BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
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For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Friday, April 02, 2004
A JAY SEVERIN FAN CHECKS IN.
Christopher Connolly e-mails:
I just read your article
from the 6th, while searching for Jay Severin on the 'net. Don't
get your knickers in a bunch over Jay using the word 'wetback'.
Does he use the word frequently when describing the country's
apathy towards its undefended boarders [sic]? Yes.
Is the use of the word offensive? Probably. Is it illegal to use
the word? No. Would he be considered 'unprofessional' for using
this word? No. Is he a racist? No. Should he be reprimanded for
using the word? Definitely not.
First off, his show is called
Extreme Games. It is not for everyone, especially those who (ie,
YOU) cringe when people use words or think outside of the 'PC
Dictionary'. I have a problem w/ accusers who use language as a
sword against someone's opinion. Comparing Jay's use of the word
wetback to Callahan's ridiculous comments while on WEEI is a poor
example. Today's society and media don't seem to mind the cowards
who easily call other people racists. You fall into this
category.
I believe Jay is using the word
for at least a couple of reasons. You have to look at Jay's 'M.O.'
for using the word wetback. Apparently most of the nation
incorrectly assumes that illegal aliens are not a problem to the
security of our nation. In doing so, our media has been using
'flabby words', ie, words w/o substance to truly describe illegal
aliens coming out of Mexico. One must have his head buried in the
sand if one assumes all of these people are 'decent poor Mexicans'
looking for work, and the 'American Dream'. These people are
breaking the law. Why should we or the media sympathize w/ them?
Jay's use of the word wetback may shock and remind us of why we
shouldn't give them a pass, and why we should work to get our
gov't to protect our boarders [sic]. He's calling
bullshit on the media's poor assessment/opinion of this problem,
and reminding us of the current and future consequences of the sad
state of our boarder [sic] protection. (I won't
bore you w/ the truth on how it's hurt our country already. My
email is already getting long enough).
Wetback is the perfect word to
describe our illegal immigration problem, and is not a racist
word. It addresses the illegality of these people, and the means
of breaking into this country. Does Jay have a problem w/ Mexicans
applying for VISAS to enter this country legally? Of course not.
Does Jay have a problem w/ Hispanics or Hispanic-Americans? No.
Does he applaud hard-working, tax-paying, legal Hispanic-Americans
who speak English. Yes.
So, to wrap up this email, it's
obvious you don't agree w/ Jay on many political topics, which is
fine. Calling him a racist for using the word wetback is wrong.
It's easy to take pot-shots at a very articulate, bright person,
isn't it? It's no wonder he's as successfully as he is, and a
giant in his field. You, on the other hand, are the flea on that
giant's ass.
No need to respond at length;
Connolly reveals himself. However, he completely glosses over what I
actually reported in the post
that he mentions (which ran on February 5, not the 6th), which is
that every dictionary you can find describes the word wetback
as either "offensive" or "taboo." If you do a search for the N-word,
you will find the same thing.
In other words, wetback is
not racist because I say so, but because it has been deemed as such
by the culture-at-large, as reflected in the most widely used
dictionaries. If Severin (and Connolly) choose to stand apart from
that, that's their right. And if I call their use of the word
"racist," that's not only my right - it's also the truth.
posted at 11:18 AM |
comment or permalink
WOLF BLITZER'S BAD TWO
WEEKS. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and the
Incomparable Bob Somerby are ganging up on CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Not
that Blitzer doesn't deserve it. Blitzer - normally about as
controversial as vanilla ice cream - was caught red-handed passing
along some ugly, anonymous White House spin about former
counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke.
Let's start with the
transcript
of Wolf Blitzer Reports from March 24. In an exchange with
CNN's White House correspondent, John King, Blitzer
asserted:
Well, John, I get the
sense not only what Dr. Rice just said to you and other reporters
at the White House, but what administration officials have been
saying since the weekend, basically that Richard Clarke from their
vantage point was a disgruntled former government official, angry
because he didn't get a certain promotion. He's got a hot new book
out now that he wants to promote. He wants to make a few bucks,
and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there
are some weird aspects in his life as well, that they don't know
what made this guy come forward and make these accusations against
the president.
Is that the sense that you're
getting, speaking to a wide range of officials?
King's response indicates that he
was at least partly appalled. Watch as he tries to get out from under
the weird aspects of Blitzer's questioning:
None of the senior
officials I have spoken to here talked about Mr. Clarke's personal
life in any way. But they offer a very mixed picture. They say
that he was a very dedicated, a very smart member of the senior
White House staff, that he was held over because of his expertise
in the Clinton administration on terrorism issues and the Bush
administration, these officials say, wanted a smooth
transition.
