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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 You see, Graham had invited me to appear with him this morning, then rescinded his invitation when I told him I didn’t consider myself a strong proponent of the legislation.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.

Herald appeals libel ruling

The Herald has asked the state’s Supreme Judicial Court to reconsider its decision to uphold a $2.1 million libel verdict against the paper. The Herald lost a 2005 trial in a suit brought by Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy, who charged that Herald falsely and recklessly reported that he had demeaned a teenage rape victim.

You wouldn’t think there would be much chance that the SJC would reverse its own unanimous ruling. But I’ve read the brief filed on behalf of the Herald, and it makes a strong argument that the SJC completely mischaracterized the testimony of the Herald’s only eyewitness source, former Bristol County prosecutor David Crowley.

I was in the courtroom, and I’d say the brief is right on the mark. So stay tuned.

Give Richardson a hand

Bill Richardson announced today that he’s running for president. He may or may not have what it takes, but give him credit for having made his peace with bacteria.

My former Phoenix colleague Mark Leibovich explained how in a New York Times story on hand sanitizer last fall. It turned out that Richardson refuses to use the stuff. Why? Leibovich wrote:

“It’s condescending to the voters,” said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat.

A fervent nonuser of hand sanitizer, Richardson holds the Guinness Book of World Records mark for shaking the most hands over an eight-hour period (13,392, at the New Mexico State Fair in 2002).

Indeed, what message does it send when politicians, the putative leaders in a government by the people, for the people, feel compelled to wipe the residues of said people immediately after meeting them?

“The great part about politics is that you’re touching humanity,” Richardson said. “You’re going to collect bacteria just by existing.”

I’m sorry, but that’s just strange. I hope Richardson has a strong immune system.

Not such a linchpin

New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen is ambivalent about doing interviews, and Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post asks him why. Kurtz, though, seems to think that the institution of the journalistic interview is more firmly established than it is. He begins:

The humble interview, the linchpin of journalism for centuries, is under assault.

In fact, what is widely regarded as the first newspaper interview was conducted not centuries ago, but in 1836, by New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, who talked with the proprietor of a brothel in the hopes of shedding light on the notorious murder of a prostitute.

It seems strange to realize that great American journalists from Benjamin Franklin to Isaiah Thomas never interviewed people, but such were the customs of the day.

Ron Borges’ departure

As you probably already know, Globe sportswriter Ron Borges has quietly left the paper. That means his two-month suspension for lifting chunks of a column from the Tacoma News Tribune will stand as the last word on his long career at 135 Morrissey Boulevard.

David Scott, who’s been blogging prodigiously on this (see this and this), invites me “to comment on the significance of the botched Borges bye-bye.” Well, I don’t know. At the time of Borges’ suspension, I wondered if he’d ever come back. I guessed he would, since the Globe has been his platform for various broadcasting and outside writing assignments. I guessed wrong — hardly the first time.

Readers of Media Nation know that I’m an exceedingly narrow sports fan. Since Borges didn’t cover the Red Sox, I’ve read very little of his stuff over the years. I do recommend this John Gonzalez profile of Borges in Boston Magazine, which includes the following hilarious passage:

Boston sports junkies might be surprised to hear this. Dan Shaughnessy has always been the guy they’d most like to dump into the harbor. But over the past few years, Borges seems to have supplanted his fellow Globe scribe as the most vilified writer in town. “We should have one of those Globe polls — ‘Who do you hate more?'” Shaughnessy says. “I’ve challenged Borges to see who could get out the vote. It would be close. And it would be a lot more interesting than who’s going to win the MVP.”

Actually, it would be a lot less interesting than to see who’s going to win the MVP, but that’s Shaughnessy: a sportswriter who doesn’t seem to like sports all that much.

One aspect of Borges’ meltdown continues to trouble me. You cannot judge whether or not he committed plagiarism without taking a close look at the disclosure that ran with his football notes column, as well as with the notes columns of several other Globe sportswriters: “[M]aterial from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report.”

How do you hang someone out to dry for lifting material when there was a huge, blinking sign telling readers that the material they were about to read was at least partially — yes, lifted from other sources? Of course Borges should have rewritten the stuff he was taking, but it’s not as though he’d claimed that it was the fruit of his own labors. To this day, I doubt that he thinks he did anything wrong. (Just to be clear: He did.)

The most fully reported piece on Borges’ departure is by Jessica Heslam, in the Herald’s Messenger Blog. Reading between the lines, it sounds like Borges — who actually returned to the Globe two weeks ago — realized that his outside work was not going to disappear if he left, and that he’d rather pursue that than stay with an employer who had publicly accused him of being a plagiarist.

Update: Cold, Hard Football Facts, the Web site that first reported on Borges’ light fingers, weighs in on his departure — right down to some Snoop Dogg-style boasting about the size of its virtual testicles. Really.

Say what, George?

Al Sharpton, debating former Imus producer Bernard McGuirk on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” on May 11:

Forgiveness has nothing to do with penalty. If you abuse a job, you can forgive somebody and say you lose the job. Moses was forgiven. He didn’t get to the Promised Land. There is penalty…. I think that there must not be amnesty. There must be — people pay for their deeds. And I think it was appropriate that y’all paid.

Boston-based PR magnate George Regan, in the Boston Herald today, talking about WRKO Radio’s decision to audition McGuirk for a possible stint as Tom Finneran’s sidekick:

If Al Sharpton has no problems with this man, neither do we.

Well, George, Sharpton does have a problem with McGuirk. Does that change your thinking?

Curious George: The deceptive headline of the day appears in today’s Globe. “WRKO clarifies McGuirk bid” may be the head, but the story consists of a Regan obfuscation job worthy of Scott McClellan. To wit: “Regan said yesterday that the three-day spot was not an audition, but said he could not rule out the possibility that McGuirk would be offered a job.”

So it’s not an audition, but if McGuirk does well, he might be offered a job. Right.

Even curiouser: Brian Maloney on Regan’s triple play.

Jeff Greenfield on the “liberal” media

Jeff Greenfield on liberal media bias:

[I]n my view the danger of bias does not lie in political coverage. I mean, ask Al Gore and John Kerry if they were the beneficiary of a poodle press. They were treated very critically — appropriately.

“Appropriately”? As has been well-documented (start here and here), Gore in 2000 was subjected to the most viciously false media pounding of any modern presidential candidate. From the media-created lie that Gore had claimed to have “invented” the Internet to the hue and cry that he give up on a race that he’d actually won, the 2000 presidential campaign amounted to a shocking eruption of media irresponsibility. The media’s shoddy performance was just as responsible for Gore’s loss as the five Supreme Court justices who handed George W. Bush a victory he hadn’t earned.

No, it wasn’t as bad with Kerry. The swift-boat lies never really broke out of the cable and radio talk ghetto (although Eric Boehlert shows the mainstream media deserve at least some blame), and by 2004 the media were finally starting to catch on to Bush. But Greenfield really needs to bone up on what happened in 2000.

Then again, I remember Greenfield’s popping up on the radio some years ago — on Imus, naturally — to say that he wasn’t all that troubled by the outcome in Florida, because whatever went wrong was balanced off by the fact that the media had mistakenly called the state for Gore before folks in the Panhandle had finished voting. Good grief. (Via Romenesko.)