3 Journalists Believed to Have Died in Secret Prison
An independent journalist arrested seven years ago with 10 newspaper publishers and editors is being held in a secret prison camp in Eritrea where at least nine other prisoners, including three journalists, are believed to have died, the international press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said Wednesday.
Eritrea, a small nation that was formerly part of Ethiopia, sits on the Horn of Africa.
“Seyoum Tsehaye, the most recent winner of the Reporters Without Borders – Fondation de France press freedom prize, is still alive and is being held in a secret prison camp called ‘Eiraeiro,’ located near the village of Gahtelay in a mountainous desert region north of the Asmara-Massawa road,” the organization continued. “Seyoum is in cell No. 10 of block A01, which is reserved for the most sensitive political prisoners,” the organization said on Wednesday, urging action by members of the African Union and the European Union.
“Reporters Without Borders learned this and other details this month from an Eritrean who has had access to the prison, where many political leaders are held. The source must remain anonymous for his protection.
“According to this source, Seyoum was transferred to Eiraeiro in about 2003. He was seen being beaten by guards a year or two after arriving in the camp. Very agitated, with his head shaved and a long beard, he rebelled several times against the guards in charge of him, refusing the prison food and repeating: ‘I did my duty,’ ‘it is my responsibility’ and ‘I don’t care if I die here.’
“Head of public television immediately after independence, Seyoum subsequently went back to being a freelance photographer and filmmaker. He and around 10 newspaper publishers and editors were arrested in the course of a round-up ordered by President Issaias Afeworki and his aides in September 2001 after several leading members of the ruling party (the only one permitted) and the military had publicly called for democratic reforms.
” . . . According to information obtained by Reporters Without Borders in Asmara and abroad in 2006 and 2007, at least nine prisoners had died in Eiraeiro including Tsigenay editor Yusuf Mohamed Ali, believed to have died on 13 June 2006, Keste Debena deputy editor Medhane Haile, believed to have died in February 2006 and Admas editor Said Abdulkader, believed to have died in March 2005.
“Reporters Without Borders subsequently learned that poet and playwright Fessehaye ‘Joshua’ Yohannes, co-founder of the now banned weekly Setit, died in detention on 11 January 2007. The source interviewed this month confirmed Fessehaye’s death in detention. He said he was held in cell No. 18. He also said there is a cemetery ‘behind the administrator’s building where at least seven people are buried.'”
Describing what it called an “African gulag,” the organization said, “The leaders attending the three-day African Union summit that begins on 31 January must not turn a blind eye to the fact that the Eritrean government acts with extraordinary cruelty towards all those it regards as a potential threat to its survival.”
It urged “that the governments of the African Union member states and the leading democratic nations summon the Eritrean ambassador in each of their capitals to express their revulsion at the inhuman treatment of political prisoners and to request their release,” that “The European Union should adopt targeted sanction against the officials responsible for repression and prison camps,” and that specified Eritrean government officials “should at the very least be banned from visiting EU countries.”
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Chicago Defender Going from Daily to Weekly
“After more than 50 years as the nation’s best-known black-oriented daily newspaper, the Chicago Defender is going to weekly frequency,” Mark Fitzgerald reported Wednesday in Editor & Publisher.
“Defender staffers learned of the decision earlier this week, a person close to the situation told E&P. The change to weekly publication was first reported by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Stella Foster.
“The paper will move to Wednesday publication on Feb. 13, according to the report.”
Defender Editor Lou Ransom told Journal-isms on Thursday that the question was, “Are we using our resources in the best way? Using them to produce four times a week didn’t make a lot of sense. Instead of covering the shooting that happened last night, instead will we do a story that ties these shootings [of the previous week] together.”
Hiram Jackson, the Detroit-based CEO of Real Times Inc., which has owned the Defender since 2003, tried to reassure skeptical callers Thursday morning on “The Santita Jackson Show” on Chicago’s WVON Radio. “We’re trying to grow the Defender,” he said, adding that there will continue to be daily news on the Defender’s Web site. “We are by no means decreasing our influence on the community, in fact we’re increasing it,” he said.
