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Belafonte, Nagin, Clinton Comments Create Stirs

Activist entertainer Harry Belafonte, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., all found themselves the object of broadcast and print commentary over the weekend after racially tinged comments. The way the comments were reported was controversial as well.

On NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, host Tim Russert asked Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., the only African American U.S. senator:

“I want to talk a little bit about the language people are using in the politics now of 2006, and I refer you to some comments that Harry Belafonte made yesterday. He said that Homeland Security had become the ‘new Gestapo.’ What do you think of that?”

Obama replied: “You know, I never use Nazi analogies, because I think that those were unique, and I think we have to be careful in using historical analogies like this. I think people are rightly concerned that we strike the right balance between our concerns for civil liberties and the uniform concern that all of us have about protecting ourselves from terrorism.”

But when Belafonte’s remarks were discussed today on the journalists’ roundtable of National Public Radio’s “News and Notes” With Ed Gordon, panelists said they had to agree with Belafonte’s point when taken in context.

According to a New York-datelined account of Belafonte’s speech Saturday to the annual meeting of the Arts Presenters Members Conference, the activist said, according to Verena Dobnik of the Associated Press, “We’ve come to this dark time in which the new Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended.

“You can be arrested and not charged. You can be arrested and have no right to counsel,” Belafonte was quoted as saying.

However, “new Gestapo” was the only phrase that made it to the lead of the Chicago Tribune story today by Jeff Zeleny of the Washington Bureau:

“Sen. Barack Obama on Sunday gently criticized two comments by civil rights activist Harry Belafonte in which he called the Department of Homeland Security a ‘new Gestapo’ and referred to President Bush as ‘the greatest terrorist in the world.'”

At least one blogger, Peter Daou, writing on Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post, raised another question: “Why did Russert ask Obama in particular about the statements of someone who isn’t an elected official, who doesn’t speak for Democrats, who doesn’t represent Obama, who doesn’t represent the Democratic Party, who is entitled to his own opinion?”

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. . . Paper Edits Out “Chocolate City” Reference

As noted in Friday’s column, columnists Cary Clack of the San Antonio Express-News, Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald, Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press and Jarvis DeBerry of the New Orleans Times-Picayune were among those taking New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to task for urging residents to rebuild a “chocolate New Orleans,” adding, “You can’t have New Orleans no other way.”

Nagin apologized, saying he never should have used the term “chocolate.”

And he didn’t, according to what ran in the Louisville (Ky.) Courier-Journal. “Nagin’s reference to ‘chocolate New Orleans’ had been edited out . . . in these pages,” Pam Platt, the paper’s public editor, told readers Sunday. “Instead, our version read, “Nagin also promised that New Orleans will be rebuilt and again will be ‘a majority African American city.’ “

“C-J readers would not see the controversial ‘chocolate’ reference – which was all over TV news and the Internet starting at the crack of dawn on the 17th – in their own newspaper until a day later, on Jan. 18. That’s when the Courier printed an AP story about the mayor’s apology for his earlier invocations of God and chocolate.

Platt explained, “A copy editor who worked on the first day’s wire story paraphrased Nagin’s remarks because he did not want to give offense to readers.

“Though the editor’s personal sensibilities are to be admired, this time they did not serve the readers, or the newspaper, or journalism.”

Meanwhile, Deborah Mathis, writing on BlackAmericaWeb.com, took another approach to the controversy. “Rather than apologize for calling New Orleans a ‘chocolate city’ – and explaining how, by that, he really meant blending dark chocolate and white milk – he might have asked why folks were getting so worked up,” Mathis wrote.

“Where was their outrage when Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alfonso Jackson predicted that New Orleans would not ‘be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again’?

“The remark was explained away as a forecast, not wishful thinking. Some of the same folks who find no fault with Jackson’s prognostications find Nagin’s racially offensive.”

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. . . Then There’s Hillary’s “Plantation” Remark

As has also been widely reported, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., drew denunciations from Republicans when she told a predominantly African American audience on Martin Luther King Day that the House of Representatives “has been run like a plantation, and you know what I’m talking about.

