Maynard Institute archives

It’s Unanimous: Obama Makes History

by richard0577

Bob Johnson Urges Pressure to Select Clinton as VP

Barack Obama declares he has won the Democratic presidential nomination.

As the world savored the historic day in which Barack Obama became the first black man with the votes to be nominated by a major party to be president of the United States, one of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s black supporters said he has begun a campaign to pressure Obama to pick Clinton, D-N.Y., as his vice president.

Robert L. Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, said on CNN’s “American Morning” on Wednesday that Clinton was aware that he planned to pressure the Congressional Black Caucus into urging Obama to choose the opponent who refused to concede defeat, even as the Illinois senator was claiming victory.

“Does Senator Hillary Clinton know what I’m doing? Absolutely,” Johnson said. “I talked with the senator, told her what I was doing. She didn’t direct me to do it. She certainly knows what I’m doing. I’ve been in touch with her all the way in thinking how we can move this country in a unified way. She’s prepared to be a part of that unity.”

Johnson, who sent a letter to the caucus, was widely criticized for other efforts on behalf of Clinton during the campaign. In January, he apologized to Obama for calling attention to Obama’s admitted drug use as a teenager and for referring to Obama as Sidney Poitier in the 1967 film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” Clinton was forced to declare Johnson’s comments “out of bounds.”

 

 

Then, in March, Johnson helped organize a letter that “upbraided House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) . . . for suggesting that Democratic superdelegates should back the candidate with the most pledged delegates and urged her to respect the right of those delegates to back whomever they choose at the end of the primary season,” the Washington Post reported then. Obama led in pledged delegates.

Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny reported for Thursday’s editions of the New York Times that Clinton will endorse Obama on Friday, “bringing a close to her 17-month campaign for the White House, aides said. Her decision came after Democrats urged her on Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Mr. Obama.”

Clinton’s refusal to concede and the efforts to pressure Obama to choose her as his running mate were seen negatively by pundits analyzing the Tuesday night developments. Obama won the Montana primary and Clinton won in South Dakota, but a stream of declarations for Obama by superdelegates put him over the top in delegate count.

The commentators said Obama would risk looking weak and boxed in if he bowed to pressure to pick Clinton.

Both Democrats spoke to their supporters Tuesday night, as presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., did to his.

“You know, I understand that a lot of people are asking, ‘What does Hillary want? What does she want?’ ” Clinton said with a small smile, as Alessandra Stanley reported Wednesday in the New York Times. “Well, I want what I have always fought for in this whole campaign. I want to end the war in Iraq.”

“She went on to enumerate her demands, from universal health care to a restored economy and deference towards her supporters, or as she put it: ‘I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard, and no longer to be invisible,'” Stanley wrote.

As Clinton spoke, some of her supporters chanted, “Den-ver,” “Den-ver,” signaling that they wanted to take the contest to the convention in September. Clinton urged her followers to send her advice on her next moves via her Web site.

“She sounds like she’s trying to create a coalition government,” veteran commentator and political adviser David Gergen said on CNN.

“It would be a Trojan horse,” Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez said.

“You can’t put a gun to his head,” said CNN contributor Roland Martin.

Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said, “The Clintons are the Ike and Tina Turner of politics: They don’t do it nice and easy, they do it nice and rough.”

“She’s still on the stage and he needs to be at the center, because he’s the nominee,” said journalist Gloria Borger. Jeffrey Toobin, another CNN analyst, decried “the deranged narcissism of the Clintons.”

“Not only did Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., not concede tonight, she didn’t even congratulate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, for having secured the Democratic presidential nomination,” ABC’s Jake Tapper wrote. “She said Obama inspired Americans to care about politics, and empowered people to get involved — but nothing about his rather historic accomplishment.”

It was the historic accomplishment that was paramount to journalists and pundits. “Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States,” Obama said to more than 20,000 people in St. Paul, Minn., and millions more on television. The sight of Obama and his wife, Michelle, taking the stage as the prospective president and first lady was breathtaking.

“It’s an historic day in American politics,” Terry Moran said as he introduced ABC-TV’s “Nightline.” “Take a moment and let that one sink in.”