He said the new product would be “a much thicker paper that has a lot more local news, very comprehensive, very organized.” It will be 48 pages, Ransom said. Advertisers, who were informed some time ago that the change was coming, have welcomed the weekly schedule, Ransom maintained. Most were advertising only once a week anyway. The daily paper had a cumulative circulation of about 52,000 weekly, he said, with some days garnering only 13,000. He said he expected the weekly edition to reach a circulation of 50,000 to 60,000.
Jackson said on the radio show that the Defender is negotiating with the distribution arm of a local newspaper to make the weekly paper available in double the locations. He said he was not ready to name the distributing newspaper.
“Founded in 1905, the Defender was one of the most successful African American newspapers ever, circulating nationally and virtually single-handedly setting off the so-called Great Migration of black Southerners to the industrial North after World War I. It became a daily in 1956,” Fitzgerald noted.
“In recent decades, the paper has weakened visibly. Its circulation drifted to less than 20,000 by the mid-1990s. Its circulation is no longer audited by an outside firm.
“Two years ago, it went from five-day frequency to four, eliminating its Tuesday edition.” [Added Jan. 31]
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Detroit Mayor Asks: Spare My Family Media Glare
An apologetic Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick addressed his city Wednesday night to try to tame the scandal unleashed when the Detroit Free Press obtained records that show that “Kilpatrick and his chief of staff lied about their relationship last summer at a police whistle-blower trial that has cost the cash-strapped city more than $9 million,” in the words of the Free Press.
“This has been a very difficult time for my wife and my family,” Kilpatrick said in an address carried live on the city’s television stations. “I would ask from this point forward that if you have to attack someone, attack me. I would ask that you don’t follow my wife, you don’t film my kids going to school. I ask you not to have helicopters flying around our home. I ask that you leave them alone. I am the mayor, I made the mistake, I am accountable.”
Speaking of his wife, Carlita, he said at another point, “Our marriage has not been perfect, but it has been great. Now, I have put her in a situation which many couples deal with in the privacy of their homes. But in our case, it is on the front page of the newspaper.”
“Kilpatrick, 37, is in his second term and could run again next year. He has been in seclusion since a Detroit Free Press report last week of racy text messages from 2002 and 2003 found on the city-issued pager of longtime friend and Chief Of Staff Christine Beatty,” the Associated Press wrote before Kilpatrick spoke.
“The mayor’s only public response has been a statement acknowledging he and his wife had worked through what he called ‘painful issues’ and asking for privacy following the report on the ‘profoundly embarrassing’ messages.
“The text messages are central to a prosecutor’s investigation into whether Kilpatrick and Beatty lied under oath during a whistle-blower’s lawsuit last summer in which both denied having a physical relationship. . . . A conviction of lying under oath can bring up to 15 years’ imprisonment.”
Beatty submitted a letter of resignation Monday, effective Feb. 8.
Among the journalists of color at the Free Press working on the story, which has gripped the city for days, are Suzette Hackney, Chastity Pratt Dawsey, Stephen Henderson, Carlton Winfrey, James Hill and Alex Kellogg.
At the Detroit News, editors Kisha Dunn and Ebony Reed, and reporters Darren Nichols and Oralandar Brand-Williams have been on the story.
Henderson, Free Press deputy editorial page editor, wrote on the Free Press Web site last night that Kilpatrick’s speech did not address the public consequences of the scandal, only the impact on his personal life.
“The mayor closed his speech last night by saying he’d be at work tomorrow, determined to build on the progress we all know is gaining traction here in Detroit,” Henderson wrote.
“‘I would never quit on you,’ he said. ‘Ever.’
“That’s great. Inspirational, even.
“But personal exaltation isn’t what Detroit needs now.
“We need the mayor to deal with the business at hand.”
Bankole Thompson, Michigan Chronicle: Is Kilpatrick fair game?
