Author: Dan Kennedy

Correction of the day

From the New York Times:

An article last Wednesday about a decision by the Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, to remove at least five members of Community Board 6 who oppose the Atlantic Yards development project — which Mr. Markowitz supports — misstated the reason for the absence of a response by Mr. Markowitz. At the time the article was being reported, Mr. Markowitz could not be reached by his aides because he was on a ship at sea, had no telephone access and was not regularly checking his e-mail messages. He did not “refuse” to comment.

Dr. Shaughnessy is in

Why does he do this? In his Globe column today, Dan Shaughnessy insinuates that the Red Sox were lying — or at least blowing smoke — about what was really wrong with Josh Beckett between May 13, when he hurt his finger, and last night, when he made a successful return. Writes Shank:

He appeared to be bound for a start in the All-Star Game in San Francisco before suffering an “avulsion” on his right middle finger while throwing a pitch against the Orioles in what turned out to be the most memorable game of this young season (a.k.a. the “Mother’s Day Miracle”). Remember, boys and girls, this was not a blister — it was an avulsion.

Shaughnessy, of course, presents no evidence. But reports have been pretty consistent that Beckett did not get a blister, a problem that plagued him pretty consistently when he was younger. For instance, here is what the Globe’s Amalie Benjamin reported on May 17:

Beckett suffered an avulsion — a torn piece of skin below the pad on his right middle finger — in the fourth inning Sunday against the Orioles. He has experienced similar skin problems in the past, though the Sox are careful not to characterize the injury as akin to the blisters he developed with the Marlins.

Medline Plus defines “avulsion” as “a tearing away of a body part accidentally or surgically.” That doesn’t sound like a blister, either.

A small matter, obviously. You just wonder what’s rattling around Shaughnessy’s brain when he types this stuff.

Will Kerry save Edwards?

Only John Kerry can save John Edwards now. Will he? It depends on who is telling the truth.

I am not an Edwards fan. However, I admire the way he has resolutely refused to exploit the death of his son Wade. Now a new book by Democratic political operative Bob Shrum tells an ugly, ugly tale. My former Phoenix colleague Michael Crowley of The New Republic finds (sub. req.) the relevant excerpt, involving the period when Kerry was considering Edwards as his running mate:

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he’d never told anyone else — that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before — and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn’t pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

Crowley does point out that there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest Shrum’s devastating tale may not be true, writing, “When I asked one person close to Edwards about it, he argued that Shrum’s account makes no sense because Edwards had publicly recounted similar versions of the funeral home story before — and thus wouldn’t possibly have claimed on either occasion that he was telling it for the first time.”

Fair enough. But what gives this legs is that Kerry — who, after all, isn’t running for anything — now has the power to make or break Edwards. If Kerry denies it in firm, straightforward language, then the Edwards campaign survives, and Shrum will henceforth be known not just as a loser, but as a liar as well. But if Kerry confirms it, or refuses to discuss it, then Edwards might as well pull out.

By the way, if Kerry does confirm it, why on earth did he go ahead and put Edwards on the ticket?

Oh, and another thing — Edwards may not be all that big on gays and lesbians, either.

Web pioneer Holovaty goes solo

This is big news. Adrian Holovaty, one of the most important journalists you’ve never heard of (or maybe you have), has quit washingtonpost.com to strike out on his own after winning a Knight grant to experiment with hyperlocal journalism. His project will be called EveryBlock.

Holovaty, who’s in his mid-20s, is the master of the mashup, in which datastreams are merged to create something new and useful. Using publicly available data from the Chicago Police Department, he created ChicagoCrime.org, which automatically sorts crime information and plots it on Google Maps. (If you’d like to see such a feature in Boston, forget it — although the Boston Police deserve credit for their innovative blog, they do not make crime data available in a form that would allow an outside programmer like Holovaty to make sense of it.)

Another Holovaty special: The Congressional Votes Database at washingtonpost.com.

I saw Holovaty speak last summer at the Media Giraffe conference at UMass Amherst. I thought his most interesting comments were in response to a question as to whether he considers himself a journalist. His answer: absolutely. He laid out the differences between an electronic journalist and a traditional journalist like this:

  • Gathering news: A traditional journalist calls sources and conducts research. An electronic journalist writes programs to fetch data.
  • Distilling the news: A traditional journalist decides what’s worth including in her report for print, online or broadcast. An electronic journalist decides which data queries are worth showing to readers.
  • Reporting the news: A traditional journalist writes or broadcasts news stories. An electronic journalist puts together Web presentations.

