BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Thursday, July 31, 2003
"We are all sinners."
President Bush tried to walk a moderate path in his news conference
yesterday when he was asked about same-sex marriage. "I
am mindful that we're all sinners,"
he said, sending a clear message that he sees hatemongering toward
gays and lesbians to be as "sinful" as having non-biblical
sex.
Thanks a lot, Mr.
President.
The big issue on the table right
now, other than same-sex marriage, is sodomy, a concept that has
become nebulous and slippery as cultural mores have
changed.
Recently, of course, the US Supreme
Court threw out Texas's anti-sodomy law, which some predict will pave
the way, eventually, for legal recognition of gay marriage. Bush
opposes such evolution, much as Darwin's version continues to be
opposed by many of Bush's supporters. In the end, opposition to
either type of evolution is likely to be equally futile.
What's interesting here, though, is
that Bush appears to regard sodomy as a sin, yet he does not
explicitly define sodomy. He appears to define it as sex between two
men or two women. But is that right?
Sodomy laws traditionally banned
anal or oral sex between men and women, even if they were married.
Over time, anti-sodomy laws came to be used almost exclusively as a
way to persecute -- and occasionally prosecute -- gay men and
lesbians for what they do in private.
A far better definition of sodomy
was offered in March by Andrew
Sullivan (sub.
req.). Writing in the New Republic, he
asserted:
It's worth noting, then,
that from the very beginning sodomy and homosexuality were two
categorically separate things. The correct definition of sodomy --
then and now -- is simply non-procreative sex, whether practiced
by heterosexuals or homosexuals. It includes oral sex,
masturbation, mutual masturbation, contraceptive sex, coitus
interruptus, and anal sex -- any sex in which semen does not find
its way into a uterus.
I realize this reads like a Ken
Starr legal brief; my apologies for such dirty talk this early in the
day. But this is important stuff, because Sullivan is absolutely
right. If George and Laura get it on in ways guaranteed not to
produce any more little Bushes -- and, given the First Couple's ages,
it's safe to assume that they do take some precautions, or
perhaps no longer need to -- then they are committing sodomy just as
surely as those two guys rousted by the Texas cops.
Yes, indeed. We are all sinners.
So, Mr. President, why won't you allow homosexual sinners the same
rights that heterosexual sinners such as you and the First Lady
presumably enjoy?
Note to the irony-impaired: Media
Log does not actually consider any consensual, nonadulterous
sex between two adults to be a sin.
posted at 9:13 AM |
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No whining, please. I love
the Reporters
Committee for Freedom of the Press.
No, really. I mean, I don't know much about what it does, but I'm
glad it's out there theoretically fighting for the First
Amendment.
But this is kind of weird.
According to a
dispatch recently posted on
the organization's website, we are supposed to be up in arms that the
Eagle County Sheriff's Department posted a mug shot of Kobe Bryant
online that is not "suitable for print publication."
Well, here's
the photo. It doesn't look
too bad to me. Some jaggies around the edges, but I've seen
newspapers print a lot worse.
Don't take this as Media Log's
commentary on any of the free-speech/fair-trial arguments
going on right now regarding Bryant and the woman he is charged with
sexually assaulting. This is just one small part of it.
But the Reporters Committee,
frankly, is being ridiculous.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Free and news-free. You'll
find more news about the Boston Metro this week than
you'll find in the Metro.
In the new issue of
CommonWealth magazine, Jeffrey
Klineman (free reg.
req.) offers a smart take on the thin freebie tab, which has been
a hit on subways since its debut two years ago.
Globe columnist
Steve
Bailey writes today that
the Globe is thinking about starting its own competitor to the
Metro.
And when I asked Herald
publisher Pat
Purcell last month about
rumors that he was thinking of launching a Metro-like
publication, he told me, "We're taking a look at doing something
there. It has been an annoyance and has probably impacted circulation
a little bit."
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Harvard's secret police. The
Globe's Jenna
Russell reports today that
the Harvard Crimson is suing the university to gain access to
the campus police log -- a public record under Massachusetts law, but
Harvard is claiming an exemption on the grounds that it is a private
institution.
The students argue, logically
enough, that since Harvard police officers have the power of arrest,
they should be held to the same standard as police officers
everywhere.
Here's some background. On July 11,
the Crimson reported that the Harvard police were
cutting
back on the amount of
information they would release to the public -- and thus, by
extension, to the paper.
Then, on July 18, the
Crimson reported that the police had decided to
loosen
up a bit, although they
were still refusing to release as much information as they had
before. Among the forbidden news: reports of attempted suicide and
sexual assault.
Suppressing such news would appear
to be more about protecting Harvard's image than about any legitimate
police function.
As civil-liberties lawyer and
Phoenix contributor Harvey Silverglate told the
Crimson, "You would think that if they're really professional
they would act like real police officers."
posted at 8:38 AM |
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Tuesday, July 29, 2003
In Lowell,
college radio goes corporate. Students, faculty members, and
community activists will meet with UMass Lowell chancellor William
Hogan and other administrators on Wednesday to protest a contract to
turn over 25 weekly hours of programming on the student-run radio
station to the Lowell Sun.
Patrick Murphy,
music director for WJUL Radio (91.5 FM), estimates that as many as
100 to 200 people may turn out for the meeting, which will begin at 6
p.m. in the multi-purpose room of the North Campus
Library.
"This station has
been student-run for 50 years, and they came in behind our backs and
set all this up without even coming to us first," says Murphy. "This
could affect every college station everywhere."