Tonyaa Weathersbee, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Kilpatrick’s Misdeeds Ultimately Hurt the People Who Elected Him — Poor Blacks in Detroit
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Denver Reporters Allowed to Vote in Party Caucuses
Journalists at the Denver Post, living in a state that is holding presidential party caucuses and a city that is to play host to the Democratic National Convention, will not be barred from participating in the caucuses, but “Honestly, I would prefer you didn’t,” Editor Gregory Moore told staffers on Monday.
“While attending a caucus could raise questions about your impartiality as a journalist, I realize it is a right to participate in our democratic process,” he said in a memo published in Westword, an alternative newspaper.
“So, with certain exceptions, we will not prohibit folks from attending the caucuses.
“Honestly, I would prefer you didn’t. Caucuses are fundamentally different than primaries because of the public nature of the declaration in a caucus. A number of newspapers have barred all employees from participating in caucuses. I think that is defensible. But I wanted to find an alternative.
“While some of you may participate in the caucuses, you will NOT be permitted to be a delegate to any county, state or national convention. I hope you recall that all vacations and leaves are cancelled as we ready ourselves to cover the Democratic National Convention. There will be no exceptions.
“Barred from even participating in caucuses are all city, suburban, state and national political reporters and editors; those covering political races; the metro, business and TV columnists; anyone who leads a department or oversees a section; the team leaders and writers for the anchor team; all members of the breaking news team and online operations and all editors at the ME level and above.”
Meanwhile, in a reference to former president Bill Clinton, “The man who would be First Spouse made more news last week than any Republican, or than the other Democratic contender, John Edwards,” the Project for Excellence in Journalism reported on Tuesday, a day before Edwards pulled out of the race.
For the Columbia Journalism Review’s CJR Daily, Gal Beckerman reflected on the coverage of Saturday’s South Carolina primary.
“Leroy Chapman, the political editor of The State, South Carolina’s largest paper . . . thought the stories he saw about black women were not nuanced enough, did not capture the real motivating factors behind their choice. ‘There was definitely some simplistic reporting about identity politics that really didn’t get into where the issues were,’ he said. ‘The lines that were drawn had little to do with race. If you look at education, at income, at regional breakdowns, those told you a little bit more about how the choices were being made.’
“. . . A perfect example of the national media missing the nuance was the problem of illegal immigration. I was told over and over again how important this debate was for people in South Carolina, who are struggling economically and worried about the effects of globalization. But in both the Republican and Democratic primaries, the national media failed to reflect this struggle,” Beckerman wrote.
CNN, the Los Angeles Times and Politico are continuing back-to-back presidential primary debates Thursday night, less than one week before Super Tuesday, with a face-off planned between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for approximately 90 minutes beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Wolf Blitzer is to moderate the Democratic candidates debate at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. Scheduled panelists are Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, and Jeanne Cummings, a senior correspondent for the Politico. The Republican candidates debated Wednesday night.
Jeff Bercovici blog, Portfolio.com: Racist Columnist Defends His Obama ‘Satire’
Louis E.V. Nevaer, New America Media: Florida’s Cuban Voters Harder to Woo
Joseph C. Phillips, BlackAmericaWeb.com: Obama’s Soaring Rhetoric and Promises to Cross the Aisle May Lead to More and More ‘Obamacans’
Adrienne Samuels, ebonyjet.com: On the Ground in South Carolina: Gender Bender race wasn’t the only issue for South Carolina’s Blacks
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Newsday AME Lawrence Leaves for ABCNews.com
Newsday is losing its top black newsroom manager as Calvin Lawrence, assistant managing editor in charge of nation, state, foreign, health and science news, leaves to become an editor at abcnews.com.
“The business cards will read something like ‘coordinating producer,'” Lawrence, a former Newsday editorial writer, told Journal-isms via e-mail. “That’s a sign of how different this will be for me, but it’s time to move on. And I like what I see at, and hear about, the abcnews web site. By the way, I’m going into my 19th year at Newsday so my emotions are all over the place. It was a great ride, despite the past two very difficult years.”
