Latina Columnists Say Lighten Up on “Dame Edna”
Two Latina columnists say Hispanics who have protested a column by the “Dame Edna” character in Vanity Fair magazine that disparages the Spanish language need to lighten up.
“Forget Spanish. There’s nothing in that language worth reading except ‘Don Quixote,’ and a quick listen to the CD of ‘Man of La Mancha’ will take care of that,” wrote the character created by Australian comic Barry Humphries, responding to a fictional letter from a reader asking which second language to take up. “There was a poet named Garcia Lorca but I’d leave him on the intellectual back burner if I were you. As for everyone’s speaking it, what twaddle! Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or if you’re American try English,” wrote Humphries.
The incident has generated angry e-mails and letters and a protest from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the National Council of La Raza. Vanity Fair says it will apologize.
Writing separately, Helen Ubinas of the Hartford Courant and Myriam Marquez of the Orlando Sentinel, say Latinos have bigger fish to fry.
“Poverty, lack of education, inequality — all those are things to get outraged about. Some Benny Hill wannabe’s silly comments? Please,” writes Ubinas.
“After more than 15 years of writing commentary, I’ve received my share of insults from readers who take my opinions way too personally,” writes Marquez.
“I know the danger in satire, believe you me. Once I wrote about how white guys needed to stop complaining about being picked on because, when all was said and done, they still run things, whether on Wall Street or on Pennsylvania Avenue. Well, you would have thought I said, ‘Your mama.’
“That taught me a lesson. Learn to let hurtful comments slide. Pick your battles, and know when to laugh. A lot.”
O’Reilly Has Used “Wetbacks” Term Before
When Fox News talk host Bill O’Reilly used the word “wetback” last week, he quickly tried to correct the damage, the New York Times reported, saying that O’Reilly returned a call to the Times to say: “I was groping for a term to describe the industry that brings people in here. It was not meant to disparage people in any way.”
But now it turns out that O’Reilly has used the term before.
A Jan. 5 story by William J. Ford in the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call covered O’Reilly’s appearance in Easton, Pa., to help raise money for the State Theatre.
“About protecting U.S. borders,” the story said, “O’Reilly criticized the Immigration and Naturalization Service for not doing its job and not keeping out ‘the wetbacks.’ He has often blasted the INS for allowing illegal immigration.”
On McGowan, NYU and NABJ on Same Page?
“The purposes of NABJ and of the course to subject the book to critical examination are the same,” said Jay Rosen, journalism department chair at New York University. He was responding to the view by Journal-isms, wearing other hats as chair of the Media Monitoring Committee of the National Association of Black Journalists and as an NYU alum, that it would be inappropriate for writer Nat Hentoff to assign William McGowan’s“Coloring the News: How Crusading for Diversity Has Corrupted American Journalism” as required reading “unless you were going to teach skewed journalism.”
Hentoff had written two columns praising the book, the most recent in Editor & Publisher, neither of which indicated the book would be viewed critically.
Moreover, details of the book, which earned NABJ’s “Thumbs Down” award last year for its twisting of facts and use of half-truths and spin to make McGowan’s point, are not easily challenged unless the reader has first-hand knowledge of the incidents and situations McGowan portrays — a difficult feat both for college students and for professionals who have not worked in the newsrooms of daily newspapers.
For his part, Hentoff called NABJ defensive. “The reason why I assigned this book is precisely because it was attacked by NABJ and others,” Hentoff said, “indicating that although they read the book, they are so defensive that they don’t see the point of the book,” according to the story in the student Washington Square News.
He disclosed in that story that his required reading list will include books arguing other points of view, such as Eric Alterman’s “What Liberal Media? The Truth about Bias and the News.”
Elsewhere on the Maynard Web site, Kara Briggs of the Native American Journalists Association describes how the book took her words out of context.
MSNBC Hires “Ultra-Right Attack Dog”
The latest hire by the cable news network MSNBC– co-owned by General Electric/NBC and Microsoft– is Michael Savage, a radio talk show host described by Salon.com today as “an ultra-right attack dog.” Savage is scheduled to have his own weekly one-hour show on MSNBC beginning in March.
“Savage routinely refers to non-white countries as ‘turd world nations’ and charges that the U.S. ‘is being taken over by the freaks, the cripples, the perverts and the mental defectives,” says the liberal media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, citing a San Francisco Bay Guardian article from Sept. 20, 2000. In a recent broadcast he justified ethnic slurs as a national security tool: “We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy,’ he explained, the group said, citing a Feb. 6 article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Savage’s show is to air for an hour every Saturday. at 2 p.m..
