BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
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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, May 07, 2004
REAL TROUBLE AT AIR AMERICA.
Turmoil is one thing, not meeting payroll is quite another. The
Chicago Tribune reports
that two more top-level executives are leaving Air America Radio,
adding, "The company also failed to make its scheduled payroll
Wednesday, leaving its staff of roughly 100 radio personalities,
writers, and producers unpaid until Thursday."
Question: how could the
Air
America people be in this
much trouble after only five weeks? This was always a long shot, but
they did seem to have money and brains. Well, it sounds like the
money's hard to find, and the brains are leaving. The story
concludes:
Last week, according to
two sources familiar with the matter, paychecks to some of the
network's talent - a group that includes Al Franken, Janeane
Garofalo, and Randi Rhodes - bounced, and Rhodes joked on the air
about not being paid.
A scheduled payday for the staff
on Wednesday came and went without checks, though the staff was
paid on Thursday. [President-of-the-week Jon] Sinton
chalked up both cases to "technical issues."
Technical issues? It's possible. I
suppose.
CHANDLER TO CARR: SHUT UP.
Boston Globe Steve Bailey weighs
in on the battle between
Boston Herald columnists Howie Carr and Mike Barnicle, which I
wrote
about yesterday. Herald editorial director Ken Chandler tells
Bailey: "I am not going to tolerate people on the Herald
payroll sniping at each other in print."
Chandler says nothing about
Barnicle's writing a valentine to House Speaker Tom Finneran without
disclosing that his wife, FleetBoston executive vice-president Anne
Finucane, had made a $500 campaign contribution to Mister Speaker
(Carr's allegation, unverified by Media Log).
posted at 2:12 PM |
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Thursday, May 06, 2004
BATTLE OF THE SNAKES. In
case you missed it, there has been some excellent eye-boinking going
on in the pages of the Boston Herald between columnists Howie
Carr and Mike Barnicle. I would say there's tension in the newsroom,
except that both specialize in making themselves as scarce as
possible. (Neither one is a full-time staffer.)
On April 29, Barnicle
wrote
(sub. req.) his first recognizably Barnicle-like column since his
return to the Boston newspaper wars earlier this year. That is, he
penned a shameless suck-up piece about House Speaker Tom Finneran,
currently under
investigation for his
testimony in a court case over redistricting, testimony that may have
been just a tad disingenuous.
My favorite Barnicle line: "When he
[Finneran] arrived in the Legislature, the witch at the
public stake was Kevin Harrington, the Senate president who got
hounded out over a signature on a campaign check." Poor Kevin
Harrington! As with a lot of what Barnicle writes, this is
technically true, but it ignores the fact that a signature on a
campaign check can be a serious matter depending on whose signature
you're talking about, and whether the person to whom it belongs has
any recollection of ever having written it on said check. On course,
a lot of what Barnicle has written over the years isn't true,
technically or otherwise.
For good measure, Barnicle compared
Finneran to Ted Williams, Eric Clapton, and Michelangelo. Hand me the
barf bag.
Carr, who's been referring to
himself on his WRKO Radio (AM 680) show as the Herald's
"non-fiction columnist" since the Barnicle comeback, lashed
back (sub. req.) yesterday
with a tough column on the friends of "Tommy Taxes" - the lobbyists,
the ex-pols, and others who have showered Finneran with so many
campaign contributions that he had nearly $500,000 in the till at the
end of last year.
Carr also drops this
bomblet:
It's astounding that with
friends like these, Tommy Taxes could be teetering on the edge of
an indictment. He's even had press vermin penning fiction about
what a swell guy he is, and guess what - the pipe artist's wife
maxed out to Tommy Taxes with a $500 contribution. Odd that
the hack forgot to mention his wife's largesse in his
piece.
That, of course, is a reference to
Barnicle's wife, Anne Finucane, an executive vice-president at
FleetBoston Financial and perhaps the most powerful woman in
town.
Now, I don't want to go overboard
in praise of the sneering Carr. To say that Finneran is "on the edge
of an indictment" is a bit like saying that George W. Bush is on the
edge of impeachment. That is, some of us might wish it to be true,
but there is no evidence for it.
But if this is to be a battle of
the snakes, my snake is Howie. Scales down.
TODAY'S TORTURE HIGHLIGHTS.