During those two years, the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper lost nine journalist of color just from December 2006 through April 2007 as it underwent retrenchment and waited to see who would own its parent Tribune Co. Chicago billionaire Sam Zell won permission to buy the company.
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Spending to Reach Black Consumers Down 4.4%
In its first 12-month analysis of advertising spending on media outlets that reach African American consumers, the Nielsen Co. reported on Tuesday that spending from Oct. 1, 2006, to Sept. 30, 2007, totaled $2.3 billion. However, a spokeswoman for the company told Journal-isms that overall, such spending was down 4.4 percent compared with the same 12-month period a year previously.
The survey covered local radio, national magazines, national cable TV, network TV and syndication TV. Local radio reported the greatest amount of spending on African American-targeted media at $805 million, or 35 percent of total spending.
“With $89.7 million in spending, Procter & Gamble is the largest advertiser targeting African American consumers. McDonald’s is second with $37.7 million, followed by Johnson and Johnson with $36.1 million in total spending for the 12 months October 2006 through September 2007,” the study said. The national magazines covered were American Legacy, Black Enterprise, Ebony, Essence, Giant, Jet, King, Oprah, the Source, Upscale, Vibe and XXL.
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Steve Grayson, L.A. Sports Photographer, Dies at 47
Steve Grayson, a Los Angeles area sports photographer, died Thursday, Jan. 24, after suffering a heart attack, family members told Journal-isms. He was 47.
Grayson suffered from high blood pressure and had been hospitalized three times in the past year, the family members said. He had been freelancing since being laid off last summer from the photo agency WireImage after it was purchased last year by Getty Images.
“I had the pleasure of working with Steve Grayson at WireImage from 2002-2007. Steve was a fine journalist and mentor. He worked at WireImage as a photo editor and then as staff photographer,” Marguerite Ruscito of Getty Images said via e-mail.
“You should know we all miss Steve dearly. He was a credit to the photography profession and always gave back. I know that he was planning to relocate to Chicago to teach photography and was excited about it.”
In fact, his sister, Willamina Grayson, told Journal-isms, he had planned to leave for Chicago this week.
Grayson worked at the Los Angeles Sentinel, the old Los Angeles Herald-Examiner and at the Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise. He had been senior picture editor at AllSport USA and worked under contract for the Associated Press, United Press International, the Los Angeles Times and Reuters, the family said. He covered the NBA finals, the PGA tour, four Super Bowls and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
While at the Riverside paper, where Grayson worked from 1990 to 1995, he was one of the first to cover the outbreak of violence at Florence and Normandie in Los Angeles after the 1992 acquittal of police who beat Rodney King, Managing Editor John Gryka told Journal-isms.
He was “a great person and one of the best photographers ever. Committed to the craft, he was fearless in the field, yet sensitive to those around him,” the Web site theWizardofOdds said.
Grayson’s father, Willie Grayson, said his son had complained of headaches and “hadn’t been the same” since he was laid off. Without insurance, the family needs help in meeting funeral expenses, he said. Contributions may be sent to him at 1030 W. 85th St., Apt. 333, Los Angeles, CA 90044.
Viewing is scheduled for Thursday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Ashley and Grisgby Mortuary, 9920 S. Central Ave., Los Angeles, with services at Love and Faith Christianity Center, 8505 Southwestern Ave., on Friday at 11 a.m.
In addition to his father and sister, the Los Angeles native is survived by three brothers, Will and Michael Grayson and Eugene Bradford.
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Inquirer Fires Stephen A. Smith, Who Left the Paper
Stephen A. Smith, the onetime Philadelphia Inquirer columnist who was reassigned against his will to the reporters ranks, has been fired from the Inquirer, which cited job abandonment, Dan Gross reported Wednesday in the Philadelphia Daily News.
As reported in October, Smith’s name disappeared from the paper’s online staff list months ago and he has retained high-powered Florida trial lawyer Willie E. Gary to challenge the Inquirer’s decision to reassign him. He has moved on to concentrate on his broadcasting career — he hosts an ESPN Radio show, is an ESPN NBA analyst — and, most recently, created a blog, stephenablog.typepad.com.
