Hartford station. Black businesspeople and clergy, who had denounced Katz for indulging in racial code phrases such as "welfare sleazeballs," claimed victory, although station management denied their protests had had any effect.
Katz was not interviewed for this article. After initially expressing willingness to talk, he failed to return repeated phone calls or respond to an e-mail. Says program director Kevin Straley: "Race is one of the issues that people are still divided over. There was a problem. We went to the area, and we let people talk. I think that's as healthy as any medium."
Fair enough. But even given the wide-open atmosphere of a radio talk show, a responsible host should not give free rein to haters, and should not let untrue or unproven allegations go unchallenged.
Katz is not without talent, and an issues-oriented morning show would be a welcome departure from WRKO's trend toward gossip, advice, and gross-out humor. Yes, Katz replaced Marjorie Clapprood, who had been the station's only liberal. But in her final incarnation, as host of the ill-fated Clapprood & Company, she barely discussed issues at all.
If Katz in Your Morning is to succeed, though, the racial rhetoric has got to go. To put it in language its two-time-loser host might understand: Hey, Katz-man, three strikes and you're out.
Cybergossip Matt Drudge is basking in the limelight this week following the coup of his notorious career. After all, it was the Drudge Report (http://www.drudgereport.com) that broke the news about Newsweek's having killed a story about a supposed sexual affair involving Bill Clinton and a 23-year-old former White House intern. And it was Drudge whose updates kept fanning the flames -- until Wednesday, when the Washington Post published an explosive story involving allegations of sex and perjury that could shake the Clinton presidency to its very core.
But before anyone thinks about handing Drudge a Pulitzer, it would be a good idea to take a look at the instant replay. The truth is that Drudge took a hell of a gamble -- as big a gamble as he took last August, when he trumpeted rumors that just-hired White House aide Sidney Blumenthal had a history of wife-beating ("Don't Quote Me," News, August 15, 1997). Drudge was wrong, and despite a prompt retraction and apology, Blumenthal slapped him and America Online, which carries Drudge's column, with a $30 million libel suit.
Media-conspiracy theories aside, editors generally have good reasons when they kill stories. It's reasonable to assume that when Newsweek editor Maynard Parker and company pulled the story about the president and the intern just before publication on Saturday, they had genuine doubts about whether it was true, or least about whether they had enough to make it stick. A spokeswoman for Parker said the magazine would not comment. But it's safe to rule out the possibility that Parker was trying to suck up to the White House: the story he did publish, by veteran muckraker Michael Isikoff, still contained highly damaging allegations about Clinton's sexual escapades.
Yet because of reckless rumormongers such as Drudge, it's no longer possible to kill a story, even with a mallet and a wooden stake -- and no matter how richly it seems to deserve it. The intern story began its second life just before midnight on Saturday, when Drudge zapped out a bulletin based on a leak, apparently from within Newsweek. Republican spinmeister William Kristol blurted out the rumor Sunday morning on ABC's This Week, as cohosts Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts looked on in horror.
On Monday, the rumor continued to spread. Newsweek's sister publication, the Washington Post, made a passing reference to Kristol's comments. Later that day, Rush Limbaugh read a Drudge Report follow-up, and shared with his 20 million-plus listeners the former intern's name and résumé. She's "not much older than the president's daughter," intoned the unctuous Limbaugh, obviously enjoying himself -- reprehensible, given that he was besmirching the reputation of an obscure 23-year-old woman on the basis of nothing more than rumors that Newsweek had killed a story about her.
The Post story itself broke late in the news cycle -- so late that Slate's daily roundup of the national press reported that the Post was leading with the latest on the Clinton-Netanyahu talks. Instead, the lead headline, four columns across the top, was CLINTON ACCUSED OF URGING AIDE TO LIE. The story, by Susan Schmidt, Peter Baker, and Boston Globe alumnus Toni Locy, reported that independent counsel Ken Starr's office had obtained tapes in which the former intern, Monica Lewinsky, was heard graphically describing her sexual affair with Clinton -- and, more important, telling of efforts by Clinton and Democratic power broker Vernon Jordan to persuade her to lie about the affair at her deposition in the Paula Jones case. (Indeed, Drudge reported earlier this week that Lewinsky, under oath, denied having had sex with the president.)
Drudge did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment. But on Wednesday morning, he was in his glory. His Web page was decorated with a flashing blue-and-red police light. Below that: CONTROVERSY SWIRLS AROUND TAPES OF FORMER WHITE HOUSE INTERN, AS STARR MOVES IN!
Okay, he was right, and he deserves his fun. Sometimes a 100-to-1 underdog will come in, too. A smart gambler, though, counts his winnings, thanks his lucky stars, and goes home. To date, Drudge has shown little evidence of being smart.
No doubt Drudge has learned some important lessons from this week's developments. It's unlikely, though, that they're the right ones.
Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www1.shore.net/~dkennedy/
Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com
Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here
