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Hot Type, for the week of November 19, 2004 -- continued
The best-known name on the list belongs to All Things Considered newscaster Corey Flintoff, listed in public records as having given $538 to Dean for America last December 9. "Actually, it was to MoveOn," says Flintoff's wife, Diana Derby. "I mistakenly put it in both of our names. Since then I've been very, very careful to put our political donations in my name." Umansky told me the Flintoff-Derby contribution didn't count anyway, because the ethics code didn't become effective until February 25, 2004. So in the in-every-sense-of-the-word-a-journalist category, that leaves only science correspondent Michelle Trudeau. She gave $500 to Dean for America last September and, after the code was put in place, $500 to John Kerry for President Inc. in May. I couldn't reach Trudeau. But surely, I told Umansky, as I studied Petrelis's list, producers and engineers are journalists too. "We also put out entertainment shows," he said. Here in Chicago, Rod Abid is senior producer of NPR's Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!, and Michael Danforth works with him. Abid wrote two $250 checks to Kerry for President and a third to the Democratic National Committee. Danforth gave $250 to Kerry for President. "I'm a producer for a goofy news quiz," said Danforth. "I don't consider what I do journalism." But now that the ethics code exists he doesn't intend to contribute again. Danforth gets it. If the argument's about appearances, the distinction between so-called journalists and everyone else at NPR hardly matters. The fact is, seven employees is a very small number. The other fact is that all of them gave money to Democrats, which means people certain that NPR skews left have reason to say "I told you so" regardless. As I made my inquiries, I continued to hear from Petrelis. "After we spoke on the phone," he e-mailed me at one point, "I checked federal and state records to see if Chicago Reader reporters had made any donations to politicians or campaigns, and discovered executives made contributions. "So my question to you is, what are the ethical guidelines of the Reader about such political giving? Another question is, have these donations been disclosed to the Reader's audience? I couldn't find anything on the Reader's web site indicating such disclosure. . . . What do you say about these donations?" I reply here through gritted teeth. No, the donations haven't been disclosed to the Reader's audience. Doing that had never occurred to us, and now that Petrelis has raised the idea, expect us to forget it. Readers who want to know who here gives what to whom are free to search the same Web sites Petrelis has mastered, such as tray.com. News Bites
Now it's John Kerry's turn. Higgins pummeled him constantly going into the election and in the first week after Bush was reelected whacked him three more times. At least I think he whacked him; as Tribune blogger Eric Zorn has pointed out, Higgins's many sallies against Kerry have been distinguished chiefly by their impenetrability.
Baby steps.
A second cousin of mine worked a precinct in Cleveland for John Kerry on election day. She described the experience in an e-mail to friends. "I arrived at a black polling location suited up like an astronaut to 'protect the vote' from a team of aggressive, racially-profiling Republicans, and then when they did nothing of the sort boredom led me to befriend them and learn that they were there to 'protect the vote' from the hordes of illegal/out-of-state voters that we were sure to bus in en masse." What she called "massive bilateral paranoia" gave way in the end to a collective interest in doughnuts. Send tips, tirades, and comments to hottype@chicagoreader.com |
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Nobody chews an old bone like Jack Higgins. In the first four weeks
after George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2001, Higgins drew five more
editorial cartoons for the Sun-Times castigating Bill Clinton. He
drew the new president once.