In an age of
increasing corporate media concentration, Murphy fears that the
relationship with the Sun -- owned by Dean Singleton's
Denver-based MediaNews Group -- will lead to the "homogenization" of
a station that bills itself as "Real Underground Radio." Murphy also
warns that the Sun's involvement may eventually lead to the
demise of programs that serve Lowell's ethnic communities, such as
Café Latino and Voice of Cambodian
Children.
"Is a Cambodian
show profitable? Absolutely not. But is it essential and important?
Absolutely," says Murphy.
Expressing similar
concerns is Victoria Fahlberg, director of One Lowell, a coalition of
a dozen immigrant and social-services organizations. She plans to
attend the Wednesday meeting to press for assurances that immigrant
programming will remain intact, and that the Sun will not be
given even more hours as time goes on.
"People thought
that before any contract was signed that they would talk to them
about it. And that's where people are feeling really uncomfortable --
it's that they feel that their voice wasn't heard, Fahlberg says.
"There's a trust issue, I guess, at this point."
But Christine
Dunlap, the university's executive director of communications and
marketing, who will oversee the relationship with the Sun,
says such fears are groundless -- although she concedes that, "in
retrospect, I think we should have been talking to the students more
than we did."
According to Dunlap
and Kendall Wallace, the Sun's president and publisher, the
Sun will produce a weekday news show from 5 to 10 a.m. Dunlap
calls it "very much like WBZ, but with a Merrimack Valley focus," a
reference to Boston's top-rated all-news station. Wallace says it
will be a cross between WBZ and public radio, with news, sports,
weather, and traffic. There will be no advertising, although Wallace
says commercial underwriters will be sought -- an arrangement that
will be familiar to anyone who listens to Boston's two big public
stations, WBUR and WGBH.
With a range of
about 15 to 20 miles, WJUL, with 1400 watts of power, reaches just
about all of the Merrimack Valley, Dunlap says.
As for what the
relationship will mean for the future of the station, Wallace and
Dunlap paint a positive picture: a full-time staff person, whose
$40,000-a-year salary will be picked up by the Sun; a new
studio, also to be paid for by the Sun, which will most likely
be located in Fox Hall, a residence and student-activities center
(the Tsongas Arena, an early contender, has been ruled out); and
opportunities for internships.
Dunlap insists that
the arrangement does not signal any reduction in the university's
commitment to community programming on 'JUL, and that the 25 hours a
week being turned over to the Sun will not be increased. She
does note that a yet-to-be named editorial board of students,
faculty, and community representatives may decide to make further
changes in programming, but says of the students, "If they're willing
to work with us, I honestly believe it will be a better experience
for everybody."
The partnership
with the Sun, she adds, grew out of talks that began about a
year ago, and that coincided with a mandate from the UMass board of
trustees to maximize the use of its radio stations at all of its
campuses.
Wallace says the
Sun has wanted to get into the radio business for some time,
and that it may buy a commercial station if the opportunity presents
itself. The Sun has set up a nonprofit entity to manage the
WJUL show, which will be hosted by a Sun staff member, John
Collins, and which could debut in as soon as two weeks.
As for whether the
move had its origins in Lowell or Denver, Wallace says, "MediaNews is
one of the leading forces in the country for cross-ownership, but
they haven't driven this, no. They're aware of the idea, they like
it, they think it's a step in the right direction."
It may turn out
that what the relationship represents is worse than the reality. As
Dunlap notes, the show will be broadcast at a time when most students
are "either sleeping or in class." And -- let's be honest -- it could
be a boon to Merrimack Valley residents looking for local news and
traffic reports at the beginning of the day.
At the same time,
though, the Sun program constitutes a serious commercial
encroachment by a media conglomerate into college radio -- the
closest thing there is to independent radio in the age of
deregulation.
Murphy says that
WJUL and similar small college stations are about the only place
where noncommercial punk, hip-hop, and the like can be heard these
days. The Sun agreement would not appear to threaten that, but
who's to say what another financially strapped public university
might do in league with a media conglomerate?
Murphy rightly
observes that this is about a lot more than one show on one station.
Indeed, he says, it's about "music and ideas that would otherwise go
unheard and that aren't heard anywhere else on the dial."
posted at 5:16 PM |
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Lies, damn lies, and polls.
No sooner did I post an
item about the latest
USA Today poll regarding attitudes toward homosexuality than
TB and JVC pointed me to another, later, story that appears to place
a
completely different interpretation
on the same numbers.
In today's USAT, Susan Page
reports:
Americans have become
significantly less accepting of homosexuality since a Supreme
Court decision that was hailed as clearing the way for new gay
civil rights, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll has found. After several
years of growing tolerance, the survey shows a return to a level
of more traditional attitudes last seen in the mid-1990s.
The headline: an unequivocal "Poll
Shows Backlash on Gay Issues."
Yet I wasn't hallucinating when I
posted this
link to Page's Monday
story, headlined "Gay Rights Tough to Sharpen into Political 'Wedge
Issue.'" Here's the money graf:
Strategists in both
parties caution that the public's views are changing too rapidly
to provide an easy answer. A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll indicates
that public attitudes toward homosexuals are in the midst of a
transformation, though the issues involved remain controversial.
Analysts say the shift is fueled by a self-perpetuating cycle:
More gay men and lesbians are open about their sexual orientation,
prompting some of their family members and co-workers to revise
their views. That in turn makes it easier for others to come out
of the closet.
Regarding the sliding numbers, Page
wrote in her earlier story, "Analysts at Gallup said the question
would be asked again to test whether the finding reflected a change
in attitudes or a temporary blip." Her follow-up suggests no such
doubt about the veracity of the results.
