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.

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.