 | ||||||
 | ||||||
| ||||||
| ||||||
| Hot Type, for the week of November 18, 2005 -- continued Kim Cavitt appeared in Wilgoren's story as a neighborhood mother who "recalled having coffee and a cookie one afternoon with her boisterous 2-year-old when 'someone came over and said you just need to keep her quiet or you need to leave.'" McCauley read that as Cavitt claiming she'd been kicked out -- which he was sure hadn't happened, his sign being no more than a "very gentle reminder" that no one who worked for him would ever enforce so brutally. Cavitt and McCauley wound up on Fox News together. "I said, 'Ma'am, I don't think that happened,'" McCauley told me. "And she was very dogmatic and she said, 'Are you calling me a liar?' on national TV." Later that day Cavitt showed up at A Taste of Heaven, which she was otherwise boycotting, to pursue the discussion. "That was very awkward," said McCauley. I reached Cavitt at home. It was hard to hear her over the two-year-old screaming in the background, but she set the record straight. "Nobody kicked me out -- I just left," she said. "Why would I lie about something like that? I've tried really hard not to say anything personal about him, but I don't appreciate it when I'm called a beauty queen with a sense of entitlement. That's so far from me. . . . My child wasn't running. She wasn't screaming. She wasn't doing anything. My child also does not know a stranger. She was talking to the other patrons showing them her cookie." The New York Times promptly corrected Wilgoren's story online and on November 11 published a page-two correction saying the retail clerk didn't work at the bookstore. For good measure, it also said the story had misstated the Women & Children First policy governing story time. This was OK with Wilgoren, though she didn't think it was necessary. She told me, "I'm not sure what the exact difference is between asking people to leave and kicking them out." Story time is Wednesday at 10 AM, before the doors open to adult customers. "We're a children's bookstore," says co-owner Ann Christophersen. "We want children here." She and the other owner, Linda Bubon, sent the Times a letter complaining that Wilgoren's story "trivialized an important issue" and put their store on the wrong side of it. "Mothers of young children don't need to be told by the media how hostile most of the world is to the work they do. They feel it every day, in the stores and restaurants where they're not welcomed, in workplaces that penalize them for maternity leaves or wanting to work part-time." Bubon told me A Taste of Heaven and her bookstore are worlds apart. "If," she said, "I was a restaurateur trying to balance the needs of customers who want a quiet, peaceful atmosphere with the needs of customers who want to get out of the house with their children -- " She hesitated. "I don't know how I'd strike that balance." McCauley had told me about a phone call from a woman in Alabama. "She said, 'May I send you a letter? I'll need your address.' And she said, 'Will you put it up in your bakery? I want you to put it in a pretty frame.' She said, 'I'm a single mom, and I have four children, and we're victims of Katrina. And I want you to know that even in this shelter I expect them to behave. Even in this shelter I expect them to use their indoor voices. Even in this shelter I expect more from my children than they expect from theirs." Time Out Chicago and the Tribune did a story on a neighborhood squabble. Despite its bungling, the Times uncovered a fault line in American society. News Bites
The unfilled position is a stick in the eye of Ariail's profession, and last week the Tribune Company came at it with an even sharper stick. A new publisher sent from Chicago fired the Los Angeles Times's conservative, Pulitzer-winning cartoonist, Michael Ramirez. For balance and greater savings, he also fired a liberal columnist, Robert Scheer. I first heard about this from my sister in Pasadena, who thought she got her money's worth from both of them. She said the firings made her understand for the first time that her hometown paper had been bought. The Tribune Company took over the Times in 2000. Surely the last thing its publisher wants is for his world-class paper in his world-class city to be perceived by the public as colonized. The Times can either report to Los Angeles or it can report to Rome.
Send tips, tirades, and comments to hottype@chicagoreader.com |
 |  |
Two and a half years ago Robert Ariail, editorial cartoonist of the State in Columbia, South Carolina, thought he was about to be hired by the Tribune to fill a position vacant since Jeff MacNelly died in 2000. I checked in with Ariail the other day, and as far as he knows he's still in line for the job. But the line's not moving, and he's not holding his breath. "Your guess is as good as mine," said Ariail, who hasn't heard from editorial page editor Bruce Dold in a year or so and doesn't know why.