They also say, and many top
Clinton administration officials support this, that Richard Clarke
could be irritable. He could sometimes get angry at those who did
not agree with him. That is an opinion shared in both
administrations. And, in the end, of course, he did not get the
No. 2 job at the Department of Homeland Security and he decided to
move on.
Next up: Krugman. In his
Times column this past Tuesday,
Krugman included Blitzer in a wide-ranging roundup of
Bush-administration smear tactics, writing:
But other journalists
apparently remain ready to be used. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his
viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr. Clarke "wants
to make a few bucks, and that [in] his own personal life,
they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his
life as well."
This administration's reliance
on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics - even
compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to
abuse power - to use its control of the government to intimidate
potential critics.
On Wednesday,
Somerby incomparably skewered Blitzer's pathetic attempt to defend
himself against Krugman's charge that he was used. Yesterday,
Somerby was back, showing how Blitzer's idiocy had its roots in an
interview he conducted with Republican Party spokesman Jim Wilkinson
on March 22, when Wilkinson lied to Blitzer's face about Clarke and
Blitzer didn't have the wit or the guts to take him on.
Today
Krugman is back, putting a punctuation mark on the whole matter. He
writes:
Stung by my column, Mr.
Blitzer sought to justify his words, saying that his statement was
actually a question, and also saying that "I was not referring to
anything charged by so-called unnamed White House officials as
alleged today." Silly me: I "alleged" that Mr. Blitzer said
something because he actually said it, and described "so-called
unnamed" officials as unnamed because he didn't name them.
To put it mildly, there is no
excuse for Blitzer's laying down and then attempting to justify his
asleep-at-the-wheel act. Any members of the national media who were
still laboring under the misapprehension that they could get a
straight answer out of this White House should have at least figured
it out by last September, when Dick Cheney went on Meet the
Press and flat-out
lied to Tim Russert about
(among other things) whether he still receives money from
Halliburton. Russert was notably more energetic when he
interviewed
the president on February
8; the result, predictably, was a disaster for George W.
Bush.
The White House couldn't have made
it any clearer that lies and personal attacks will be crucial weapons
in its campaign arsenal this year. If Wolf Blitzer isn't prepared,
well, let him host a cooking show or something. It's war out
there.
RON CREWS, HATE-MONGER.
David Guarino reports in today's Boston Herald that a lesbian
foster mother is being investigated for allegedly
raping a 15-year-old girl
in her custody. Sadly, stories about foster parents sexually abusing
their charges are hardly unusual. But get this:
"It appears that children
in homosexual relationships are not as safe," said Ron Crews of
the Massachusetts Coalition for Marriage. "Homosexual
relationships are less safe."
Will Archbishop Seán
O'Malley distance himself from his sleazy political partner? You can
be sure he won't.
posted at 8:58 AM |
comment or permalink
Thursday, April 01, 2004
BANNED IN NIGERIA. The
so-called reform government of Nigeria has banned live BBC reports
from its airwaves. This story
on the BBC website doesn't do it justice - this morning I heard a
report on the BBC World Service (broadcast locally by
WBUR
Radio, 90.9 FM) that
featured an Orwellian interview with a Nigerian official, based in
London, as to how live foreign newscasts could endanger national
security.
MAKING SENSE OF FALLUJA.
News Dissector Danny Schechter's indispensable
weblog is the place to go
this morning for a media roundup of the horror in Falluja yesterday.
He writes:
Here, the US government is
caught in a trap of its own making: it is in too deep to leave and
has no real exit strategy because officials know how unprepared
the Iraqis in the US-appointed Governing Council are to run
things.
Meanwhile, the English-language
website of the Arab news organization Al-Jazeera is curiously subdued
on the attacks. The incident barely rates a tease on the
home
page, and the Falluja
killings and mutilations are relegated to the second item in a
roundup.
Interesting news judgment, given
how obsessively Al-Jazeera lingered over images of death and
dismemberment during the war last year.
Boston Globe columnist Jeff
Jacoby picked a
bad day to say how great
things are going in Iraq.
NEW IN THIS WEEK'S
PHOENIX. Boston's
dueling dailies, the
Globe and the Herald, have entered a new phase of their
long rivalry - one that threatens to consign the Herald to
irrelevance.
Also, why
can't you buy the anti-war
documentary Uncovered at Wal-Mart?
posted at 10:57 AM |
comment or permalink
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
STREAMING O'FRANKEN. I've
been listening to a bit of The O'Franken Factor on Air America
Radio, which doesn't have an outlet in Boston but which is streaming
live here.
