Thursday, August 29, 2002

The “Go-Getter’s” Ups and Downs
UPS: John Schlagetter sent me an email over the weekend about a post of mine covering the Phil Heimlich semi-controversy about his stint as a radio talk show host on WRKC-AM earlier this year. This issue covered whether Phil’s stint on the radio amounted to a campaign contribution. I do not know if it does or not, but it should be investigated. John’s point was to differentiate Alicia Reese’s and Ken Anderson’s radio shows and he is correct. Both Ms. Reese and Mr. Anderson had different situations than Phil Heimlich, but overall each of the three raised the issue of politicians jumping back and forth from candidate/office holder to member of the media, ala Pat Buchanan’s revolving media door. My point was not to allege either Ms. Reese or Mr. Anderson had violated any campaign finance laws. My point was to question media outlets that hire politicians back after the election season, for which I question both WRKC and WDBZ.

DOWNS: John was filling in as host for Jay Love today on the 1230 the Buzz and he made a comment about Peter Bronson’s Enquirer column called “Tainted vote: NAACP intimidated by thugs.” John took Bronson to task for using the term “thug.” John seems to hate that term, mostly for its overuse. I can say the same for terms like “healing” and “change”, but that is a different issue. Here John is not fair in claiming Bronson used the word totally on his own volition, with an implied purpose of demonizing the protestors. The protestors do a find job of degrading themselves, but I digress. Norma Holt Davis, local NAACP President, is quoted in the column: “the protestors were ‘thuggish,’ she said. ‘I stand by that.’” I realize that “thug” and “thuggish” are not exactly the same word, but they are close enough for Bronson to use the noun form of the word in his column subtitle. John, in my opinion, took a cheap shot at Bronson. Bronson deserves to be knocked down often for many of his columns, but not this one.

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