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Papers Push Back on Maya Angelou Haters

by richard0621

“Small Minds” in Congress Oppose Honoring Icon

Sanders Slips on “Racial Blind Spots” Question

Henderson Challenges Matalin on Bigotry in GOP

For Some, “Nancy Reagan” Means “Just Say No”

Young NFL Fans Want Change in D.C. Team Name

NAACP Sets Up News Conference for Fired Manager

Author Lives Among Evicted Black Families

Money Meant for Vets Built “Lost Cause” Statues

Farah Stockman Leaving Boston Globe for N.Y. Times

Worldwide, Progress for Media Women Hits Plateau

Short Takes

President Obama awards the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom to Maya Angelou in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on February 15, 2011. (Credit: Lawrence Jackson/White House)
President Obama awards the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom to Maya Angelou in the East Room of the White House on Feb. 15, 2011. (Credit: Lawrence Jackson/White House)

“Small Minds” in Congress Oppose Honoring Icon

“Maya Angelou died two years ago but still she lives, a mighty spirit against the small minds of negativity,” began an editorial in the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal on Sunday. “She lives through her written words, including her signature poem that smacks back hard against some Washington small minds who tried to belittle her last week.

“ ‘Does my sassiness upset you?

” ‘Why are you beset with gloom?’ she asked in ‘Still I Rise.’

“The Washington folks in question are several members of Congress who soiled what should have been a happy day for all those who cherish the legacy of Winston-Salem’s own Angelou, an international icon. These nine Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against renaming our downtown post office for her, unjustly tying her to the worst of Fidel Castro. The Republicans were responding to a bill filed by Democratic Rep. Alma Adams of Greensboro, a bill that had bipartisan support from the North Carolina delegation. . . .”

The Journal wasn’t alone in its outrage at the opposition to what is normally a routine congressional action. The Dallas Morning News editorialized Friday:

“The late Maya Angelou was known worldwide as a voice for freedom and justice. Apparently that isn’t good enough for U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, who was among nine House members to vote against naming a post office in Winston-Salem, N.C., after the literary legend.

“Defending his vote in a written statement, Burgess said Angelou was soft on Cuba, adding that post offices should be named to ‘honor and remember young men and women who have lost their lives fighting for our country.’ Angelou did write in support of Fidel Castro — in the 1960s — but she subsequently received dozens of awards and honorary degrees for her work.

“She marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She’s on a stamp. Don’t those accomplishments count for something?”

On the Daily Beast Thursday, Asawin Suebsaeng wrote, “The way some of the lawmakers explained themselves, you’d have thought they had just been asked to name the United States Postal Service after Muammar Gaddafi or Bane,” the Batman villain.

At the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., Sam R. Hall noted Thursday that Rep. Steven Palazzo “just felt that it was too controversial,’’ according to a Palazzo spokeswoman.

“So, quick question for the congressman,” Hall wrote.

“Seeing as how the Confederate symbol is controversial, not to mention offensive to a large percentage of Mississippi’s population, do you think it should adorn our state flag?

“Just wondering where the ‘controversial’ line is drawn…”

Other news outlets tried to chase down the other Angelou haters, such as Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, like the others white and Republican. “Why would Buck, particularly, care about a North Carolina post office’s name?“ Simone Charles asked Thursday in the Colorado Independent. “He has remained silent on the issue and his office ignored multiple messages from The Colorado Independent. . . .”

Luke Russert of NBC News secured statements from Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Andy Harris of Maryland.

” ‘While Maya Angelou did many good things in her life, Congressman Mo Brooks (AL-5) did not believe it appropriate to name an American Post Office after a communist sympathizer and thereby honor a person who openly opposed America’s interest by supporting Fidel Castro and his regime of civil rights suppression, torture and murder of freedom-loving Cubans,’ Lauren Vandiver, a spokesperson for Brooks, told NBC News in a statement.

“Other Republican lawmakers who voted ‘no’ had similar reasons. . . .”