“It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard,” she said at New York’s Canaan Baptist Church, as Deepti Hajela reported in the Los Angeles Times.

“We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence,” Clinton went on. “I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country.”

Republicans from first lady Laura Bush to incendiary columnist Ann Coulter wasted no time in calling Clinton on her analogy.

Some columnists of color had their say:

“Actually, American leaders’ fondness for spouting such absurdities is older than Congress. When writing the Fairfax Resolves, founding father – and slaveholder – George Mason pledged that the colonies ‘will use every means which Heaven hath given us to prevent our becoming . . . slaves.’ George Washington, Mason’s fellow Virginian, predicted that the Revolutionary War would determine whether the ‘once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves.’ Both men were talking about the British crown’s oppression of the landed aristocracy, not the hundreds of Africans planting their crops and powdering their wigs.

“But that unfortunate tradition doesn’t excuse Gingrich and Clinton from playing fast and loose with analogies”, a reference to former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who had used the “plantation” comparison in 1994.

“The reality, despite many Americans still being in denial, is that for millions of Africans and their American-born children, plantations were equal to Nazi concentration camps.

“Doubters should read “Bury the Chains” by Adam Hochschild, the excellent history of the British abolition movement whose descriptions of plantation existence are not for the faint-hearted.

“It’s enough to say that after reading his accounts of the torture and dehumanization to which slaves were daily subjected, no one would make such a ridiculous comparison again.”

“This space has seen a fair share of criticism thrown at Republicans – and clearly earned – but what angers me about Clinton’s comment is that if she felt that way, then why not say it on the floor of the U.S. Senate? Something tells me that she never would utter such words in that body because she really doesn’t believe it.

“Remember, Clinton sided with the massahs in the Republican Party when she voted to go to war in Iraq, and now acts like she’s a modern-day abolitionist.”

“Judging from her skit, we know two things about Hillary the Presidential Candidate: she wants the black vote, and she doesn’t want to work for it the way her husband did as governor of Arkansas and later as president.

“You see, saying the wrong thing about race or ethnicity is a bipartisan phenomenon. Both parties do it. Both parties use loaded language to speak in code or stoke emotions or demagogue opponents. And both parties ought to knock it off.”

“Significantly, the backlash against Clinton’s plantation talk comes at a time when quite a few conservatives have appropriated the word, particularly to attack blacks who stay on the ‘liberal plantation.’

“. . . maybe there’s something else at work here. Maybe it is not what Sen. Clinton said that mattered as much as who said it.

“She might have hyped up her hyperbole a bit, but anybody who says she’s wrong hasn’t been paying much attention to Congress in recent years.”

“I suspect GOP leaders believe they inherited the right to make a political point through the use of language that conjures up memories of this country’s abusive treatment of blacks from Clarence Thomas, one of the party’s leading blacks.

“Remember when Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court was threatened by accusations of sexual harassment? While the charge came from Anita Hill, one of his co-workers during his days as a political appointee in a Republican administration, Thomas’ wrath was directed at Senate Democrats who treated her charges seriously.

“‘As far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks,’ Thomas said . . . “

Meanwhile, Angela Tuck, public editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, brought comments by Pat Robertson into the fray.

“When Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said two weeks ago that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was God’s punishment for ‘dividing his land,’ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a front-page story. Yet when Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin made inflammatory remarks during separate King Week observances this week, the AJC carried those stories inside the main news section,” Tuck wrote Saturday.

“Some readers were right to question this juxtaposition and AJC editors agree now that we probably overplayed Robertson’s statements.”

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13 New Magazines for Blacks, 13 for Latinos in ’05

Thirteen new magazines geared toward African Americans and 13 others targeting Latinos were launched in 2005, the Magazine Publishers of America announced today. It is a sign that in post-Sept. 11 America, “people want to feel a sense of belonging” and are doing so with their own ethnic group, magazine guru Samir A. Husni contended.

All told, 257 magazine launches were announced in 2005, the association said. They include 31 magazines for women, 22 magazines dedicated to sports, 27 lifestyle titles, and 10 that made the transition from the Internet to print.

