The Inquiring Manatee

Helen Thomas Spells it Out

   For six years, 1991-1997, I was in the White House press corps with the redoubtable Helen Thomas, then of UPI. An institution, she had been covering the presidency since 1960.

    Everybody thought she was a grand lady. I drove her home to her condo across the street from the Shoreham Hotel, not far from my place, a number of times.

    But there was one thing I began to notice about her. A Lebanese-American, she devoted virtually every news conference question she asked to Middle Eastern issues. And she always got in a barb or two against Israel. She clearly had an agenda and she clearly was biased. Everyone seemed to overlook this. I found it quite irritating and off-putting, despite my admiration for Helen.

    Well, on May 27 Helen finally let it all hang out at the age of 89. In a video-recorded interview with a website called rabbilive.com (now, why was she speaking to them in the first place?), she is seen saying that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go somewhere else, such as "Germany, Poland or the U.S." She later apologized, but some damage has been done to her reputation. A Bethesda, Md., high school cancelled her appearance for a graduation speech. 

    Helen promptly announced her retirement.

    Unlike Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, I am willing to accept her apology. The saddening thing is the ignorance with which this intelligent woman spoke. Germany? Poland? Why did she think Israel was founded in the first place? To give Jews an escape from the hatred and death in Germany, Poland and elsewhere in Europe, that's why.

   The whole thing is sad. But in a way it's good to see that the whole world now knows what was on Helen Thomas' mind this whole time. Now I'm not the only one who realizes it.

  ###

Memories of the Real Frost/Nixon

       

"Frost/Nixon," directed by Ken Howard, is an excellent film that I recommend strongly to moviegoers. Though playwright and screenwriter Peter Morgan took plenty of liberties with facts and left out some key participants, the movie is dramatically strong, as was Morgan's original play. The movie benefits from Frank Langella's fine performance as the exiled Richard Nixon, a repeat of Langella's theatrical role, and from sunny location shooting at Nixon's former San Clemente, Calif., estate, La Casa Pacifica.
    I was especially eager to see "Frost/Nixon" because I reported for Newsweek on Frost's original dealmaking with Nixon and agent Irving (Swifty) Lazar for the broadcast interviews, and again in the May 9, 1977 issue of Newsweek for a major, eight-page cover story on the production and the content of the broadcasts that were about to begin that week.
    I barely remember working on the 1977 story, but re-reading it makes it obvious that colleague Hal Bruno and I interviewed Frost, his key research aides and other insiders to give readers as many tips as possible on what would be in the widely awaited, syndicated telecasts. My files are long gone, except perhaps in Newsweek's New York archives, but the story with its revelations, headlined "Nixon Speaks," still speaks for itself.
    In return for Frost giving Newsweek some juicy leaks on the highlights of the shows, especially those relating to Watergate, the magazine splashed the Nixon/Frost story big and no doubt contributed to the broadcasts' high ratings and profits (profits shared with Nixon by contract). Newsweek on its own obtained some newsy Nixon Watergate tapes that had never been made public by Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.
    I wouldn't be surprised if parts of the Newsweek package were used in the screenplay. For example, on leaving for the last time the Monarch Bay, Calif., home where the 11 days of interviews were taped, the socially inept Nixon is seen in the movie awkwardly asking a woman bystander with a dog if the animal was "called a dachshund," then stiffly petting the dog. Newsweek had that detail at the time.
    The script and Newsweek also track in their accounts of how the shrewd Nixon got the upper hand in early interviews, to the frustration of Frost's side, only to climactically melt down into a near-admission of wrongdoing and regret after Frost finally got more prosecutorial. That moment of sweaty candor gave Frost the TV moment he wanted, and Hollywood's Ron Howard does a good job of showing the triumph in Frost's eyes through actor Michael Sheen.
    While I have little recollection of my reporting, I do remember becoming acquainted later on with one figure in the movie, Frost's British girlfriend, Caroline Cushing, who is played by Rebecca Hall. After her five-year relationship with Frost broke up, the very bright and beautiful Ms Cushing eventually married Bill Graham, a son of my big boss, the late Newsweek and Washington Post publisher Katharine (Kay) Graham. The smashing Ms Cushing was even more impressive in real life than actress Hall is in the film.

Justice at Last for Justice Ginsburg

  

The New York Times issues a bizarre correction on page 2 of its national print edition today. The Newspaper of Record notes that a recent story had misspelled the name of Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as "Ginsberg." Furthermore, the paper said, that error marked at least the 18th time that the Times had gotten this prominent woman's name wrong since 1980. No correction ever had been publicly made before, the paper said.
   A justice of the Supreme Court! And the Times has such a famously smart and finicky copy desk! Where were they on this one, all these years?
   Well, you say Ginsberg and I say Ginsburg. Let's call the whole thing off.

Was it News Not Fit to Print, or What?

   I didn't see a word in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times this morning about Ashley Todd, the McCain volunteer who admitted cutting a backward "B" into her face and trying to blame it on a nonexistent black ATM mugger. The story, so embarrassing to the Republican campaign because the College Young Republican Committee used this nutcase as a recruitment volunteer, was all over the Web for two days, but apparently it wasn't considered newsworthy by major newspapers.
   I'd like to know by what standards of newsworthiness the editors bypassed this horrifying story. Was it fear of stirring up racial trouble? Pity for a disturbed young woman? Or a desire not to jump on the already beleaguered McCain campaign with more bad publicity?