For context, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reached back to the debate in the Continental Congress over the place blacks should occupy in the Republic. Longtime “NBC Nightly News” anchor Tom Brokaw noted on the same cablecast that the milestone took place 40 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the other turmoil of that year, the subject of a book by Brokaw. He noted that “young people are much more color-blind” today. “However you feel about his candidacy, this is a milestone in American politics,” Brokaw said.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews recalled a Chicago Tribune interview last month with Desmond Tutu, the retired Anglican archbishop of South Africa, in which Tutu compared the United States and South Africa.

“When I first came to this country in ’72,” Tutu said, “I was quite shaken by the intensity of feeling that African-Americans had. And I said I couldn’t understand: Why are they so bitter? Why are they so angry?

“There, in South Africa [under apartheid], they told you, ‘You’re nothing, and we’re going to treat you like the nothing you are. And don’t ever hope to think that you have a chance of being treated differently.’

“Here, you say to them, ‘You’re equal, and the sky’s the limit.’ And they keep bumping their heads against this thing that’s stopping them from reaching out to the stars. And so I understood that it was the illusion of equality, which is still the case.

“And yet, why I say you’re such a crazy country, you’ve got all of that going against you, and yet you produce [Obama]. Where else in the world would you ever have had anything like that? I mean an African-American being not just a credible candidate but one who has galvanized. I mean the number of young people who have come out and said, ‘Yes, we think it is actually possible to have a different kind of society.’ Only here.”

Jesse Jackson said on CNN, “Barack has won a tremendous last leg on really what is essentially a 54-year journey, from the law changing in 1954, which made racial division and race supremacy illegal, to 1965, when he has embodied that legacy and tradition and made a major step towards becoming the president.”

Even Black Entertainment Television, which received last year’s Thumbs Down award from the National Association of Black Journalists in part for failing to televise live the funeral of Coretta Scott King, broke into its programming for Obama’s 10 p.m. speech.

BET followed that with “Obama’s Journey to the White House,” a special that featured commentary from entertainers and opinion leaders as well as video and interviews from the campaign trail. However, by 11 p.m., BET returned to its normal programming.

CNN added an “Obama makes History” T-shirt to its lineup of CNN paraphernalia.

By morning, it was the newspapers’ turn. The headlines told the story: “Finally,” was the banner in the Anniston (Ala.) Star. “Obama claims Democratic presidential nomination.”

 

“Obama Makes History,” said the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Tribune, the Newark Star-Ledger, the Omaha (Neb.) World Herald and the Providence (R.I.) Journal.

The San Francisco Chronicle and the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph chose an Obama quote, “America, This Is Our Moment.”

“On to Denver,” said the Denver Post.

“Obama: I’m the One” said the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

“Historic Race Begins,” contributed the Tampa (Fla.) Tribune.

The Chicago Sun-Times accompanied a photo of Obama with, in big type, the word “Won!”

The Patriot-News in Quincy, Mass., wrote next to Obama’s photo, “The Face of History.”

“Obama’s History Step,” said the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“History!” said the New York Daily News. “Destiny,” wrote the New York Post.

The Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, S.D., said, “Clinton Wins State, Obama Wins Nation.”

On the syndicated “Tom Joyner Morning Show” on Wednesday, comedian Huggy Lowdown said he was feeling so good that “everything I said this morning, I ended with ‘Barack Obama’ and it was OK.”

Journalists were affected like everyone else.

“I’m fighting back tears as I’m watching his speech,” Chris Stevens of the County Times in Hollywood, Md., wrote to the National Association of Black Journalists Sports Task Force, referring to Obama. “At 26 years old, I’m actually going to have the privilege to vote in an election where someone who looks like us is running for the Presidency. June 3rd, 2008 is going to a date I will remember for as long as I’m on this Earth.”

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R. Kelly Trial Judge Spares Reporter from Testifying

Chicago Sun-Times reporter and music critic Jim DeRogatis “will not have to testify in R. Kelly’s child porn trial after all, Judge Vincent Gaughan ruled this morning,” Kim Janssen reported Wednesday on the Sun-Times Web site.