Diversity Inspired Dropping “Redskins,” Says Editor
Kathleen Rutledge, editor of the Lincoln Journal Star in Nebraska, says the paper got about 500 letters and e-mail messages after the paper decided not to use the term “Redskins,” accusing the the paper of being run by “PC” (politically correct) leftists, Editor & Publisher reports.
But Rutledge notes that, “this paper endorsed George Bush for the presidency, so we’re not exactly Liberal City here,” and says instead that “the paper was motivated mainly by the increasing diversity of its community, which has taken in large numbers of refugees from Africa and Asia, and has a growing Hispanic population,” E&P said.
“One area this newspaper has been making strides in is diversity,” Rutledge told the trade magazine. “We’ve just become more aware of other cultures, other ethnicities.”
Sacramento Bee Sorry for Kobe Bryant Story
The Sacramento Bee apologized for a piece it said was intended as tongue-in-cheek that inaccurately portrayed Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant as drunk.
“The story was intended as a humorous feature about how Bryant could avoid food poisoning in Sacramento, given the bout he suffered the last time the Lakers played in Sacramento during the 2002 NBA Western Conference Finals,” the Bee said.
“Since the story was published, however, Bryant’s attorney, Timothy J. Hoy, said that Bryant does not drink. In addition, The Bee’s source for the story, Chanterelle co-owner Geoff Wong, now says through a spokesman that he was misquoted and that he did not see Bryant at his restaurant the night Bryant became ill.”
The story “did not meet The Bee’s reporting standards and was misleading to readers.”
Richard Parsons Not Big on “Reality” Programming
“The dominant force in TV will remain high-quality, scripted programming,” says Richard Parsons, AOL Time Warner chief, according to Media Week. “Reality ideas are not only scraping the bottom of the barrel but have gone through it,” he said at the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau’s “Cable First” conference in New York.
Luis Rios Named Miami Herald Photography Director
Luis Rios, night photo editor at the Washington Post, is joining the Miami Herald as director of photography.
He succeeds Maggie Steber, who left the Herald to free-lance.
” Miami is one hellava rock & roll city when it comes to news, and for an adrenalin news junkie like Luis it will be a great ride,” said Joe Elbert, assistant managing editor for photography, and Michel DuCille, Post picture editor, in a note to the staff.
Linda Salazar, who came to the Post three years ago from the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, where she served as director of photography, becomes the Post’s new night photo editor.
Free Spanish Weekly Debuts in Yakima, Wash.
Readers hungering for more news and entertainment in Spanish have another choice in the crowded field of ethnic newspapers. Sea Latino, a free weekly newspaper that debuted with 20,000 copies printed in Yakima, Wash., joins about a half-dozen Spanish-language papers in the region, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer says. The papers are be available in grocery stores and businesses that cater to Latinos.
About 442,000 Hispanics live in Washington, about 7.5 percent of the state population, according to the 2000 Census.
Reporter, 62, Sues, Claiming Age Discrimination
A 62-year-old Hartford Courant reporter claims he was banished to a job covering police and courts in New Britain as part of a pattern of age discrimination at the newspaper, the Courant reports.
“Thomas D. Williams, who covered courts and did investigative work out of the Courant’s main office in Hartford, claims he was singled out during a move by the Courant’s parent company, Tribune Co., to cut costs. The allegations are detailed in a lawsuit filed last month in Hartford Superior Court. Williams, a 36-year veteran of the paper, was moved to the paper’s New Britain bureau in 2001 to a job he described as an entry-level position with clerical duties. Williams claims a younger, less qualified reporter was moved into his old position,” the paper wrote.
High school students interested in pursuing a career in journalism are invited to apply for a special summertime project called J Camp, the Sacramento Bee reports.
“Scheduled for Aug. 9-13 at San Diego State University, J Camp will bring together a multicultural group of high school students from across the country to sharpen their journalistic skills in a unique learning environment.
“Students selected for the program will spend time in classrooms and professional newsrooms, take a digital-photography field trip and talk with some of the top figures in the media, including Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters, network newscasters and leading newspaper editors.
“The best and brightest minority students with a keen interest in broadcasting, newspapers, magazines, photojournalism or new media are especially encouraged to apply.
“Qualified applicants must be currently enrolled in high school as a freshman, sophomore or junior and must be available to travel to San Diego during the camp week.
“There is no cost to apply. All expenses — including airfare, room and board — will be covered by the camp’s sponsors for the 40 students selected for the program.
“The deadline for applications is March 14.
“For more information and to obtain an application form, please contact Bee Pop Culture Writer J. Freedom du Lac — one of the camp’s directors — at (916) 321-1115 or jdulac@sacbee.com. Or visit the Asian American Journalists Association’s Web site at www.aaja.org”