I can't find more than a fragmentary mention this morning of an
allegation that an American soldier put a harness on a 70-year-old
Iraqi woman and rode her like a donkey. Andrew Miga includes
a reference in his Boston Herald roundup. This, obviously,
bears watching.
The Washington Post has
obtained more
photos from Abu Ghraib.
New York Times columnist
Thomas
Friedman, a liberal
supporter of the war in Iraq, calls for Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld to resign.
NEW IN THIS WEEK'S
PHOENIX. Stuck
in neutral: Democrats fret
as John Kerry's presidential campaign falters in the face of George
W. Bush's $50 million assault.
posted at 9:13 AM |
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Wednesday, May 05, 2004
MEDIA CONSOLIDATION IN THEORY
AND IN PRACTICE. The New York Times' Jim Rutenberg
reports
today that Disney is trying to renege on a deal to distribute Michael
Moore's latest documentary, Fahrenheit 911, which "harshly
criticizes President Bush." The deal between Disney's Miramax
division and Moore was blasted by right-wingers at the time that it
was announced last year. Example: this screed
at FrontPageMag.com.
So what happened between then and
now? According to Rutenberg's piece, it appears to be a matter of one
hand not knowing how much cash the other hand was hauling in. He
writes:
Mr. Moore's agent, Ari
Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked
him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel
said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would
endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and
other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is
governor.
Eisner denies the
allegation.
Still, this is sleazy,
reprehensible stuff, just one step short of dictating to ABC News
what sorts of stories it may or may not cover based on Disney's
corporate interests. Moore does not enjoy a great reputation for
accuracy,
but this isn't about journalism, it's about business. Eisner ought to
be ashamed of himself, but I suspect that's not an option.
ATROCITIES REDUX. To listen
to John O'Neill and his merry band of Kerry-bashing veterans, you'd
think that atrocities never took place during the Vietnam War. In
yesterday's Wall Street Journal, O'Neill wrote:
John Kerry slandered
America's military by inventing or repeating grossly exaggerated
claims of atrocities and war crimes in order to advance his own
political career as an antiwar activist. His misrepresentations
played a significant role in creating the negative and false image
of Vietnam vets that has persisted for over three decades.
...
During my 1971 televised debate
with John Kerry, I accused him of lying. I urged him to come forth
with affidavits from the soldiers who had claimed to have
committed or witnessed atrocities. To date no such affidavits have
been filed.
Michael Kranish reports
in today's Boston Globe on yesterday's news conference by the
anti-Kerry Swift Veterans for Truth.
What everyone seems to have
forgotten is that, last month, the Toledo Blade won a
Pulitzer
Prize for its investigative
reporting into atrocities committed by US troops in Vietnam in the
late 1960s. The Blade found that "[w]omen and children
were intentionally blown up in underground bunkers. Elderly farmers
were shot as they toiled in the fields. Prisoners were tortured and
executed - their ears and scalps severed for souvenirs. One soldier
kicked out the teeth of executed civilians for their gold
fillings."
Atrocities did occur. Kerry knew it
when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in
1971, and the Blade filled in many of the details 32 years
later. Given the horrors
of Abu Ghuraib, denial of past abuses is not a moral
option.
LEHIGH BLASTS SEVERIN. The
Globe's Scot Lehigh has written two fine columns on Jay
Severin, the "towelhead"-bashing talk-show host at WTKK Radio (96.9
FM). Here's today's;
here's last
Friday's.
Here's my
take on Severin, from last
Thursday's Phoenix.
posted at 9:38 AM |
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Tuesday, May 04, 2004
THE HORROR, CONT'D. Likely
to become a Media Log standing head in the days to come. Reuters is
now reporting
that two Iraqi prisoners in US custody may have been murdered - one
by an Army soldier, the other by a private contractor hired by the
CIA.
The English-language
website
of Al-Jazeera gives an indication of how the Abu Ghuraib story is
playing in Arab and Muslim countries. This is from a story headlined
"Abu
Ghuraib Prisoners Speak of
'Torture'":
One of the released
detainees who was forced to pose naked in a human pyramid has told
Aljazeera that the acts committed against them were so horrible
that he still could not get himself to speak about most of
it.
"They wanted to humiliate us. It
was disgusting", said Hashim Muhsin.
"They covered our heads with
plastic bags and hit our backs with sharp objects, which added to
our wounds".