A careful read of both stories
suggests that Page was being cautiously optimistic about the poll's
implications for gays and lesbians on Monday, and cautiously
pessimistic today. I find it interesting that Monday's story ran on
page 10A, whereas today's is on the front.
So what is going on
here?
posted at 11:10 AM |
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Crittenden's souvenirs. The
Herald's gung-ho embedded reporter, Jules Crittenden, has not
only been cleared in the matter of those souvenirs he grabbed in
Iraq, but the US Customs Service has actually returned most of them
to him.
At least that's what
this
account in today's
Herald says.
Here's an
April 25 Globe story
by Geoff Edgers and Mark Jurkowitz on the initial inquiry. And here
is a commentary by the Poynter Institute's Bob
Steele that was posted to
Poynter.org on April 23.
Crittenden shouldn't have done it;
Steele went so far as to call what Crittenden and other reporters did
an example of "terrible ethical judgment." Plenty of other reporters
came back empty-handed.
But apparently Crittenden has been
proved right about this: it wasn't a criminal matter.
posted at 8:50 AM |
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Bush and gays. Q: Why is
Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, generally regarded as a
moderate, pushing for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex
marriage, while George W. Bush, a conservative's conservative, is
waffling? A: Because Karl Rove is smarter than Frist.
A new
USA Today poll shows
that Americans are far more accepting of gay and lesbian
relationships than they were just a few years ago -- and that, as
more people come out, the acceptance continues to grow. Susan Page
writes:
More than half of those
surveyed said a friend, relative or co-worker had personally told
them that he or she was gay; that's more than double the
percentage in 1985. Nearly one-third said they had become more
accepting of gay people in recent years. Just 8 percent said they
had become less accepting.
That's why Bush is ignoring Pat
Robertson. Unfortunately, it also explains why he's playing the good
cop to Frist's bad. To win election in 2004, Bush needs to mobilize
his fundamentalist base while not scaring away moderates.
The solution: use surrogates to
appease the wingnuts while staying above the fray. Progressives need
to call Bush on this as loudly and as frequently as they can, and
make sure he doesn't get away with it.
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Monday, July 28, 2003
Conventional chaos. With the
Democratic Convention scheduled to begin in exactly one year, the
Globe and the Herald today both take a look at how
Boston is going to handle thousands of delegates, media, and
hangers-on. And it ain't pretty.
On page one of the Globe,
Yvonne
Abraham and Corey Dade
report that "getting through the next 12 months requires $50 million,
and logistical nightmares for officials and ordinary residents that
are becoming clearer, and more daunting, by the day." How's this for
starters: the likelihood that North Station will be closed for the
week.
The editorial
page tries to be
optimistic, but betrays some jitters: "Labor agreements are still
unsigned, and the Boston police could create difficulties if they
attempt to use public safety at the convention as leverage with Mayor
Menino. Their long-term interests would be better served by showing a
positive side of Boston to the nation." Yeah, no kidding.
Herald columnist
Joe
Sciacca (sub. req.)
begins somewhat more directly: "Starting today, you have one year to
plot your escape."
I hate to be a pessimist (actually, that's not true), but does
anyone think this is going to work?
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Arithmetical abnormalities.
The Globe "Ideas" section yesterday ran a piece by
Harvard
economist Benjamin Friedman
arguing that the Bush deficit will bring economic growth to a halt.
Certainly Friedman appears to be well within the economic mainstream
in that regard.
But Friedman's third paragraph
begins, "One war, two terrorist attacks, and three tax cuts later
..." Hmm. Isn't that one terrorist attack and two wars? Or am I
missing something?
posted at 10:43 AM |
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New in this week's
Phoenix. Well, it's been out since last Thursday, but I'm
just back from vacation. I've got a piece on the Bush
administration's prevarications on why it wanted to go to war with
Iraq -- a record
of deception that goes
right back to 9/11, and of which the Nigerien uranium is just a small
part.
posted at 10:42 AM |
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Saturday, July 19, 2003
Summer vacation. Media Log
will go into suspended animation this week. There will be no posts
until July 28 or thereabouts.
posted at 10:06 AM |
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It's winter down there! Greg
Tingle, the proprietor of a website called Media
Man Australia, has
published a
long Q&A with me. He
was kind enough to let me flog my book, Little
People: Learning to See the World Through My Daughter's
Eyes. Please have a
look -- and check out his site.
posted at 10:06 AM |
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No blood for oil
redux. Media Log has always found ridiculous the
notion that the war in Iraq was all about oil. No doubt oil had
something to do with moving Iraq higher up the priority list than,
say, North Korea or Congo. But if the Bushies really wanted Iraq's
oil that bad, then how come they didn't grab it 12 years
ago?
But now I'm beginning to think the
"no blood for oil" crowd might have been right all along. ER passes
on this
link to Larry Klayman's
Judicial Watch website, which reports that documents turned over
under court order by Dick Cheney's secret energy task force include a
map of Iraq's oilfields and pipelines, as well as similar maps of
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
The documents are dated March 2001,
according to Judicial Watch. Hmm. Do you suppose Cheney might have
believed the US would have access to Iraqi oil at some point in the
future? Where would he have gotten that idea?
Obligatory weasel words: by itself,
this proves nothing. But there are some pretty serious questions that
need answering.
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Friday, July 18, 2003
Drip, drip, drip. No matter
how much cover Tony Blair tries to give George W. Bush, the news for
the White House keeps getting worse.
Today the Washington Post's
Walter
Pincus and Dana Priest
report that the State Department received those forged Niger uranium
documents three months before the State of the Union address -- and
four months before the documents were finally turned over to UN
weapons inspectors. Write Pincus and Priest:
State Department officials
could not say yesterday why they did not turn over the documents
when the inspectors asked for them in December.