Bill Ross, a local representative of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia Local 10, confirmed that the company fired Smith on Friday and told Journal-isms the guild amended its grievance over Smith’s reassignment to include the firing.
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Wilbon Out of Hospital; Allison Payne Recuperates
After being treated for a “very, very mild heart attack” on Monday, Washington Post columnist and ESPN commentator Michael Wilbon was released from the hospital Wednesday and is resting at his home in Arizona, ESPN spokesman Bill Hofheimer told Journal-isms.
Dan Le Batard of the Miami Herald co-hosted “Pardon the Interruption” Wednesday and will do so again on Thursday, he said.
Wilbon “suffered chest pains early Monday morning at his home in Arizona. He went to the hospital and, after some tests, doctors performed an angioplasty. They classified this as a very, very mild heart attack. . . . JA Adande filled in for Wilbon on Monday’s PTI. . . . he is very appreciative of all the calls, emails and well-wishes he has received from so many friends around the country these past few days,” Hofheimer said.
He said it was still to be determined when Wilbon will return to work.
In Chicago, meanwhile, “Allison Payne, the veteran news anchor at WGN-Channel 9, is battling back from a series of ministrokes that has kept her off the air for more than three weeks,” Robert Feder reported Wednesday in the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Payne, 43, disclosed Tuesday that when she sought treatment for numbness in her right arm, doctors discovered that she had suffered two ministrokes within the last year.
“Ministrokes are temporary blockages of blood to the brain.”
Substitute anchors have been filling in for Payne on the 9 p.m. newscast, Feder wrote.
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More Than “Tribal Rivalries” Behind Kenya Violence
“There is more to Kenya’s post-election violence than a bungled vote count and so-called tribal rivalries. As protests degenerate into organised ethnic violence in Rift Valley towns and countryside, the root-cause of the unrest lies elsewhere, Najum Mushtaq wrote from Nairobi, Kenya, in an analysis for the Inter-Press Service.
” ‘We must tackle the fundamental issues underlying the disturbances — like equitable distribution of resources — or else we will be back here again after three or four years,’ former U.N. chief Kofi Annan told journalists in Nairobi’s Serena Hotel Sunday, after talking to survivors of the violence which has claimed over 1,000 lives and displaced some 250,000 people since the December election.”
A front-page story by Sarah Childress in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday added that the conflict can also be attributed to an economic boom.
“Sharp economic growth benefited one tribe at the expense of others, helping reignite long-simmering animosity. Kenya now has among the world’s least-equal distributions of wealth. Opposition politicians have been accused of playing up the disparity, which set off a powder keg after last month’s disputed election results,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, a media organization took to court the government’s Dec. 30 order suspending all live media broadcasts, Evelyn Kwamboka reported Wednesday in the East Africa Standard in Nairobi.
Farida Karoney, head of the Media Institute, told the High Court the Government’s order was an illegal censorship and should be quashed, Kwamboka reported.
Reporters Without Borders: Leading journalists threatened with same fate as murdered opposition MP
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Short Takes
Sandeep Junnarkar, a new-media professor at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and one of the country’s leading experts on online journalism, was elected president of the South Asian Journalists Association, SAJA announced on Wednesday. The board, voting Sunday, chose V.V. Ganeshananthan, known as Sugi, a writer and author, as vice president and Anusha Shrivastava, a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires, secretary. John Laxmi, a New Jersey-based freelance writer, continues as treasurer and Sree Sreenivasan, a Columbia University journalism professor and WNBC-TV New York technology reporter, continues as the executive committee’s at-large officer. SAJA posted a q-and-a with the new leaders.