"They then took off all our
clothes, made us stand next to the wall and carried out immoral
acts that I cannot even talk about", Muhsin continued.
He said "women soldiers took
pictures of naked men and did not care".
The New York Times website
reports
that Democratic senator Tom Daschle and Republican senator John
McCain are demanding that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld be
held accountable. Rumsfeld is reported to be "deeply disturbed."
Senator Ted Kennedy is quoted as saying:
We have a great sense of
revulsion, not only because of these actions, but we also
recognize what the dangers are for American troops if they are
ever taken prisoners and the kind of treatment that they would be
subject to. And this has been a major setback to our interests in
that region.
Meanwhile, Josh Marshall
notes
that George W. Bush still hasn't apparently bothered to read the
Taguba report. Marshall's headline: "Shaken, but Apparently Not
Stirred."
posted at 4:20 PM |
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Monday, May 03, 2004
WHAT DID MENINO SAY? On
Sunday, the Boston Globe's Rick Klein reported
that Boston mayor Tom Menino might ignore Governor Mitt Romney's
orders to verify the residency of same-sex couples seeking to marry.
Klein quoted Menino as saying, "There is a good chance I might defy
the governor, but we're still looking at our options. It's about
civil rights. It's about uniting people. It's about showing that we
don't discriminate in the city of Boston."
Today, the Boston Herald's
Brian Ballou has a
similar story that includes
this:
Menino disputed a
published report that he said he may defy the governor and
instruct city officials not to ask for proof of residency from
same-sex couples seeking to get married.
"I never said that," he
said.
Media Log awaits clarification, but
in the meantime I'll hazard a guess: "I never said that" can be
translated as "I shouldn't have said that" or possibly "I said it, but it isn't
quite what I meant."
posted at 10:46 AM |
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THE HORROR. Thirty-four
years ago Seymour Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing atrocities
committed by American soldiers in the Vietnamese village of My Lai.
Today he's front-and-center on another horror story involving US
forces - this one involving the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu
Ghraib, Saddam Hussein's former torture center.
The details of the story were first
reported
last week by CBS's 60 Minutes II. Hersh has additional
information in the current
New Yorker on the conclusions of an investigation conducted by
General Antonio Taguba. This is sickening, disgusting stuff - Iraqi
prisoners forced to strip naked and simulate sex with each other,
raped with broom sticks, ordered to masturbate in front of female
American soldiers.
Was it an isolated event? Not
likely. Hersh writes:
As the international furor
grew, senior military officers, and President Bush, insisted that
the actions of a few did not reflect the conduct of the military
as a whole. Taguba's report, however, amounts to an unsparing
study of collective wrongdoing and the failure of Army leadership
at the highest levels. The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one
in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were
routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management
of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units
and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and
getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was
the priority.
The New Yorker's website
also includes 10
photos of the torture
taking place. Sadly, the Americans depicted in these photos are
obviously enjoying themselves.
So how many future terrorists have
we created? Hersh again:
Such dehumanization is
unacceptable in any culture, but it is especially so in the Arab
world. Homosexual acts are against Islamic law and it is
humiliating for men to be naked in front of other men, Bernard
Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at New York
University, explained. "Being put on top of each other and forced
to masturbate, being naked in front of each other - it's all a
form of torture," Haykel said.
A New York Times
editorial
today also takes note of reports that British soldiers, too, have
tortured Iraqi prisoners. The editorial concludes:
Terrorists like Osama bin
Laden have always intended to use their violence to prod the
United States and its allies into demonstrating that their worst
anti-American propaganda was true. Abu Ghraib was an enormous
victory for them, and it is unlikely that any response by the Bush
administration will wipe its stain from the minds of Arabs. The
invasion of Iraq, which has already begun to seem like a bad dream
in so many ways, cannot get much more nightmarish than
this.
Liberal supporters of the war in Iraq
such as Times columnist Thomas Friedman have argued
that the war was justified because we needed to puncture the bubble
of Arab-American terrorism by building a decent, stable society in
the heart of the Middle East. It's a seductive
proposition.
But as the horrors of Abu Ghraib
show, Tom Friedman was not in charge of the war; and in any event,
war against and occupation of a country that was no threat to us is
no way to achieve some idealistic vision of American-imposed
democracy.
The world can be a pretty ugly
place. The White House utopian dreams have made it quite a bit
uglier.
posted at 9:22 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