“Kelly’s legal team wanted DeRogatis — who broke the story about the sex tape at the center of the case in 2002, and passed a copy to police to investigate — to take the stand for the defense. They said his testimony was ‘crucial’ to Kelly’s defense, claiming it would undermine the testimony of prosecution witness Stephanie ‘Sparkle’ Edwards. They have also claimed DeRogatis’s reporting has shown an ‘extreme bias’ against Kelly.

“Judge Gaughan ruled Friday that DeRogatis had no protection against testifying under either the First Amendment or the Illinois reporter’s privilege, reaffirming that decision Tuesday and saying that DeRogatis must testify. The reporter’s privilege only protects journalists from revealing their sources, he said.

“But this morning Gaughan said that DeRogatis was protected against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment. ‘He does not have to testify,’ the judge said.

“Outside the presence of the jury this morning, DeRogatis, wearing a dark suit and tie, appeared before Gaughan to answer questions in court from Sun-Times attorney Damon Dunn and Kelly’s attorney, Marc Martin.

“After identifying himself and spelling his name, he gave the same answer to every question he was asked about where the tape came from, what he did with it and what he had written about Kelly.

“To each question, he answered, ‘I respectfully decline to answer the question on the advice of counsel on the grounds that to do so would contravene the reporter’s privilege, the special witness doctrine and my rights under the Illinois Constitution, and the First and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.’

“Kelly’s attorneys have repeatedly suggested during the trial that DeRogatis may have committed the crime of child pornography, alleging that he may have made a copy of the tape before passing it to police. An anonymous tipster left the tape in DeRogatis’s mailbox in 2002.”

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Still Resonates: Sorry “for Messing Up Your Game”

Among the millions paying attention as Barack Obama claimed the votes needed for the Democratic presidential nomination was a reporter to whom Obama had tendered an apology.

 

Nick Lovelady

Obama told Nicklaus Lovelady, a bachelor, that he was sorry “for messing up your game.” The 2006 conversation (audio) was replayed last weekend on the public radio show, “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.”

For those who missed it, Lovelady, 27, who now works at the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., wrote a column about an incident that took place when he was a full-time newspaper reporter in Illinois.

“I had the looks, I had the charm and I had my eye on this pretty young thing who was doing an internship for a competing paper,” he told readers of the Henry Daily Herald in Georgia, where he was a county government reporter who also wrote a weekly column.

The homestate senator had come to Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to hold a news conference, and, “After about five questions from different television and newspaper reporters, I stood up to ask mine,” Lovelady wrote.

“‘Wait a minute son, this is for professional media only,’ Obama said to me,” the column continued.

“‘What do you mean? I work for the local paper,’ I said with a crackling nervous voice.

“‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you were a college student. You have such a baby face,’ he said with an unremorseful grin.

“At that point everyone in the room turned to look at me and laugh. The 800 people in the lobby laughed as my face was projected on the big screen.

“Remember that girl who I was trying to get with, well she was sitting next to me and guess what she was doing?

“Everyone was laughing except me.

“The next time I saw that young lady was at another press conference, but this time she was acting as if she never knew me. I think I saw her maybe two more times and each time, it was the cold shoulder.”

Lovelady wrote that Obama owed him an apology. “He might make a good president some day, but he won’t get my vote. At least not until he apologizes,” he told readers. “Obama owes me a public apology for making me look like a court jester and for blocking my shot.

“All that day I had received e-mails from people who thought the column was hilarious and those who thought I should be beaten with a dozen rusty hammers for requesting an apology for something so petty,” Lovelady wrote in a follow-up.” The column also caught the attention of an Obama staffer.

“‘Hi, is this Nicklaus?’ Obama asked as I answered the phone at work. ‘This is Barack Obama. I’m calling to publicly apologize for messing up your game.’

“Obama went on to apologize for igniting the news conference crowd into laughter when he said I had a baby face, and told me not to fret over the ‘superficial’ journalism intern who turned me down.”