Both the Post and the New
York Times' James
Risen and David Sanger
offer details on how National Security Council staffer Robert Joseph
pushed to include the phony Niger connection in the State of the
Union even though CIA director George Tenet had personally acted to
keep it out of Bush's October 7 speech.
Meanwhile, former secretary of
defense Caspar
Weinberger comes riding to
Bush's defense with a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece (free
registration required) that attempts to resurrect the Niger story.
Earth to Cap: perhaps there is something to it, as Blair
insists. The issue is the White House's cavalier treatment of a
forgery. But, then, lest we forget, Weinberger received a
presidential pardon from Bush's father.
Loyalty counts.
The sneering subhead on
Weinberger's piece: "How many electoral votes does Niger have,
anyway?" Well, gosh, I guess that would be zero. Can't argue with
that.
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Thursday, July 17, 2003
Despite everything, goodwill in
Baghdad. Late blogging this morning -- my home Internet
connection was down. I heard the results of a
fascinating poll (PDF file)
on the BBC while driving to work. Despite everything, a survey of
adults in Baghdad shows that precisely half supports the US-British
invasion and most definitely does not want Saddam Hussein back in
power.
According to the poll, by the
British polling company YouGov, 50 percent "think that America and
Britain's war against Saddam's regime was right" and 27 percent think
it was "wrong." Those expressing no opinion totaled 23 percent --
which seems weird until you remember that they were probably
terrified to answer.
The support comes even though large
pluralities believe the primary reasons for the war were oil and
Israel.
By a margin of 29 percent to nine
percent, respondents say they would rather live under US rule than
under Saddam -- even though they also say that their lives were
better a year ago than they are today (47 percent to 32 percent).
Optimism prevails: by 52 percent to 11 percent, they believe their
lives will be better five years from now than they were under
Saddam.
And by 75 percent to 14 percent,
Baghdad residents say that Iraq is a more dangerous place today than
it was before the invasion.
What this shows is that even if you
believe we blundered into Iraq under false pretenses (and if you
believe that, you would be correct), there is still more than a
decent chance of salvaging this -- if we get about the business of
restoring the country's shattered infrastructure and continue to turn
power over to Iraqis.
Sometimes it's difficult to take
the Fitzgeraldian view and hold two contradictory ideas at the same
time. But we need to find a way to investigate the prevarications of
the Bush administration while at the same time realizing that a
significant number of Iraqis do see us as liberators, and are
depending on our willingness to follow through.
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New in this week's
Phoenix. The surprise issue of the 2004 presidential
campaign may turn out to be same-sex
marriage.
Plus, newly anointed New York
Times executive editor Bill
Keller turned down another
career path several years ago: the chance to edit the Boston
Globe.
posted at 11:13 AM |
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Wednesday, July 16, 2003
A bulletin from Planet W.
Salon blogger Joe
Conason has picked up on a
truly weird statement that Our Only President made in a story
reported by Dana
Milbank and Dana Priest of
the Washington Post.
George W. Bush said that he decided
to go to war with Iraq after having given Saddam Hussein "a chance to
allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."
Do I need to point out that Hans
Blix, Mohamed ElBareidi, and company were in Iraq, diligently
looking for weapons, and left only when the threat of a US invasion
came imminent?
Asks Conason: "What possessed the
president to make an assertion that everyone on the planet knows to
be untrue? And who is going to take the responsibility for this
one?"
posted at 3:01 PM |
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Searching for those WMDs.
The New Republic is back with another vital contribution
to the debate over the so-called imminent threat posed by Saddam
Hussein.
Last month, the magazine ran a
report by John
Judis and Spencer Ackerman
demonstrating how the White House and the Defense Department leaned
on the intelligence community to cook the books in favor of a US-led
invasion.
This week, it carries a dispatch by
Los Angeles Times reporter Bob
Drogin (subscription
required) that asks: what ever happened to those WMDs? Drogin's
well-researched guess is that Saddam's weapons program ceased in the
mid 1990s under pressure from UN inspectors and economic
sanctions.
Now, this gets a little
complicated. There's no question that Saddam lied repeatedly when
inspections started up again late last year. Even Hans Blix said it
appeared Saddam was holding out. Why didn't Saddam just come clean
and save himself?
The most likely explanation,
according to Drogin, is that even though Saddam was telling the truth
when he asserted that Iraq didn't have WMDs, he wanted to make it
look like he was lying in order not to appear weak.
Certainly US officials could have
been fooled by this stance. But combined with the earlier story,
showing that the administration was more concerned with building a
case than with finding the truth, Drogin's article is damning
indeed.
And remember, the New
Republic was prowar, vigorously so.
posted at 7:58 AM |
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On bended knee. I've got one
bone to pick with Robert
Kuttner's column in today's
Boston Globe: he can't be sure that George W. Bush knew the
Niger-uranium evidence was fake.
Other than that, Kuttner offers a
first-rate indictment of the White House's lying ways, and of the
supine media that let the Bushies get away with it.
posted at 7:58 AM |
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Not the corrections column.
Check out what InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds does when he's
caught
making a mistake. I'm
surprised.
posted at 7:58 AM |
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Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Not on Keller's agenda. You
wouldn't expect a blogger as savvy as InstaPundit
Glenn Reynolds to make a rookie mistake, but he does today. After
blasting a column by the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof,
he
asks, "I wonder if Bill
Keller will exercise some adult supervision."
I wonder how Reynolds made it this
far without knowing that the editorial and op-ed pages are under the
control of editorial-page editor Gail Collins -- who, in turn,
reports directly to publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
After all, the opinion pages'
isolation from the news operation is one of the reasons that Howell
Raines was treated with such suspicion when he was promoted from
editorial-page editor to executive editor.
posted at 10:16 AM |
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Baron's stock soars.
