BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Thursday, March 31, 2005
A MEDIA LOG DEBATE! Tim
Graham, of Brent Bozell's Media
Research Center, writes to
Media Log:
Dan: Like all your liberal
friends, you're so defensive of Michael you won't even acknowledge
facts that make him any shade less heroic. [Note: I assume
Graham is referring to this.]
The common-law wife and the two kids, for starters. You can try
and build a case that Michael's not Dr. Evil. But it's sloppy to
argue that because some question Michael or Judge Greer, we're all
building up hatred. I could just as well turn that around and say
every liberal's critique of George Bush's war in Iraq, using terms
like "Bush lied, people died," calls on all the crazies to
assassinate him.
Media Log writes back to
Graham:
That doesn't make Terri
Schiavo any less brain-dead for the past 15 years. It doesn't
change the fact that most of her brain was gone, and had been
replaced with spinal fluid. It doesn't change Jay Wolfson's
opinion. It doesn't change the fact that people like Hammesfahr
and Weller were coming out and reporting things that simply could
not be true. You are focusing on the wrong issues.
Please point out where I have
ever called for Bush's assassination, or said anything even
remotely supportive of anyone who did. For that matter, please
point out one single liberal - as opposed to some left-wing
nutjob - who's ever called for Bush's assassination.
"But it's sloppy to argue
that because some question Michael or Judge Greer, we're all
building up hatred." Come on, Tim, you know that's not what I
said. I said that the almost-certain lies of people like
Hammesfahr and Weller, aided and abetted by the likes of Hannity
and Scarborough, were whipping people into a frenzy, since they
were painting a picture of a sentient woman who could be
rehabilitated. Hell, if there was one scintilla of evidence that
they were credible, I'd probably have been outside the hospice
demonstrating with the disability-rights activists. If you're
going to criticize me, please try to be accurate.
posted at 3:43 PM |
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THE END. At long last, Terri
Schiavo has died.
I've got a piece
in the new Phoenix on how the media-and-political circus
surrounding this case may have placed Michael Schiavo's life in
danger for many years to come.
Taking the opposite view is the
great Nat Hentoff, writing
in this week's Village Voice. Obviously I think he's wrong,
but this is well worth reading.
TINA GETS IT. It's odd
enough that I find myself nodding in agreement with everything Tina
Brown says (well, not the bit about Nancy Grace's nostrils) that I've
got to share this
with you:
The current mania for any
story with a religious angle is just the latest index of the
post-election angst in executive suites about the terror of being
out of touch with suburban mega-churches and other manifestations
of the supposed Real America. God forbid, so to speak, that anyone
should stand up and suggest that Mozart might be as worthwhile as
NASCAR, or that it might be as important for the soul to read
Philip Roth as the hokey bromides of "The Purpose Driven
Life."
Bring back the cultural
elite!
posted at 10:57 AM |
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Wednesday, March 30, 2005
A LIFE LESSON. If you read
Brian MacQuarrie's horrifying
story on the Wilkersons all
the way through yesterday, you would have learned that evangelical
yuppie strivers Michael and MarCee not only condemn Gandhi and Jews
to hell, but aren't so keen on Catholics, either. Check this
out:
Like many evangelical
congregations, Hope Church is nondenominational. Its members
include former mainstream Protestants as well as one-time
Catholics "who now are Christians," Michael says. "The Catholic
religion? I'm not too sure that Jesus is a big, integral part of
that."
Perhaps MacQuarrie and Jack Thomas
can arrange a meeting between the Wilkersons and Ric Teves so that
Michael can explain to Ric where he's gone astray. Thomas has a
wonderful
piece in today's
Globe about Teves, a State Police trooper who's caring for his
severely brain-damaged partner, Ellen Engelhardt, also a trooper.
(Suzanne Kreiter's photos are equally wonderful, but you'll have to
take my word for it, since they didn't make it to the online version.
Grrr.)
But Teves and Engelhardt are not
only Catholics, they're both divorced, and they (gasp) bought a home
and lived together without benefit of marriage.
Hey, Wilkersons - sin alert! It's
too late to set Engelhardt straight, but surely you can help Teves
see the light. That is, if he's not too busy suctioning out his
girlfriend's tracheostomy tube.
At least the Wilkersons are
Christians. Ric Teves is merely a saint.
posted at 10:43 AM |
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TUBE TALK. There is
something weirdly coincidental that on a morning when Terri Schiavo's
parents are making yet
another legal attempt to
have her feeding tube reinserted, we learn that both Jerry
Falwell and the
pope
are on life support. (Okay, the pope not so much. But I need three to
make a trend, right?)
posted at 7:08 AM |
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Tuesday, March 29, 2005
BURNING LOVE. I've always
figured that the best thing about going to hell would be seeing all
my friends again. I was wrong. Michael and MarCee Wilkerson
tell
the Boston Globe's Brian MacQuarrie that I'll get to meet
Gandhi, too. Woo-hoo!
Nice to know that the Mahatma and I
will be sharing the eternal torments of the damned while a couple of
BMW-driving yuppies from Cincinnati will be doing the halo-and-wings
thing.
Memo to Democrats: stop trying to
appeal to these folks. They sound like very nice people. They also
happen to hate us.
GOD BLESS HARRIET KLAUSNER.
When my book on dwarfism, Little
People, was published a
year and a half ago, the first person to review it on
Amazon.com
was a woman named Harriet Klausner. She liked it, Mikey, she really
liked it.
Today the Wall Street
Journal's Joanne Kaufman profiles
Klausner, who has reviewed nearly 9000 books for Amazon, and often
plows through four or five a day.
posted at 1:54 PM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