I can't judge it from 45 minutes of intermittent listening,
obviously, but while I had it on Michael Moore dropped by, and then
Al Gore called in to say hello.
Gore got off a funny, asking,
"How's the drug-free thing working out?" Moore made a crack about
OxyContin, and Al Franken chimed in, "We've been drug-free now for
two hours and 40 minutes." Maybe they're taking the wrong
drugs, because it seemed pretty low-energy. You'd think they'd be
bouncing off the walls on Day One.
Franken and Gore couldn't get Moore
to apologize for supporting Ralph Nader in 2000, but Moore did say
he's backing John Kerry this time around.
Air America has got to pick up a
Boston outlet before the conventions. You'd think this would be one
the best markets for liberal radio in the country. But with just
about every station with a decent signal locked down by a
conglomerate, that may not be easy.
Anyway ... the streaming works just
fine, and it's also on Channel 167 on XM Satellite Radio. As for the
rest of the country, stay tuned.
MONKEYS MAUL KERRY. Kerry
knew it was coming, but he hasn't been particularly effective in
warding off the flying
monkeys of the Bush-Cheney
campaign.
That's the conclusion of the
Washington Post's Dan Balz, who reports
today that "attacks on John
F. Kerry by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, backed by
millions of dollars in negative ads, have wiped out the narrow lead
Kerry enjoyed at the beginning of the month and damaged his public
image."
MORE IRAQI HORROR. The
images out of the Iraqi town of Fallujah today are horrifying and
sickening - the burned bodies (and body parts) of four Americans
being dragged through the streets, beaten with sticks, and hung up
for public display.
The New York Times, which
covers the story here,
has also posted an AP video
that you need an extraordinarily strong stomach to watch. If you read
this
AP story at Yahoo News,
you'll also find a slideshow that is nothing short of
appalling.
It will be interesting to see what
the media ethicists say about showing these images. Two years ago,
the Phoenix touched off a controversy when it published on its
Web site a link to a propaganda video made by the Islamist terrorists
who kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The
video ends with an image of Pearl's severed head being held aloft.
The paper also published two small images from the video, one of them
post-decapitation. Click
for what I wrote about it at the time.
The Phoenix got some
support, but also received a lot of criticism. Publishing gruesome
images is always controversial, and should never be done without a
great deal of thought. The question is, are the pictures from
Fallujah somehow newsworthy in a way that the Pearl images were not?
And, if so, what is the standard?
And just in case you were wondering: I think they were both newsworthy. We shouldn't be forced to watch such images, but neither should we hide from them.
posted at 3:44 PM |
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Monday, March 29, 2004
WHITE DEATH.
Here
was the story of the weekend - Ken Holmes, a 37-year-old father of
five, hiked into the Pemigewasset Wilderness on January 12 and froze
to death. Garry Harrington's piece in the Boston Globe
Magazine portrays a man who was in excellent physical condition,
who packed plenty of cold-weather gear, but who nevertheless had an
exceedingly cavalier attitude about how quickly conditions can turn
life-threatening in New Hampshire's White Mountains.
I have my own memories of the Pemi.
In November 1987 my friend Brad and I set out on what we hoped would
be a three-day trip. It soon started snowing, and we ended up camping
right in the middle of the trail, with the snow piling up and the
temperature dropping into single digits. We couldn't get our
backpacking stove to light, so we ended up eating granola bars and
huddling in our sleeping bags. We clambered up the summit of
Owl's
Head the next morning and
then bugged out.
Eleven years later we were back,
hiking in a steady, at times heavy, rain over Columbus Day Weekend.
We camped out the first night. The second night, after making our way
over the summits of Bondcliff,
Bond,
West
Bond, and Zealand,
we talked our way into Zealand
Falls Hut, which had been
booked to capacity but had some vacancies because of the weather.
Zealand is open year-round. If Holmes had made it there, Harrington
notes, it might have saved his life.
In August 2001 I took my son, Tim,
and his friend Troy, then both 10, up to Galehead
Hut for their first
extended hiking experience. Accompanying Harrington's article is a
photo of Holmes's backpack in front of Galehead. I've got a picture of
Tim, Troy, and me taken in more or less that very spot.
For those of us who love the White
Mountains, Harrington's story was both a thriller and a cautionary
tale.
HOW DID KELLEY DO IT? "It's
like medical malpractice - doctors don't turn one another in." Howard
Kurtz offers
some insights in this
morning's Washington Post into how former USA Today
reporter Jack Kelley got away with it for so long.
posted at 9:13 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