Use Your Real #$@&* Names on the Net, Morons

   Think that's a rude headline up there? It's merely a reflection of the disgracefully ill-mannered tone of the "dialogue" in viewers' comments appended to blogs and news stories on the Internet. It's time to clean up the World Wide Web by forcing commenters to use their own names on their postings, just as newspaper readers are properly required to do when sending letters to the editor. Say what you will about the MSM, published letters are generally civilized and read as if written by literates. That's because the writers are forced to take responsibility for their opinions.
   I'm very familiar with the appalling tone of the Web vox populi because I've been volunteering as a moderator of comments on the popular Huffington Post website. For 3 hours a week on Wednesday afternoons, I wade through hundreds of comments posted by readers. Comments posted in response to HuffPost blogs are moderated -- OK, censored -- in advance. Moderators go to the queue of pending comments and either "publish" or delete them. There's less worry about comments defaming the public figures in news stories that draw reader responses (as opposed to defaming the poor, unpaid HuffPost bloggers), so every comment is allowed to pass through to the website but may be deleted later, especially when readers "flag" obnoxious remarks for the moderators.
     On political websites, commenters almost always use fake IDs. Some are cute ("technokitty"). Many are creative. What you don't see are real names. Freed from identifying themselves and risking reproach or retribution, those who post remarks are often unbridled in their vitriol. It's fine to see passion in politics, but deeply held opinions too frequently are expressed with demeaning put-downs and name-calling that can be obscene.
    Even that would be OK if the thinking were original. But it's not. Everybody picks up the same few, weary tropes. Hillary people dismiss Obama people as "Obamabots." The Obama people have their own annoying names for the Clintonistas. Republicans are "Repugs." McCain is "McSame" or "McCane" or "McBush." Every 4-letter epithet in the slang book is used, the more polite commenters inserting asterisks as they call the blogger or the previous commenter a f*cking a**hole. Those who disagree with them are fools, morons, "bots."    And I'm not even talking about the kindergarten-level spelling, or the English-as-a-Fourth-Language grammar used by all too many Americans. To see writ so large the failure of the American school system is to wince in pain.
   It's an abysmally infantile level of discourse, unworthy of a democracy. And the only way to raise it is to end the ability to wear a mask.
    It is true that pseudonyms have a worthy history going back to Colonial times. But these days, how many disguised Web users are following the high-minded example (though controversial even then) of 18th Century pamphleteers like Ben Franklin or James Madison, who wrote under pseudonyms like "Silence Dogood" or "Publius"? Read their works. These patriots could jab royalists or Federalists, but they wrote literately and in the public spirit. They wrote to persuade, not merely to calumniate or to sniff at opponents in dubious superiority. All too many comment-writers grow giddy in their anonymity -- carried away to unpunished excess like Ku Kluxers in their white cone hats with those little eye slits.
    First Amendment considerations? They don't apply here. The First Amendment relates only to government actions. A private website is perfectly free to set its own standards for attributing comments.
    Starting today, we need independent decisions by leading websites to end the cowardly masquerading and restore a measure of civility to an American political process that is being steadily debased day by day -- a global warming by the hot air of bitter, inarticulate and insecure haters.
    Message to this sort of Web user: Grow up or shut up.
    And, whatever you do, go to school.
   

Did Scottish Newspaper Hit Barack Below the Kilt?

   "She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything," reporter Gerri Peev (now the Obama campaign's pet peeve) quotes Obama foreign-policy adviser Samantha Power saying about Hillary Clinton in that fateful interview.
   Why didn't Power's admonition not to use the damaging quote stop the reporter? In my own reporting career for Newsweek, Newsday and USA TODAY, I probably would have acceded to the interviewee's request. Peev's response, according to the Los Angeles Times, is that she "followed a standard journalistic practice in requiring interview subjects -- particularly political operatives -- to reach agreement in advance if they want to keep matters out of the public domain." Peev told the Times that "it would be a disservice and dereliction of duty if I didn't run the quotes I have on my tape recorder." http://www.latimes.com.
    Presumably, then, Power and Peev had agreed in advance that everything said would be on the record, and Peev was under no obligation to honor Power's attempt to change the rules in mid-game.
    That's certainly one way to look at the issue. As a matter of comity and human decency, however, sometimes it's better to pull in the fangs and sacrifice a scandalous scoop. The future political, government and even academic career of the very promising, bright, 37-year-old Power -- a Harvard professor, a Pulitzer Prize winner  and a Time magazine columnist -- is now in jeopardy. 
    Sure, Power is perhaps too outspoken for her own good. She is trying to peddle her latest book, which is on the subject of a U.S. history of failing to stop genocide overseas, and in book-promotion interviews authors frequently try to make news, or at least they act unguardedly.  But in my opinion, her punishment goes beyond her case to redound to the detriment of not only the Obama campaign but potentially someday to the diplomatic potential of the United States. I fear that we have lost a future White House national security adviser or a Secretary of State.
   Can Samantha Power ever live this thing down? I hope so.

A Bittersweet Day at USA TODAY

    In another sad sign that the Internet (not that I'm knocking it) is wreaking havoc with so-called Old Media, I was informed today that USA TODAY has succeeded in eliminating 45 newsroom jobs by convincing 45 veteran staffers to accept the proffered buyout by Gannett Corp. Obtaining the full panoply of buyouts means that nobody will have to be cut involuntarily -- in other words, fired.
    USA TODAY, the nation's No. 1 newspaper in circulation, is gaining circulation, unlike the many journals losing readership. Yet the publishers consider the economic climate for print media so downbeat that they're making cuts, anyway.
    At the Los Angeles Times, which has been losing circulation and has gone through some painful cuts, the only jobs they're advertising for involve online work and require a lot of technical expertise that few but the hippest and youngest of today's reporters ever thought would be necessary to flourish in their profession.
    I retired last May because the trend was not my friend. It's even more unfriendly now to print journalists.
   An HTML training course, anyone?