The Winston-Salem Journal editorial concluded:

“Fortunately, those opposing renaming our post office are small in number and exist on their own island of ignorance. The measure overwhelmingly passed the House and now heads to the Senate, where we hope it will rise as surely as Angelou’s words:

“You may write me down in history

“With your bitter twisted lies,

“You may tread me in the very dirt

“But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

The tone of the debate between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt. in Flint, Mich., on Sunday "was an exercise in decorum and diplomacy, none of the bullying, bluster and lewdness of the republican brawls which have been passing for debates," Roz Edward wrote Monday for the Michigan Chronicle.
The tone of the debate between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., in Flint, Mich., on Sunday “was an exercise in decorum and diplomacy, none of the bullying, bluster and lewdness of the [Republican] brawls which have been passing for debates,” Roz Edward wrote Monday for the Michigan Chronicle.

Sanders Slips on “Racial Blind Spots” Question

“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said white people don’t understand what it’s like to be poor and live in the ghetto, in response to a question about the candidates’ racial blind spots” at the Democratic presidential candidates’ debate Sunday in Flint, Mich., Amanda Terkel reported for HuffPost BlackVoices.

“Sanders told a moving story about how, as a newly elected congressman in Washington, D.C., about 20 years ago, he was shocked to learn that a fellow congressman, who was black, avoided taking cabs because it was humiliating when drivers would go past him because of his race.

“He also said he was humbled when a young woman active in the Black Lives Matter movement came up and told him that he simply doesn’t understand what police do in many black communities on a regular basis, beyond the shootings that tend to get more attention.

” ‘You don’t understand the degree to which we are terrorized. … I’m just talking about everyday activities where police officers are bullying people,’ Sanders recounted the woman telling him.

” ‘When you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto,’ Sanders concluded. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car. And I believe that as a nation in the year 2016, we must be firm in making it clear, we will end institutional racism and reform a broken criminal justice system.’

“Sanders’ answer immediately generated some criticism — and confusion — on social media for the implication that the ‘ghetto’ is exclusively where black people live — or that all black people understand what it’s like to live in a low-income area. . . .”

Adam Howard added Monday for MSNBC.com, “Sanders’ ‘ghetto’ gaffe underlined a persistent problem that may have crippled his bid for the 2016 nomination. He has struggled to connect with black voters, and his choice of words has often undercut a populist economic message that might have resonated with people of color. . . .”

Abby Phillip (Credit: Ruth Fremson/New York Times)
Abby Phillip (Credit: Ruth Fremson/New York Times)

Meanwhile, Sridhar Pappu reported in the New York Times Sunday print edition on “a select group of millennial reporters who have a front-row seat to the greatest political show on earth.”

Among the group: “Abby Phillip, 27, who covers the Democratic campaign for The Washington Post, said: ‘When I first started as a reporter, I had just turned 21. I was the youngest person on the job. Now everyone I work with is my age.’

“Ms. Phillip, who has more than 11,000 Twitter followers, went to work for Politico in 2010, soon after graduating from Harvard, where she was a government major. She joined The Post in 2014 and is now a leading player in this troupe. . . .”

Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, and Republican strategist Mary Matalin on NBC-TV's "Meet the Press"
Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press, and Republican strategist Mary Matalin Sunday on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.” (Credit: Screenshot/Detroit Free Press)

Henderson Challenges Matalin on Bigotry in GOP

“If you missed Sunday’s ‘Meet the Press,’ it’s worth catching an exchange between Republican strategist Mary Matalin and Free Press Editorial Page Editor Stephen Henderson about the role of bigotry in Donald Trump’s campaign and in the GOP,” according to the Detroit Free Press.

“Here’s a transcript of the exchange, courtesy of Meet the Press.

“Stephen Henderson: There’s also a substantive credibility problem here. I mean, you have Republicans saying, ‘Trump is not one of us.’ And yet, a lot of the things that he’s saying are said in coded language by other Republicans. I wrote a column last week about Paul Ryan, for instance, saying, ‘This is not a party that preys on people’s prejudices.’