Boston Globe editor Marty Baron is staying put, he tells
his own paper's Mark
Jurkowitz and the Boston
Herald's Greg
Gatlin. Baron's statement
should put an end to speculation that he'll be brought to New York to
serve as managing editor under newly
named executive editor Bill Keller.
But Baron's stock is clearly at an
all-time high. He and Los Angeles Times managing editor Dean
Baquet were the only two outsiders who were seriously mentioned as
possible successors to Howell Raines, who resigned in the aftermath
of the Jayson Blair scandal. (Not that they were true outsiders,
having both worked as editors at the NY Times.)
Both Jurkowitz and Gatlin quote
Baron as saying all the right things about Keller. But the reverse is
also true. In 2001, shortly after Baron had been named editor of the
Globe, Keller
told me that he had become
a Baron fan during Baron's stint in New York.
Saying he had recommended Baron
"enthusiastically" both to Globe publisher Richard Gilman and
Times Company chairman Arthur Sulizberger Jr., Keller commented:
"He's an editor of terrific judgment and integrity. I'm partial to
editors who tell you what they think without nursing some political
agenda, and Marty did that while he was here."
Yesterday's announcement marks
quite a reversal of fortune for Keller, who was passed over in favor
of Raines two years ago. To be sure, Keller had carved out a great
job for himself, writing both a column for the op-ed page and long
pieces for the Times Magazine. But there's no doubt he wanted
the top job.
He could have dealt himself out of
the running several years ago when, during his stint as Times
managing editor under Joseph Lelyveld, he was asked whether he would
ever consider taking the editor's position at the Globe. He
said no. Months later, when Globe editor Matt Storin retired,
the spot went to Baron instead.
Now, not only is Keller right where
he wants to be, but Baron is in an ideal position: editing the
Globe, publicly identified as a hot property, and with someone
with whom he has a good relationship running the
Times.
posted at 9:58 AM |
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Those WMDs, discovered at
last. This may not last long, so hurry up and do it now. Thanks
to JM.
- Go
to Google.
- Enter the phrase "weapons of
mass destruction" (use quotation marks).
- Click on "I'm Feeling Lucky."
You'll get what looks like an error
page. Read carefully.
posted at 9:58 AM |
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Monday, July 14, 2003
Dylan's Japanese connection.
News that Bob Dylan had lifted extensively from a Japanese book on
his 2001 "Love and Theft" CD sent me running for Bob Spitzer's
Dylan: A Biography (1989). Sure enough, just as I had
remembered, I found Spitzer's account of an interview with Rob
Stoner, who played bass on Dylan's 1975 Desire album and in
the Rolling Thunder Revue. Stoner's recollection of a conversation he
once had with Dylan in New York City is worth quoting at some
length:
At three o'clock in the
morning, in a city once referred to as "the most dangerous place
on earth," Bob Dylan and Rob Stoner went on a walking tour that
lasted until the sun came up. "We just wandered around until
dawn," Stoner recalls. "Bob staring off into space with his hands
in his pockets, walking with a bounce in his step. Taking it all
in. Later I learned that this was something he did in every major
city in the country. No one recognizes him and it allows him to
feel completely free and relaxed."
As usual, Bob was preoccupied
with plans for the tour, but mostly they talked about obscure rock
'n roll songs. Stoner was a connoisseur of old rockabilly
standards. He owns a priceless collection of R&B 78s,
including the entire Sun Records catalogue and hundreds of
southern "race" records, and as the two men walked they tried to
stump each other with a list of their favorite titles and
corresponding singles. Bob was no slouch when it came to
rockabilly. "He knew almost everything I threw at him," Stoner
remembers. "Not just the titles but the entire lyric, too. He'd go
into a verse like he was singing it only a couple hours before.
The extent of his knowledge was mind-boggling."
Very cautiously, Stoner broached
a subject that had been nagging him for some time. "Ever hear a
tune called 'Bertha Lou'?" he asked Bob.
Bob nodded confidently. "Sure.
Johnny Burnette and his trio. 19 ... 57."
"Fifty-six," Stoner corrected
him, "but that's pretty good, man." They walked another hundred
feet or so in silence. "The reason I asked is that it's really
similar to one of your songs." In fact, it was almost a
note-for-note duplication of "Rita Mae," from the Desire
sessions. The melodies were exactly the same, and Bob's scansion
followed Burnette's pattern to a rhyme.
"Oh, yeah?" Bob remarked, but it
was a closing statement if Stoner had ever heard one.
"He never even asked which song
of his I was referring to," Stoner says nonplussed. "He didn't
care, and at that moment I realized that the line between
plagiarism and adaption was so blurred that it wasn't even an
issue for him."
A quick search of BobDylan.com
turns up a song from 1975 called "Rita
May," written by Dylan and
Jacques Levy, that has apparently never been released. But Stoner's
recollection neatly ties in with a piece in Saturday's New York
Times by Jon
Pareles on the Japanese
connection, who notes that Dylan has always operated as someone who
blends together lyrics and music from a variety of sources. Writes
Pereles:
The absolutely original
artist is an extremely rare and possibly imaginary creature,
living in some isolated habitat where no previous works or
traditions have left any impression. Like virtually every artist,
Mr. Dylan carries on a continuing conversation with the past. He's
reacting to all that culture and history offer, not pretending
they don't exist. Admiration and iconoclasm, argument and
extension, emulation and mockery -- that's how individual
artists and the arts themselves evolve. It's a process that is
neatly summed up in Mr. Dylan's album title "Love and
Theft," which itself is a quotation from a book on minstrelsy
by Eric Lott.