Do young people who want to pursue careers in journalism need to become programmers? Well, it’s certainly a promising field for those with the inclination and talent — but it’s not absolutely necessary. In fact, the Congressional Votes Database depends on contributions from traditional journalists, who do old-fashioned tasks such as deciding which are the key votes and describing them. At best, such journalism is a skillful amalgamation of old and new.

You can watch a video of Holovaty demonstrating ChicagoCrime.org here. And here is an excellent Q&A with Holovaty posted in the Online Journalism Review.

Photo of Holovaty (cc) by JD Lasica. Some rights reserved.

Ketter on the Herald libel case

William Ketter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editor, former Pulitzer board member and past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, has written a fine op-ed piece on the Herald libel case.

Ketter goes right after the dubious notion — recently endorsed by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court — that Herald reporter Dave Wedge knew his characterization of Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy as having demeaned a teenage rape victim was false, or that Wedge harbored serious doubts. Ketter writes:

It is reasonable to assume that reporter Wedge and the Boston Herald believed the information they were fed by the district attorney’s office was truthful. The news media frequently turn to prosecutors for details of cases they are involved in. A trust builds up. They are an official source of critical information.

But the SJC would have you believe the Herald had reason to seriously doubt the accuracy of the story after it was published because a lawyer for the judge said he didn’t say what the paper had published, and the Boston Globe carried a story with Murphy’s direct denial.

Ketter’s essential point — that Wedge reported what his sources in the Bristol County district attorney’s office told him (more or less), and that he had no reason to believe they weren’t telling him the truth — is right on target. I hope Herald publisher Pat Purcell keeps fighting this.

Doing our homework

Normally I don’t get all that excited about protests against the awarding of honorary degrees to those thought by some to be unworthy. Nor does it matter to me much one way or the other whether UMass Amherst goes ahead and hands such a degree to former White House chief of staff Andrew Card this Friday.

But I was struck by an op-ed piece in today’s Globe by Vijay Prashad, director of the International Studies Program at Trinity College. What caught my eye was that, according to Prashad, Card has actually been lobbying for the degree, initiating an hour-long conversation with at least one UMass trustee and defending himself in an interview with the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Card’s message to his critics: I’m not the guy you think I am. Media Nation diverted $1.99 from its capital-projects budget in order to buy the Gazette article, which is hidden behind a pay wall. Some highlights:

“I am greatly flattered and grateful to UMass for this degree,” Card said in a telephone interview. “I defend that right to speak out, but they [the protesters] might want to do some homework.”…

Protesters are critical of what they see as Card’s role in orchestrating the lead-up to America’s invasion of Iraq and the ongoing war. Some have accused him of lying.

Card, who served as President Bush’s chief of staff from 2001 to 2006, said he has done no such thing.

“I don’t know what lie they say I have perpetrated,” Card said. “I have not lied and the people who know me know that I would not do that.”…

“In my experience, protesters have taken quotes in newspapers out of context and the things they say don’t always reflect the reality of the burden of the decisions we have to make,” Card said.

I’ll stop there. I’m up against the limits of fair use here, but I do want to get my two bucks’ worth.

Now, I’m not sure whether Card has ever actually lied about anything important, but he did amass quite a record in serving George W. Bush. (He was a top aide to Bush’s father, too.) The most notorious example — which Prashad mentions in his op-ed — was Card’s statement about the build-up to the Iraq war in 2002, when he said that “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Were Card’s words “taken out of context,” as he suggests in his interview with the Gazette? Without a transcript, we can’t know for sure. But we can at least look at the context in which that particular quote was used — in a Sept. 7, 2002, page-one New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller headlined “Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq.” Her 1,000-word story describes a coordinated effort by the White House. Here’s how it begins:

White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.

The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before President Bush’s vacation in Texas last month. It was not hastily concocted, they insisted, after some prominent Republicans began to raise doubts about moving against Mr. Hussein and administration officials made contradictory statements about the need for weapons inspectors in Iraq.

The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.

“From a marketing point of view,” said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, “you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Toward the end of Bumiller’s story, Karl Rove says pretty much the same thing:

White House officials said they began planning more intensively for the Iraq rollout in July. Advisers consulted the Congressional calendar to figure out the best time for Iraq hearings while Ms. [Karen] Hughes [a former top Bush aide], even as she was driving back to Texas, discussed with Mr. Bush the outlines of his Sept. 11 speech.

By August, with Congress out of town and the United Nations not convening until September, White House officials decided to wait out the month, even as final planning continued by phone between advisers in Washington and at Mr. Bush’s ranch in Texas.