“And yet, you can think of lots of examples of Republicans doing exactly that, going back to Ronald Reagan, giving a states’ rights speech in Neshoba County, Mississippi, in 1980. This goes on all the time in coded ways. Trump is saying some of these things more explicitly. And that makes them, you know, it makes you uncomfortable too.

“Mary Matalin: No, it doesn’t make me uncomfortable, it just makes me want to choke you because it’s ridiculous and it’s the creation of Trump. Because conservatives do not consider themselves bigots or homophobes or misogynists, okay?

“What [Texas Sen. Ted] Cruz won at CPAC, and he won overwhelmingly, he is expanding the electorate by bringing like-minded libertarians, young people. Trump is expanding the electorate by getting people who are sick of being called bigots, because they want to secure the border. This is not a race race, okay? Let’s not go there.

“Stephen Henderson: I think it is. I think there’s no question that what he is doing is appealing to race. And Republicans have done that for a long time.”

 

Nancy Reagan at a "Just Say No" anti-drug rally at the White House in 1986. (Credit: Wikipedia Commons)
Nancy Reagan at a “Just Say No” anti-drug rally at the White House in 1986. (Credit: Wikipedia Commons)

For Some, “Nancy Reagan” Means “Just Say No”

“Former First Lady Nancy Reagan, regarded as one of the most influential women to hold the position, died of congestive heart failure at the age of 94,” David A. Love wrote Monday for theGrio.com. “She will be remembered for many things, especially for those who look back fondly at the Reagan era. But amongst African-Americans what she perhaps will best be remembered for is the ‘Just Say No’ campaign against youth drug abuse.

“ ‘Say yes to life,’ Nancy Reagan said, ‘and when it comes to drugs and alcohol, just say no.’

“ ‘Just Say No’ seems like a quaint slogan from our vantage point 30 years forward. And it sounds like a throwback to another era, when the war on drugs was just starting to kick in, leading to the incarceration explosion in communities of color.

“Nancy Reagan recalled that the phrase came after she met with a group of children. According to the Ronald Reagan Library, this is how it happened: ‘A little girl raised her hand,’ Mrs. Reagan recalled, ‘and said, “Mrs. Reagan, what do you do if somebody offers you drugs?” And I said, “Well, you just say no.” And there it was born.’

“An advertising agency worked on the campaign and transmitted the message throughout American popular culture. . . .”

Young NFL Fans Want Change in D.C. Team Name

“A new national survey shows a significant increase in the number of National Football League fans who want the Washington team to change its name and stop promoting a racial slur against Native Americans,” Ray Halbritter, representative of the Oneida Indian Nation and an opponent of the team name, wrote Friday for HuffPost LatinoVoices.

“Though the overall poll does not yet show majority support for changing the name, it did show a significant year-to-year increase in those saying they do want a change — and as important, support for a change is particularly strong among young people and communities of color.

“Among those surveyed by Public Policy Polling, a majority of Latinos and fans between the ages of 18 and 29 say they want the name changed. Additionally, a plurality of African Americans say they support a change. In all, a quarter of the NFL fans surveyed support changing the name — up 7 points since the last poll.

“These survey results confirm what we have sensed in so many different ways over the last few years: namely, that more and more Americans want the National Football League to start respecting people of color and stop marketing a dictionary-defined racial slur. The NFL faces a critical choice: it can continue to try to promote, market and profit off an ugly epithet and alienate an increasingly large share of its potential fans, or it can stand on the right side of history and make a change. . . . ”

Among the findings, Chuck Modiano wrote Feb. 26 for the Daily News in New York, “While 77% of white fans believe the D.C. Team name should not be changed, that number is drastically reduced for polled fans who are African-American (38%) and Latino (33%).”