The extent to which Dylan, er,
lovingly stole lines from a little-known Japanese book, Junichi
Saga's Confessions of a Yakuza, is nevertheless a surprise.
The details were reported last Tuesday in the Wall Street
Journal by Jonathan
Eig and Sebastian Moffett.
Even Dylanologist Christopher Ricks of Boston University, who never
has a bad word to say about Zimmy, comes off in the Journal piece as a tad disappointed.
A big deal? Not really. Dylan has
always been pretty transparent about the way he works, even if -- on
this particular occasion -- he borrowed from a source so obscure that
it's a wonder it was ever discovered. Still, Dylan plays it both ways
to an uncomfortable extent: he pieces together bits of found culture,
sticks his copyright on it, and collects the royalties.
At the very least, as Pareles notes
in the Times, Dylan should be generous the next time a rap
musician asks permission to sample one of his songs.
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Uh, sorry about that. On the
second thought, the New York Times tell us, TVT Records'
Steven Gottlieb is not litigious and has not lost
control of his company. And thus we have another day, another
"Editor's
Note," and another
massive
corrective story.
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Dept. of shameless
self-promotion. I have reconfigured DanKennedy.net
to promote my book on the culture of dwarfism, Little People:
Learning to See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes, which will
be published by Rodale in October. Please have a look.
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Friday, July 11, 2003
"Give Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz the
boot." H.D.S.
Greenway explains why this
morning in a column in the Boston Globe:
The Pentagon seems to have
believed that Iraqi army units and policemen would come over to
the American side with their forces intact and begin working for
the Americans. It seems not to have occurred to them that another
scenario might unfold, that the soldiers and police would simply
melt away and that chaos would take over. The great failure of
Pentagon planning was that there was no Plan B if Plan A failed.
After trying to run Iraq on the cheap, Rumsfeld this week doubled
his estimates for the cost of maintaining troops in Iraq.
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz aren't going
anywhere, but that doesn't mean Greenway is wrong.
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A near-death experience.
Would same-sex marriage have helped Lisa Craig, Debbie Riley, and
their kids? In this morning's Boston Herald, reporter Jessica
Heslam describes a
horrifying Fourth of July attack
in East Boston that nearly cost Craig her life.
You could plausibly argue that
marriage would not impress the boneheads who preyed on this family.
Still, by normalizing gay and lesbian relationships, society can send
subtle messages about the way such relationships are
perceived.
It's rare, after all, to hear of
racist goons setting upon mixed-race couples anymore. So too could it
be with gay and lesbian couples.
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Media Log on the air. I'll
be Pat
Whitley's guest at 9 a.m.
today on WRKO Radio (AM 680). The subject will be 'RKO's decision to
return homophobic talk-show host to the airwaves after just a one-day
suspension.
If I survive, I'll also be on
Greater
Boston's Friday "Beat
the Press" roundup tonight on WGBH-TV (7 p.m. on Channel 2, midnight
on Channel 44).
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Thursday, July 10, 2003
Shannon O'Brien, on the other
side. Would somebody please tell me why this is a good
idea?
WLVI-TV (Channel 56) has announced
that former state treasurer Shannon
O'Brien is joining the station
as a "special assignment reporter," and "will focus on helping
Massachusetts' residents navigate consumer or governmental concerns.
The content will be driven by O'Brien's political savvy, insider
experience and law background."
Ethical concerns about the
revolving door aside, I just can't imagine how this is going to help
Channel 56 in terms of ratings (O'Brien didn't exactly connect with
voters in her 2002 gubernatorial campaign), credibility, genuine
usefulness, or anything else.
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Is Baron back in the game?
New York Post media reporter Keith Kelly says that Boston
Globe editor Marty
Baron was spied in the
New York Times newsroom yesterday, fueling speculation that
he's in line to become the Times managing editor -- most
likely under Bill Keller, widely identified as the leading candidate
to replace Howell Raines as executive editor. (Via Romenesko.)
Even before Raines and managing
editor Gerald Boyd resigned over the Jayson Blair scandal and its
attendant fallout, Baron was identified as a leading contender for
one of the top two jobs. The fact is that there just aren't all that
many big-time editors anymore, especially ones who -- like Baron --
have some Times experience under their belt.
Baron, a former Editor &
Publisher "Editor of the Year," won Pulitzers at both the
Miami Herald and the Globe, the latter for the paper's
monumental efforts in covering the pedophile-priest crisis in the
Catholic Church.
In the past few weeks, though,
Baron's chances had seemed to fade. As it has become increasingly
likely that Keller -- passed over in favor of Raines two years ago --
would get the top job, Baron's being a white male appeared to be
working against him. In the fevered game of media speculation,
publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was said to want a woman and/or an
African-American in one of the two top spots. In some circles,
Washington-bureau chief Jill Abramson was all but anointed as
managing editor.
Now, though, things may be moving
back Baron's way.
From the beginning, the managing
editor's job has seemed like a natural fit for Baron if Sulzberger were
inclined to go that way. Baron is only 48, and, given the problems
experienced under the Raines-Boyd regime, one would think Sulzberger
would be inclined to play it safe -- despite his reputation as a risk-taker. Baron would be a gamble as
number one; but as number two, with a clear shot at the top job in,
say, five to eight years, he'd be a natural.
Of course, this is all incredibly
speculative. As
Baron told me last month,
"I don't think there's any purpose served in speculating on that
prospect at all. Right now I'm here, I'm happy, I'm focused on what
I'm doing here, and I don't want to speculate on what might
happen."