Al’lavee Miller, a news photographer for KSHB-TV in Kansas City, was hit by a car while filming an assignment, and recorded the moment of impact. “Doctors released him after several hours in the emergency room Tuesday night. He’s still in pain, but it appears he’ll be OK,” Russ Ptacek reported in a Thursday update. “When the accident happened, Al’lavee Miller was on location in Olathe where workmen were repairing a gas main that had exploded after an unrelated car crash that had occurred a few hours earlier. ‘The impact was so powerful, that as I was running from the live truck to Al, I thought I was going to be finding a dead man,'” Ptacek said after witnessing the accident, the story said. [Added Jan. 31]
USA Today Reader Editor Brent Jones responded to criticism from Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting that the newspaper should not have characterized a white supremacist group by its self-description of “pro-majority.” Jones, a black journalist, wrote, “Your question — why don’t we call the Nationalists racists? — is one I’m sure many people would ask. The simple answer is that the term ‘racist’ is a judgment, and judgments are open to interpretation,” FAIR reported on Tuesday.
Lorraine Branham, one of two candidates for dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, made clear “the items topping Branham’s agenda in communications education: diversity and media convergence,” Ryan Balton reported Wednesday for the student newspaper the Daily Orange. Branham, on a two-day visit to the university, took part in a one-hour, question-and-answer session with students. She is director of the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.
Jesse Washington, entertainment editor of the Associated Press, created a stir recently when he said the AP was preparing an advance obituary of pop star Britney Spears. He told WNYC Radio’s “On the Media” during the weekend that, “People’s interest in celebrities has changed. The way people consume news has changed and the way people communicate about it has changed. You have to be more prepared. If we wait an hour to have a really good obituary for someone like Heath Ledger, we’re totally out of the game. And that’s not a place that I ever want to be.”
Amy Alexander, journalist, author and editor, is the 2008 Alfred A. Knobler Fellow at The Nation Institute, which is affiliated with the Nation magazine, the institute announced. Alexander, who is also a media critic, has been contributing to the publication from time to time since 2001, when she was writing for the now-defunct africana.com Web site.
Afghanistan’s senate has endorsed a death sentence handed down by a court to Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, a reporter and journalism student accused of blasphemy, the parliament media office said Wednesday, Agence France-Presse reported.
“The Committee to Protect Journalists urges Mexican authorities to fully investigate the alleged involvement of Alfredo Araujo Avila, a top hit man for the Arellano Félix drug cartel, in the shooting of editor J. Jesús Blancornelas a decade ago,” the organization said on Tuesday. “Araujo was arrested Saturday in Tijuana by the Mexican military, according to international news reports. . . . The shooting attack against Blancornelas was prompted by an investigative piece in Zeta describing how the Arellano Félix cartel recruited gunmen from violent street gangs.”
“Readers regularly ask about Fox4 reporter Rebecca Aguilar‘s status,” Dallas television critic Ed Bark wrote Monday on his blog. “It hasn’t changed since her Oct. 16th suspension. But the award-winning veteran is still included on the station’s website. She also has a new picture . . . as do the rest of Fox4’s reporters and anchors in an updated photo gallery. Otherwise Aguilar is still ‘being paid to stay home,’ she said Sunday. ‘Right now I can’t say what’s going on. But I will tell you I miss my job. I miss interviewing people. I miss helping people. I wish I could say more, but I can’t.'”
“Authorities in Nigeria’s southern Akwa Ibom State sent Sam Asowata, chairman of the editorial board of Fresh Facts, a current affairs weekly, to prison on Monday on sedition charges, according to local journalists and news reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists said on Tuesday. “The move was part of a crackdown launched by the state government in response to a story alleging corruption by the state governor.”
“The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Monday’s six-month prison sentence given by the Bangui Magistrates’ Court to the editorial director of a private weekly in the Central African Republic. The editor of Les Collines de l’Oubangui, Faustin Bambou, was found guilty of inciting revolt, abuse, and defamation. Bambou must also pay a symbolic fine of 1 CFA franc to Minister of Foreign Affairs Côme Zoumara and his Mining Ministry counterpart, Sylvain Ndoutingaï, as well as publish the entire verdict in his newspaper,” the committee reported.