Modiano also cited these figures for white fans:

“Poll Question:  ‘The (D.C. Team) Should Change Their Name’

“16% — 65 & Older

“19% — 46 to 65

“22% — 30 to 45

“70% — 18 to 29

“Wow.”

Miranda Beard said new management at WDAM-TV in Hattiesburg, Miss., was not supportive of her advocacy work to help promote better education in Mississippi. (Credit: Lici Beveridge/Hattiesburg American)
Miranda Beard said new management at WDAM-TV in Hattiesburg, Miss., did not support her advocacy work for better education in Mississippi. (Credit: Lici Beveridge/Hattiesburg American)

NAACP Sets Up News Conference for Fired Manager

“Former WDAM [assistant] news director Miranda Beard went public with why she’s out at the Raycom-owned Hattiesburg, Miss., NBC affiliate,” Kevin Eck reported Monday for TVSpy.

“ ‘I was fired after the station received a tweet of a slide I had used when I spoke to school leaders after I stopped in Jackson, Mississippi, on my way back from a trip to Tennessee to check on my very sick father, who is making a slow transition from this life, and my mother, who had surgery,’ Beard told those attending a press conference set up by the local NAACP on Sunday.

“Beard had worked at WDAM for more than 30 years. The Hattiesburg American reports a local politician is calling for a boycott of the station over Beard’s firing.

“WDAM GM Joe Sciortino told the Hattiesburg American, ‘I hope you understand that we do not comment on personnel matters.’ . . .”

Lici Beveridge reported Sunday in the Hattiesburg American, “Clarence Magee, president of the Forrest County branch of the NAACP, said the NAACP set up the meeting Sunday because the organization’s constitution says if someone comes to them seeking help, that person will be helped.

” ‘The NAACP stands with those who feel they have been violated in one form or another, regardless of who they are,’ he said. . .”

Beveridge also wrote that “Beard said she recently was named president of the National School Boards Association and will spend some of her time working with 90,000 school boards to help 50 million school children nationwide, in addition to spending more time with her ailing parents.”

During the news conference, Forrest County Supervisor Rod Woullard “asked those attending to contact Raycom, WDAM’s parent company, and express their thoughts on Beard’s firing, and he called for the audience to turn off WDAM for the next week. And if that didn’t get attention, to boycott for a second week. . . .”

The story also said, “Beard said on Feb. 25,  she was called into an office, where she was told she violated the Family and Medical Leave Act, and that she lied about going to Tennessee so that she could attend the meeting in Jackson instead. Beard was never asked for proof of her visit to Tennessee, she said.”

Author Lives Among Evicted Black Families

“On the North Side of Milwaukee, Arleen’s struggle to raise her two boys as a single mom on $628 a month ends in an eviction notice,” Edwin Rios reported March 1 for Mother Jones. “On the South Side, a grandmother named Larraine . . . can’t pay to heat her trailer, falls behind on the rent, and is eventually kicked out. The mark of eviction remains with both women long after they’ve been forced from their homes, their possessions hauled out on the street.

“In his new book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (out March 1), Harvard sociologist Matthew Desmond introduces us to Arleen, Larraine, and others struggling with the consequences of getting tossed from their houses — a situation that disproportionately affects urban women. ‘If incarceration had come to define the lives of men from impoverished black neighborhoods, eviction was shaping the lives of women,’ Desmond writes. ‘Poor black men were locked up. Poor black women were locked out.’

“Desmond conducted his immersive, ethnographic fieldwork in Milwaukee for a little more than a year, living in a trailer park in the city’s South Side and a rooming house in the North Side. He went on eviction ride-alongs with landlords and saw tenants and their possessions kicked to the curb. He sat with tenants in eviction court, where they wondered why they were getting kicked out. And with a crew of researchers, the 36-year-old researcher spearheaded the Milwaukee Area Renters Study, an extensive examination of the city’s residential history that also offers a detailed look at urban poverty and evictions.