The story of the Obama phone call was widely circulated and Lovelady was featured in the Chicago Tribune, on CNN and Fox News and in other national media.

Dave Lieber of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram wrote that he asked an Obama aide for more details.

“Right before we called, we got a call from ‘Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!’ (on National Public Radio) asking about the column,” said Tommy Vietor of Obama’s staff. ‘I told them we were about to call and recorded the call, and they ran it on the show,'” wrote Lieber, who was impressed with Lovelady’s column-writing ability.

The Obama staff evidently did the right thing. “In just one week, my view of Sen. Barack Obama went from hanging with Judas to flying high with Martin,” Lovelady wrote, referring to Martin Luther King Jr..

Nineteen months later, he’s still an Obama admirer, saying of the incident, “It said a lot about his character.” Lovelady noted that the call came during rush hour in Chicago, a busy time for a politician.

“It seems like everybody would kind of count with him,” he told Journal-isms on Wednesday. “I think he would do a good job.”

Lovelady thought about the incident again as Obama declared victory Tuesday.

“I guess I’m kind of glad I’m part of his history,” he said.

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Zakaria Wants Americans to Understand New World

India-born, Ivy League-educated Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, says on his Web site, “The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States,” and that this “rise of the rest” of other countries as world powers is the great story of our time.

 

“Is this a story the American public is ready to hear and to comprehend?” Michelle Greppi of TV Week asked Zakaria in an interview published Monday.

He replied: “That is the question. Going forward, we’re going to, as a country, have two real options: to look at this new world coming about and on the one hand we could take it in and realize this is great, it means other people are doing well, we’ll do well, the pie will expand, and be open and optimistic about it; or we could sit there and deny it and quibble and only talk about the stuff we still dominate, which is military power, and in some ways close ourselves to this new world.

“To me the big issue is, are we going to keep ourselves open to this new world or are we going to close ourselves to it. The book and the show and the columns I write are all part of a piece I’m trying to get Americans to really understand. There are big changes happening, but it’s not all bad. We have to adjust. We can’t just sit there with our head in the sand.”

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Short Takes

  • The San Bernardino (Calif.) Sun put together a package of stories about Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated 40 years ago on Thursday. The senator from New York, running for the Democratic presidential nomination, visited San Bernardino on May 29, 1968.
  • “More than 3,000 people are expected in Minneapolis this weekend for the annual National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) organized by the nonprofit Free Press,” Nonna Gorilovskaya reported Wednesday for the Nieman Watchdog site. “The gathering will tackle press coverage, media policy, new media and other topics in over 70 panels. Journalists Bill Moyers, Dan Rather and Amy Goodman, Federal Communication Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Craig Newmark, the founder of craigslist, will be among the speakers.”
  • “UNITY: Journalists of Color and CNN will broadcast live in prime time a historic discussion with the presumptive presidential nominees at the UNITY ’08 Convention in Chicago on July 24,” Unity announced Wednesday. Executive Director Onica Makwakwa told Journal-isms that neither Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., nor Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive nominees, has accepted Unity’s invitation to attend the convention. But she said there had been conversations and “we are hopeful.”
  • “According to SALDEF — the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund — the editor-in-chief and chairman of Golf Digest magazine, Jerry Tarde, has issued an apology to the Sikh community for using the image of Guru Arjun Dev Ji in its May 2008 edition. The item showed him as a ‘golfing guru,’ holding a golf club and offering advice,” the South Asian Journalists Association reported on Wednesday.
  • The voices of WFOR-TV Miami’s Shomari Stone and Eliott Rodriguez — “audio samples from a CBS4 newscast — are on the title track of rapper Foxy Brown‘s latest album, ‘Brooklyn’s Don Diva.’ The newsmen were reporting on Foxy’s Feb. 16 release from Broward County jail following her arrest in a fight at a Pembroke Pines beauty supply store,” Joan Fleischman reported Wednesday in the Miami Herald.
  • “Hispanic Link is headed this summer where it has never quite gone before,” according to the June 2 issue of Hispanic Link Weekly Report. “Working with Young D.C., a publication for area teenagers supported in part by the Freedom Forum, and ASPIRA, one of the nation’s most successful youth leadership training nonprofits, it will host and train as journalists a dozen college and high school students from throughout the country. For terms ranging from 10 to 14 weeks, the young reporters will learn to cover the three branches of government. The students will write for a number of publications, among them Hispanic Link Weekly Report and our column syndication service. Three editors,including lead syndicated columnist José de la Isla, and individual volunteer mentors, most of whom work with national print and broadcast media in D.C., will be guiding their activities. Several are Hispanic Link program ‘graduates.'”
  • “As she preps for the 2009 launch of her own television network, OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network), Winfrey opened up to Black Enterprise in the June issue to talk about lessons learned during her years in business,” Women’s Wear Daily reported on Tuesday. “She claims none of her business ventures have come out of forethought: ‘I haven’t planned one thing — ever. I have just been led by a strong instinct, and I have made choices based on what was right for me at the time.” She also doesn’t judge a business venture by its profitability. ‘I don’t care about money,” said the woman who’s worth $2.5 billion. ‘It throws people off all the time in business meetings. They start shuffling papers.'”
  • Funeral services for Thomas A. Johnson, the retired New York Times reporter who died on Monday at 79, are scheduled for next Monday at the J. Foster Phillips funeral home, 179-24 Linden Blvd., Queens, N.Y. Viewing is from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., followed by the service at 11.