The best quote on the subject comes
from Times metropolitan editor Jonathan
Landman, who recently told
the New York Observer's Sridhar Pappu: "I truly know nothing.
It's all a lot of people making stuff up. I don't know; you don't
know. Everybody's making stuff up."
In other words: take all of this
with a grain of salt.
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Well, that was quick.
The Boston Herald's Dean
Johnson and the Boston
Globe's Mark
Jurkowitz today report what
was obvious last night: WRKO Radio (AM 680) has decided to put
syndicated right-wing garbage-mouth Michael Savage back on the air
after a one-day suspension.
In yesterday's Globe, 'RKO
program director Mike Elder came across as someone who was at least
going to give
it some thought before
deciding whether to keep doing business with the homophobic Savage.
So in today's Phoenix, I've got an open letter to Elder,
documenting his long record of homophobic outbursts on radio and in
print, long before the rant that got him fired from his MSNBC show
last Saturday.
Well, Mike, read
it anyway. Maybe you'll
learn something.
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New in this week's
Phoenix. In addition to my letter to Mike Elder, I offer
some thoughts regarding animal
magnetism on the homophobic
right.
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Wednesday, July 09, 2003
The dog that didn't bark.
I'd missed this until I saw Robert
Samuelson's column in
today's Washington Post. But the US Supreme Court declined to
rule on a free-speech case involving Nike and an anti-corporate
activist from San Francisco named Marc Kasky.
Kasky had sued Nike, charging that
the company lied in press releases, letters to the editor, and on its
website about the working conditions of Nike employees in the Third
World. More to the point, Kasky asserted that Nike's statements
constituted commercial speech under California law, as subject to
regulation for truthfulness as ads about the performance of its
running shoes. While not conceding having made any false statements,
Nike tried to get the case thrown out on First Amendment
grounds.
I wrote about the case recently
("Don't
Quote Me," May 2), mainly
because I was intrigued by the involvement of the Boston-based
National Voting Rights Institute, which took the position that the
First Amendment should protect individuals, not corporations. It's an
interesting argument, though I think speech restrictions are never
worth whatever gain its proponents believe there is to be had in
terms of leveling the playing field.
One tidbit I picked up that I
didn't use now looks prescient. Stephen Barnett, a professor
at the Boalt Hall School of Law, at the University of California at
Berkeley, told me that though he was hoping the Court would rule
decisively in Nike's favor, his expectation was that it would punt
because the case had not yet gone to trial.
"My sense is that in the end it
will not be a great case, and the Court will decide very little,"
Barnett told me. "The way things work now, the Court has this rule
requiring final decisions, meaning that the case only comes up after
a final judgment, rather than an interlocutory decision like this
one."
Barnett called it exactly
right.
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More trouble for a guy who
deserves it. Gay-bashing hatemonger Michael Savage's
well-publicized firing from MSNBC isn't his only problem: his
talk-radio empire may be crumbling as well.
Ira Simmons reports on ChronWatch
that, because of a contract dispute in Savage's home base of San
Francisco, The Savage Nation has been yanked
off the air in New York City.
His show has also been
(temporarily?) suspended
in Boston at WRKO Radio (AM
680), the Boston Globe's Mark Jurkowitz reports today. Program
director Mike Elder tells Jurkowitz that he personally believes
Savage is "probably a homophobe," and that he will not tolerate an
outburst like Saturday's
MSNBC incident on WRKO's
airwaves.
This is all moving in the right
direction, yet the underlying hypocrisy continues to astound. Doesn't
Elder listen to his own radio station? Before MSNBC ever gave Savage
a show, he was already infamous for his references to
"homosexual
perversion" and "Turd World
nations" -- references that were broadcast repeatedly to WRKO
listeners since his being added to the line-up last year.
Savage's ridiculous
sucking-up
to a lesbian cop in the
debut of his TV show demonstrated that both he and MSNBC knew they
had to do something about his well-earned reputation as a
homophobe.
Hey, Mike (Elder, that is): take a
look at this
compilation by Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting. As far back as 1999,
the San Jose Mercury News reported, "Savage has apologized to
gay activists after saying he wished they would get AIDS."
Savage has reportedly also joked
about "the Million Dyke March," and has spoken out about "the grand
plan, to push homosexuality to cut down on the white
race."
On its website, WRKO has posted a
statement about Savage that concludes:
It is our hope that
Michael Savage will return to WRKO in the next few days. It is
clear that these comments were not made on his radio show, but
this is the same way we'd handle a similar situation with our
local talent. This is not a free speech issue, but rather an issue
of appropriateness and good corporate citizenship.
WRKO is certainly right about one
thing: this is not a free-speech issue. The station is part of
Entercom,
a corporate media conglomerate with stations across the country --
four in Boston alone. Its profits derive from the deregulatory
environment of recent years, in which the FCC has allowed a handful
of giant operators to gobble up all but a hardy few
stations.
Elder needs to understand this:
Michael Savage is a homophobe, and his homophobic remarks on
television were an extension of the homophobic remarks he's made on
radio. Does Elder care? He certainly will if carrying The Savage
Nation turns into a business liability.
Do advertisers really want to be
associated with such garbage? We'll soon find out.
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Tuesday, July 08, 2003
Savage cynicism. MSNBC is
getting praise in some circles today for firing talk-show host
Michael Savage after a homophobic outburst on Saturday. But why? He
was given a Saturday-afternoon gig this spring because his syndicated
radio show draws millions of listeners, featuring exactly the kind of
homophobia that lost him his MSNBC show.