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Feedback: I Identified Clinton as “Black President”
Just for the sake of journalistic accuracy, I was the first to identify Bill Clinton as a “black president,” in the Baltimore Sun, April 19, 1998. Toni Morrison‘s article appeared in the New Yorker in October 1998, six months later.
My Baltimore Sun piece began:
“Last month, in New York, I had dinner with one of the nation’s top black journalists. We began to talk about President Clinton’s problems and he said that they stemmed from his being too close to blacks. A few weeks later, I attended a reception that some members of Hawaii’s black community had arranged for me, and I heard the same from them: that some whites are after Clinton because he is viewed as a (n-word) lover.
“An African-American comedian has observed that because Clinton receives a check from the government, cheats on his wife and plays the saxophone, he’s a stereotypical black man. As scurrilous as this may sound, there is an element of truth in this statement. Indeed, Clinton may be the blackest president since Warren G. Harding, who, when confronted with rumors about his black ancestry, was supposed to have said, “Somebody may have jumped across the fence back there.”
“Though nobody may have jumped across the fence in Clinton’s background, as far as we know, my friends say that Clinton’s style is certainly black. Miles Davis‘ biographer, Quincy Troupe, asked me to notice Clinton’s manner of walking during which he bounces and bobs his head as evidence of his blackness. One of Clinton’s detractors, who seem to be ubiquitous on television these days, criticized Clinton’s late mother’s morality. I interpreted this to mean that Clinton’s hip mother used to take him to jazz clubs.
“Ronald Reagan seemed to go to out of his way to avoid having his photograph taken with blacks. And George Bush only seemed comfortable with Clarence Thomas. But just last week, Clinton seemed genuinely pleased as he was photographed giving one of his saxophones to a black eighth-grader at a White House event.
“Meanwhile, if it is as Clinton adviser James Carville says, that some of those who desire to rid the presidency of Clinton are white supremacists, then they must be annoyed by the appointment of blacks to Cabinet posts.
“Every time you look around, Clinton is naming a black person to an important post. . . . .”
Ishmael Reed Oakland, Calif.?Jan. 29, 2008
Feedback: Regardless, Revoke Bill’s Membership
I don’t want to get into a food fight with Ishmael about who was the first to call Clinton a Negro in print, but it sure wasn’t him or Toni Morrison. The TIME magazine column in which I wrote that some of us think Clinton was only passing came out in the March 30, 1998, edition, which actually appeared on March 23, weeks before Ishmael’s piece came out and six months before Morrison’s famous piece appeared in the New Yorker. Here’s a link.
For all I know, somebody else may have made the same observation in print before I did. Who cares? Of late, the erstwhile first black president has been behaving more like George Wallace the governor than George Wallace the comedian, so it’s time to revoke his honorary Negro membership. The downside is that we can no longer begin our rebukes to him with the preface, “Negro Please.”
Jack E. White Richmond, Va.?Jan. 31, 2008
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Feedback: Who Was First Could Be Campaign Issue
The question that has arisen among three of our most perceptive observers of American life—Toni Morrison, Jack E. White and Ishmael Reed—over who was the first to dub Bill Clinton the first black president, could easily become a major campaign issue.
It could provoke a dilemma for the Clinton camp. What if Bill agrees with our three sages that, in all but physical appearance, he was the first?
That may sit well with some folks, but others will claim he misrepresented himself. What if he denies the notion? “Does that mean there’s something wrong with being black?” some will snap. And what of Hillary? She just doesn’t need this bubbling up in her campaign right now —having to explain that she knew all along that Bill was black—or not.
Nor does it bode well for Barak’s ambitions, some of which rest on the promise of HIS being the first black president. “No. wait, I really will be the first black president, I really will.” sounds kind of lame as a campaign slogan.
So let’s hope this tempest in a teapot simmers down and quietly disappears.
But, now that I think about it, Mike Huckabee does play pretty good blues on his Fender bass. Hhhmmmmm . . .
Joe Boyce Indianapolis?Jan. 31, 2008??Boyce is a former Time magazine bureau chief and Wall Street Journal senior editor who retired in 1998 after 32 years in the business.