“There was a deliberate sense that this was not the time to engage in his [sic?] process,” Mr. Rove said. “The thought was in August the president is sort of on vacation.

Based on the context in which Bumiller quotes Card, and on Rove’s similar remarks, I’d say Card’s infamous “new products” remark is every bit as cynical as his critics charge. I hope Card reflects every day on the consequences of that sales job.

Also, though Prashad doesn’t mention it, just last week we learned something new, important and disturbing about Card’s conduct in the White House. Former deputy attorney general James Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that, in 2004, he had to rush to the hospital in order to intercept Card and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, who were trying to pressure the gravely ill attorney general, John Ashcroft, to reauthorize a no-warrant spying program that Ashcroft had already ruled was illegal.

The Globe’s Charlie Savage reports that Ashcroft refused, and that Card was furious with Comey for attempting to intervene on behalf of the ailing A.G.

Time was when Andy Card’s reputation was that of a moderate Republican state legislator from the South Shore, a good guy who probably would have made a pretty good governor. But it was his choice to cast his lot with George W. Bush.

You almost wonder whether the old man asked Card to keep an eye on his impetuous son. If that was the case, it didn’t work out.

The natural truth about Michael Graham

It was a few minutes before noon today, as I was driving in to Boston, when I heard Michael Graham briefly make fun of me on his talk show on WTKK Radio (96.9 FM). The subject: my alleged support of a bill filed by state Rep. Byron Rushing that would outlaw discrimination against obese and unusually short people. (For a PDF of the bill, click here and enter “1844” next to “House, No.”)

To say the least, I was surprised. You see, Graham had invited me to appear with him this morning, then rescinded his invitation when I told him I didn’t consider myself a strong proponent of the legislation. I wish I had recorded precisely what Graham said about me on the air, and what he might have said earlier in the broadcast when I wasn’t listening. But there was no doubt that he was characterizing me as a bleeding-heart liberal supporter of the measure, even though I had clearly told him that was not the case.

In fact, here are the exact words I e-mailed to him after receiving his invitation:

Michael —

My home phone’s xxx-xxx-xxxx, and I’m around. I might step out for a few minutes — my cell is xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Just in case you’re laboring under any misconceptions, I think it’s an intriguing idea, but I don’t consider myself a strong proponent. But you probably got that from reading the MetroWest article.

DK

The article I’m referring to was published in the MetroWest Daily News yesterday. It was written by Dan Loeterman, who quoted me on the subject as follows:

“We might as well add colorblind, left-handed, allergic-to-cashews and get it over with,” Todd Domke, a Republican analyst, told the Associated Press….

But Dan Kennedy, a visiting assistant journalism professor at Northeastern University, rejects Domke’s suggestions. Kennedy, whose daughter is a dwarf, is the author of “Little People: Learning to See the World Through My Daughter’s Eyes.”

“By God, if we pass this, we’re going to have to be nice to everybody. It seems that the slippery slope is treating everyone with the dignity and respect they deserve, and I’m not particularly troubled by that,” said Kennedy.

What Kennedy is troubled by, however, is how the bill might play out in the real world.

“Is Fenway Park going to be sued because the seats aren’t wide enough? In some ways, this doesn’t bother me, but in other ways, I’m asking myself, is this mainly going to be about lawsuits?”

Now, does that sound like I’m a full-throated supporter of the Rushing bill? Obviously not, and I made sure Graham knew it. But that didn’t stop him from painting me exactly as he pleased. (For good measure, he also called Rushing “limp-wristed.”)

By the way, after I sent my response to Graham, he e-mailed me again and wrote:

Thanks for getting back to me, Dan. If you’re not a strong proponent, then let’s wait for another issue where you’re more enthusiastic in your support.

Thanks again.

Michael Graham

I’m sorry to be so self-referential here. So Michael Graham made fun of me — who cares? But I think it says something pretty revealing about the way he operates. And as Lily Tomlin once said, “No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.”

Class warfare

Carpundit has taken me to task for telling the Globe that Tom Finneran is someone with “some class and some dignity.” Carpundit instructs: “He is a convicted felon.” The Scoop offers a similar observation.

I’m not going to reargue the case against Finneran, except to say, again, that I think it was largely bogus, not to mention politically motivated. Essentially, Finneran was given a choice: Plead guilty to trumped-up charges or go to prison. If you haven’t done so before, I do urge you to read Harvey Silverglate’s take, published in 2005.

Am I a Finneran lackey? In 2004, when he was still speaker, I profiled him for the Phoenix. You be the judge.