The question isn't whether MSNBC
executives actually believed Savage could contain himself when the TV
cameras were rolling. It's quite a bit more basic than that. Did they
really think they could avoid the sting of homophobia by hiring a
homophobic host and then telling him not to act like a homophobe when
the TV cameras were rolling?
Even if Savage had managed to
behave himself on Saturday, he was still playing the hatemonger every
Monday through Friday. And, until this week, he had the imprimatur of
NBC News, which I guess used to mean something.
Washington Post television
columnist Lisa
de Moraes's acid lead this
morning gets right to it:
MSNBC was shocked --
shocked, I tell you -- to learn that its well-known homophobe host
Michael Savage is actually -- gasp! -- homophobic, and the network
has sacked him, effective immediately.
By the way, here is the worst of
Saturday's outbursts, as reported by de Moraes:
Savage: "So you're one of
those sodomists -- are you a sodomite?"
Caller: "Yes, I am."
Savage: "Oh, you're one of the
sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How's that?
Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing
better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got
nothing to do today -- go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get
trichinosis."
Savage, on
his website, claims that
he didn't know he was on the air. You can't make this stuff
up. He writes:
[T]his was an
interchange between me personally and a mean spirited vicious
setup caller which I thought was taking place off the air. It was
not meant to reflect my views of the terrible tragedy and
suffering associated with AIDS. I especially appeal to my many
listeners in the gay community to accept my apologies for any
inadvertent insults which may have occurred.
Now, even if Savage is telling the
truth, which I suppose is a possibility, he still wants you to
believe that he's not homophobic because he only makes grotesque
jokes about AIDS and oral sex in private. Oh, okay.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance
Against Defamation takes the high road today, issuing
a statement saying that it
"applauded" MSNBC's decision. That may make good tactical sense. Why
not be gracious when your enemy finally does the right
thing?
But the real story is told in
GLAAD's overview of Savage's history of gay-bashing, "MSNBC
& the Anti-Gay Savage."
MSNBC.com carries only
an
Associated Press story
about the firing.
The website Michael
Savage Sucks appears to be
on vacation today, which is too bad. But it will certainly be worth
checking out when it's updated.
MSNBC deserves no kudos for finally
realizing that Savage was harming the reputation of the News Channel
That Nobody Watches. The operation's behavior has been so
unrelievedly cynical that you can only wonder why Savage was really
canned.
Was the MSNBC brass really "shocked
-- shocked"?
Or, given that Savage's ratings
sucked, did they just decide that now was as good a time as any to
pull the plug?
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Monday, July 07, 2003
Dwarfism and the new
eugenics. What were you doing on the Fourth of July? Probably not
reading the New York Times. That's all right. I was, and this
morning I want to call your attention to this
splendid column by Nicholas
Kristof about the ways in which genetic advances may eliminate
various types of disability -- including achondroplasia, the most
common form of dwarfism.
It turns out that Kristof has
family members in Britain who are dwarfs. He introduces us to one of
them, Tom Shakespeare, a scholar of genetics. I'd heard of
Shakespeare, but didn't know much about him. He seems like a pretty
interesting guy. Shakespeare has a website, which you can get to by
clicking
here.
The point of Kristof's column is
that what might seem at first glance to be an unalloyed good thing --
genetically engineered "cures" for dwarfism and other types of
disability -- could have disastrous consequences down the road. It
also happens to be a major theme of my forthcoming book on the
culture of dwarfism, Little
People.
posted at 8:44 AM |
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More on the dwarfism
conference. I've posted a
page full of links to
coverage of last week's Little People of America national conference
in Danvers. If I learn of more pieces, I'll post those,
too.
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How the Supremes came to realize
that gays and lesbians are people, too. So why did the US Supreme
Court issue such a progressive opinion in the Texas sodomy case? The
New York Times' Linda
Greenhouse explains:
The Supreme Court has
become a gay-friendly workplace where employees feel sufficiently
comfortable in their open identity to bring their partners to
court functions. Justice Powell's comment to one of his law clerks
while Bowers v. Hardwick was pending in 1986 that "I don't believe
I've ever met a homosexual" (untrue, considering that the clerk
was, in fact, gay) could not be uttered in the court -- or the
Washington or the legal profession -- of today.
If proximity leads to amity, then
let's say we all chip in and get the Boston Globe's Jeff
Jacoby a gay editorial assistant. Jacoby's two-parter against
same-sex marriage (here's part
one; here's
part
two) shows that he's out of
ammunition. But he's still firing away.
posted at 8:43 AM |
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More on the Republican Attack
Machine. Media Log would never be any more self-referential than
absolutely necessary. But Alan
Wolfe's excellent piece in
the Ideas section of yesterday's Globe reads like the flip
side of my recent piece on the down-and-dirty tactics of the modern
Republican Party and its allies in the media ("The
GOP Attack Machine").
It's heartening that a mainstream,
measured liberal such as Wolfe has concluded that the Republicans --
starting with George W. Bush -- have unilaterally shattered the
governing consensus necessary to make politics work.
Wolfe seems to think that by
sticking to their principles, the Democrats will ensure their own
defeat in 2004 -- but that may enable them to build for the future.
I'm not so sure that his short-term pessimism is warranted -- just
check out the headlines from Iraq and from the economic front on any
given day.
But he's right about this: politics
is a nasty game, and the Republicans are playing it a lot nastier
than the Democrats right now.
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Tuesday, July 01, 2003
LPA on 'GBH. Several members
of Little
People of America, joined
by me, will appear tonight on Greater
Boston with Emily Rooney.
The show will be broadcast on WGBH-TV (Channel 2) at 7 p.m., and
rebroadcast on WGBX-TV (Channel 44) at midnight.
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