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Feedback: Tom Johnson Was the First One I Asked

Not only was Tom Johnson an outstanding pioneering journalist, he was a fine, generous, caring human being. He always treated me with kindness and respect as a broadcast Journalist in the late ’60s and early ’70s. That was not always the case with some of the “veteran” print journalists in those days.

When I left ABC News after almost 20 years and founded EVT Educational Productions in 1992, the first person I asked to be a member of our board of directors was Tom Johnson.

He graciously accepted, and provided much needed advice and guidance for as long as he was physically and mentally able. For this I am eternally grateful. I will miss him greatly.

Eric V. Tait Jr.
President
EVT Educational Productions, Inc.
New York
June 4, 2008
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Feedback: A Mentor, Without Being Asked

The comments in this column really capture the Tom Johnson we knew and loved.

Generous, supportive, a friend. I first met Tom in my Long Island living room in the 1960s. I was a teenager, my parents were civil rights activists and Tom was covering aspects of the movement for Newsday.

I later met him as a colleague as I made my way through the ranks, finally reaching the Associated Press. After I joined the AP’s national business desk, as the first black person ever on that desk in the AP’s then 146-year history, potential sources told me they’d already heard about me … from Tom Johnson. And they were very helpful.

When I applied for fellowships or needed background on Africa, Tom told me stories I could easily incorporate into my writing. (His New York Times reports from Africa are a model that should be used today.) He’d call with tips or opportunities to schmooze (and eat) or introduce me to more folks I needed to know. He was a mentor and I hadn’t even asked. We’re all shedding tears today.

Peter Alan Harper
New York
June 4, 2008

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Feedback: Tom and I Worked Different Sources

I was honored to be mentioned on the same page as Tom Johnson in your obit. What a wonderful man he was. We worked together even more than Artie Gelb mentioned in his book, “City Room.” Tom was a great companion and an unflappable reporter. In a way, he taught me about dealing with black Americans — not that I did it all that well — asking different questions than I did, getting different (and better) answers than his Anglo-Saxon partner.

More times than I can remember, I backed out of the room because folks, say in East New York, clearly were not going to open up with me standing there. In fact, I did some of my best work standing on landings and stoops while Tom worked the story in those upstairs rooms. I tried to make up my debts to Tom by talking to cops, who were more comfortable with my white face. Together we did some good work in a different time. Hell, sometimes we even let Earl Caldwell come with us.

Dick Reeves
New York
June 5, 2008

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Feedback: A Beacon for Journalists Who Knew Him

Thank you for the beautifully written obituary of Tom Johnson, who was a beacon for all journalists who came to know him.

And the feedback you have elicited from many of the best young journalists of his time is a real tribute to him.

Jim Hoagland
Washington Post
June 5, 2008

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