“As a result, Evicted is a rich, empathetic feat of storytelling and fieldwork, one that Barbara Ehrenreich hails as ‘a new standard for reporting on poverty.’ . . .”

Desmond, who was awarded a MacArthur grant last year, is appearing on talk shows promoting his book. Monday on NPR’s “Diane Rehm Show” originating from WAMU-FM in Washington, a mother of five in Milwaukee whose story is told in the book called to describe her experience.

Money Meant for Vets Built “Lost Cause” Statues

It’s not often that a lecture on C-SPAN3’s American History channel becomes columnist’s fodder, but with a debate over Confederate flags, street names and monuments awakened last year after the mass shooting in Charleston, S.C., a broadcast touching on the origins of still-standing “Lost Cause” idolatry fit the bill.

“In a history lecture that was broadcast on CSPAN’s live-stream feed Saturday night, Brian Craig Miller, a professor at Emporia State University in Kansas, talks about the plight of Confederate soldiers who returned to the homes and farms without all the limbs they’d taken to war,” Jarvis DeBerry wrote Sunday for NOLA.com | the Times Picayune in New Orleans.

“Some of the Southern states eventually got around to helping the men that had fought for them, Miller says, but they didn’t make it easy for those men to receive help. . . .”

DeBerry also wrote, ” ‘The Lost Cause doesn’t have a lot of room for injured veterans,’ Miller says, ‘for distraught widows, for orphan children. When you would have these organizations kind of spring up, they would put in their mission statements — like the United Confederate Veterans — that they were all about raising money to take care of that generation that had been destroyed by the war, but they would use all that money then to go build a monument on a [battlefield], to go construct gigantic monuments or even to go into battle to hire authors to write textbooks after the war.’ . . .”

“Miller’s lecture was recorded Nov. 16, 2015. You can watch the conclusion of his lecture. (That’s where he says that the monuments were built with money raised to help those injured in the war.)

“Or, to get the full context, you can watch all 50 minutes.

“Ten-minute excerpt

“Full 50-minute lecture”

Farah Stockman
Farah Stockman

Farah Stockman Leaving Boston Globe for N.Y. Times

Farah Stockman, editorial writer at the Boston Globe, is joining the New York Times’ politics team to write about social and political issues.

Carolyn Ryan, politics editor, wrote Times staffers on Feb. 24:

“Farah worked as a Metro reporter for The Globe from 2000 to 2004, and was sent to Pakistan after the attacks of Sept. 11. She then covered the State Department from the Globe’s Washington bureau, traveling broadly to tackle a range of assignments, including the 2005 tsunami in Indonesia, the 2005 London subway bombings and the 2009 elections in Afghanistan.

“For the past four years, she has worked as a columnist and editorial writer for The Globe’s editorial page, producing deeply reported and consistently thoughtful columns on subjects including race, income inequality and school reform.

“After winning the Eugene Pulliam Fellowship for op-ed writing in 2014, she wrote a nuanced and eye-opening series of columns examining race and education in Boston, four decades after the busing crisis.

“Farah is a graduate of Harvard and still retains her ties to Kenya — where she helped found a nonprofit organization, Jitegemee, that rescues and educates hundreds of street children each year.

“Farah starts at The Times on March 21.”

Worldwide, Progress for Media Women Hits Plateau

“In a report to be released on International Women’s day (8 March), the Gender Council (GC) of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) highlights high levels of gender discrimination and violence against women in the media across the globe,” IFJ reported on Monday.

“ ‘We have hit a plateau, a place where movement and change appear non-existent,’ states the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), which indicates every five years the place women hold in the news. Its 2015 report starkly concludes that ‘Progress for women in news media has grinded to a halt.’

“The GMMP 2015 report, which was conducted in 114 countries with the help of some IFJ affiliates, shows that women make up ‘only 24% of the persons heard, read about or seen in newspaper, television and radio news, exactly the same level found in the 2010 report.’ . . .”

Short Takes

 

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