The new African American magazines were: Black Noir, Bronzeville, The Dirty, Down Magazine, Flossin’, Jones, Mixtape magazine, Naptural Roots, Noir, Our Weekly, Rap-Up, Urbanology and Verbalisms, according to the association.

The Hispanic publications were: Beisbol Mundial, Bonita, Boom Hispanic, Bridgez, Cuerpo Magazine, ESPN Deportes, Prevention en Espanol, Ser, SI Latino, Siempre Mujer, Source Latino, Trucker News en Espanol and Tu Ciudad Los Angeles, the organization said.

Husni, who chairs the journalism department at the University of Mississippi and has the nickname “Mr. Magazine,” said the number of black or ethnic magazines has jumped since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“You name the subcategory of ethnicity, and there are at least a few catering to that,” Husni told Journal-isms. “The beauty of it is nobody is left out, but what is it doing to our society?” The nation is becoming more a “pizza” than a melting pot, he said.

Only 38 percent of new magazines last past the first year, and less than 20 percent stay on “forever,” meaning 10 years or more, he said.

[Added Jan. 25: For Vaughn Benjamin, a former vice president of the Magazine Publishers Association and past chair of the National Association of Minority Media Executives (NAMME), “The fact that there are 26 titles focused on people of color is not relevant. There are two points of relevancy. The first is sustainabilty. Two-thirds of all launches do not survive the 4th year,” he told Journal-isms.

[“The second is category. Titles for people of color tend to focus on mass appeal categories (i.e beauty, fashion, shelter, lifestyle). The real story lies when the titles of the publications focus on niche markets and can attract advertisers interested in same (i.e. Black BMW owners, Lifestyles of the Hispanic and famous, Asian boat owners, Movies for people of color).”]

Trahant: Indians Falsely Blamed in Abramoff Scandal

“The Wild West Show lives. The headline-grabbing ‘re-enactment’ of real, actual history has debuted on a 21st century stage,” Mark Trahant wrote Sunday in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

“A century ago, the show was called Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World. The 21st century theater of the absurd is just called ‘Congress.’ But some elements of the plot are the same – a twisted narrative about America’s native peoples and Washington corruption. Jack Abramoff plays an economic version of Gen. George Armstrong Custer, an obscene caricature that abuses national policy. He’s the corrupt agent stealing Indian lands all over again (this time in the guise of lobbying Congress),” continued Trahant, the paper’s editorial page editor, and Maynard Institute board chair.

“Newspapers fall into the old story line, too, reducing a complicated plot into a simple yarn, making it easy for readers to conclude that American Indians and their governments are to blame for the whole mess.”

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NBC Won’t Comment on “Baseless” Foxx E-Mail

Another plea to “please forward this message to everyone in your address book” made the rounds today, this one asserting that “NBC is not doing any marketing & publicity” on Jamie Foxx’s music special on NBC. “They are purposely putting his show up against the second week of American Idol in hopes that it will fail. This will give them the excuse to never give another black person a music special,” it says.

An NBC spokeswoman told Journal-isms today the network does not comment on “baseless rumor and speculation.”

However, “on background,” the spokeswoman said Foxx conducted a media tour via satellite, had a conference call with the press today, and is interviewed in this week’s TV Guide. Also, the show is on twice this week on NBC, on both Wednesday and Friday.

[Added Jan. 25:

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Critic Finds Depressing Lesson in Oprah-Frey Flap

“Live your life from truth and you will survive everything, everything, I believe, even death. You will survive everything if you can live your life from the point of view of truth.”

Media critic Eric Deggans of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times used those words, from Oprah Winfrey’s graduation address to Wellesley College in 1997, to begin one of the many commentaries on Oprah Winfrey’s continued support of James Frey. the author of the memoir “A Million Little Pieces.”

TheSmokingGun.com reported Jan. 8 that “Police reports, court records, interviews with law enforcement personnel, and other sources have put the lie to many key sections of Frey’s book” on his life of addiction and crime.

“The most depressing lesson for this critic, given that Pieces remains atop many bestseller lists . . . is that the book-buying public may not care,” Deggans wrote.

“Just as long as they get a good story.”

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