Dan Kennedy

Professors as Information Censors

On a l’impression que le dessin est de moins en moins toléré, que c’est une forme d’expression qui, même au sein des médias, est encombrante. Un peu trop atypique, un peu trop libre…  Même dans les grands journaux, les dessins deviennent extrêmement consensuels, il n’y a pas beaucoup de prise de risque éditoriale, les dessins deviennent un peu insipides.  [You get the impression that cartooning has become less and less tolerated, that it’s a form of expression which, even in the heart of the media, is burdensome.  A bit too uncommon, a little too free…  Even in the big newspapers, cartoons have become extremely consensual, there’s not much editorial risk taking, the cartoons become a bit insipid.  —trans gts]

—Riss, editor of Charlie Hebdo

It is the fifth anniversary of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonist massacre.  Are Northeastern University students aware of that?  As an alumnus of NU and out of respect for the murdered cartoonists, I request that the student editors of The Huntington News override the decision made by one of their professors, Dan Kennedy, to censor information.  Indeed, Professor Kennedy refused to circulate to his students a cartoon (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2020/01/democracy-under-siege.html), which I’d sketched satirizing The Boston Globe.  I’d sent it to the columnists depicted in the cartoon, as well as to the editor and several other journalists.  In a separate email, I’d also sent it to Professor Kennedy, who teaches in the School of Journalism.

To Professor Dan Kennedy, Northeastern University:

It is highly likely you will choose NOT to present the attached cartoon to your Northeastern University journalist students… and that would represent in a nutshell your problem as a professor of journalism.  Why not address it, instead of ignoring it?  

Professor Kennedy was the only one who responded.  For that, I praise him.  From my experience, The Boston Globe tends to ignore/censor hardcore criticism with its regard, something that clearly ought to be a focus for professors of journalism.  Professor Kennedy’s response was brief.

Hi, George —

I like the one of me and Renée Loth much better.

No, I won't be presenting it to my students. It's puerile.

DK

Apropos, the other cartoon, which Professor Kennedy refers to and also refused to circulate amongst his students can be examined here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2020/01/renee-loth-and-dan-kennedy.html.  I just posted it.  “Oh, my God, this cartoon is fantastic,” had written the professor, but again he would not circulate it amongst his students.  In 2013, I’d posted a different cartoon again satirizing the professor, and again he would not circulate it amongst his students (see wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2013/07/rosanna-cavannah-and-dan-kennedy.html).  Moreover, last June I’d posted an “Open Letter to Northeastern University School of Journalism.”  Not one NU professor would circulate the letter to his or her students.  In fact, The Huntington News would not respond.  It can be examined here:  wwwtheamericandissidentorg.blogspot.com/2019/06/northeastern-university-school-of.html.  

In any case, rather than issue a general kill-the-messenger message-killing epithet, “puerile,” why not instead contemplate precisely what points are made in the cartoon, then via reason and fact prove the points faulty.  That should be precisely what a professor and any thinking individual does.  But when one is bound by ideology and/or career connections, one tends NOT to do that.  Sadly, to dismiss a message that one does not like with a simple epithet has become a common practice today.  Hopefully, professors are not teaching and encouraging it.  

Was Professor Kennedy’s a worthy response?  Shouldn’t his students be able to make their own determinations?  Should professors serve as academic censors of information?  In essence, would the cartoon NOT encourage debate amongst students of journalism?  And isn’t vigorous debate a prime cornerstone of a thriving democracy, even at a school of journalism?  For a professor to dismiss the clear message in the cartoon as “puerile” is troubling.  

How perchance is it “puerile,” for example, to openly criticize a highly-biased newspaper’s refusal to publish anything highly critical of its editor?  How perchance is it “puerile” to quote the puerile statements of two of its columnists, while simultaneously presenting the newspaper’s latest self-vaunting focus, “Democracy Under Siege”?  Indeed, how does publishing such puerile columns like “Miss Conduct” and “Love Letters” serve to solve the democracy-under-siege problem evoked by the Boston Globe?  How does the latter’s rejection of hardcore criticism/satire like that presented in the cartoon solve the democracy-under-siege problem?  How is it possible that Professor Kennedy seems incapable of grasping these fundamental questions?   Might the Boston Globe constitute one of the hands feeding him?  Any careerist, academic or other, knows and obeys the basic career taboo:  thou shalt not bite the hands that feed.  

How is it “puerile” to criticize/satirize the Boston Globe as a likely contributor to the democracy-under-siege problem?  Might Professor Kennedy (like him or not is irrelevant!) also be a contributor to the problem?  If so, that would explain his dismissal of the satire as “puerile,” thus not worthy of his students’ attention.  Newspapers, like the Boston Globe, publish satirical cartoons, but not when the satire targets them.  With good-taste censors like Professor Kennedy in academic positions and Globe Editor McGrory in journalism positions, democracy will remain under siege.  In fact, one must wonder what Brian McGrory and his journalist colleagues think democracy is.  Do they think it is implementation of ideology, restriction of freedom of expression, and limited debate in accord with the parameters of their particular ideology?  

Finally, for several decades now, as a Northeastern alumnus, I have tried in vain to get the library directors at the university to subscribe (only $20/year) to The American Dissident, a 501c3 nonprofit journal devoted to literature, democracy and dissidence.   So, how can Northeastern, year after year, ask me to contribute money?  Well, instead, I will now contribute a free subscription, but only if the librarian in charge assures that issues will be placed on the shelf and not thrown into the garbage.  The cartoon in question will appear in the next issue of the journal due out in April.  If the librarian in charge accepts the offer, then Professor Kennedy’s students will be able to circumvent his censorship of information and make their own determinations as to the worthiness or unworthiness of that particular expression of freedom of speech.  And the same goes, if the student newspaper editor decides to publish it.  

The American Dissident, unlike the bulk of journals and newspapers, not only brooks tough criticism regarding it and its editor (me), but encourages and publishes the harshest received in each and every issue.  How sad that the Boston Globe rejects that modus operandi, de facto preferring “democracy under siege.”  How about The Huntington News?  Journalism constitutes a part of the democracy-under-siege problem in America.   If it continues to deny that fact, as it tends to do, how can that possibly help resolve the problem?  If student journalists continue in that darkness, how can that help resolve the problem?   In the realm of journalism, careerism and ideology, which ineluctably oppose truth and reason, constitute two of the prime culprits.  

Riss concludes (see above quote), “I think that free expression is in itself a sufficiently fundamental value, which has a future if cartoonists have the courage to inject into their drawings courage and strength.  If it’s only to present nice cartoons which upset nobody, they might as well not sketch at all.”  [« Je pense que la liberté d’expression est déjà une valeur fondamentale suffisante.  Ce genre a de l’avenir si les dessinateurs ont le courage de donner à leur dessin de la force. Si c’est juste pour faire de l’illustration et des dessins gentils qui ne dérangent personne, autant ne rien dessiner du tout » —trans gts]

In sincerity, again, I thank Professor Kennedy for responding… because from his brief criticism, I was inspired to write this essay.  Please, professors, avoid the epithets and embrace vigorous debate and freedom of expression, democracy’s cornerstones.  

Democracy Under Siege

Jeff Jacoby -- The Career Columnist Quandary

Needless to say, the Boston Globe would not publish, let alone respond to, the following cartoon and counter essay, regarding one of its own, columnist Jeff Jacoby.  After all, it broke a cardinal rule:  Thou shalt NOT criticize the journalists...

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Trolls Here, Trolls There, Trolls Everywhere!

Career Columnists vs. We, the People, uh, Trolls

Thou shalt not bite the hands that feed constitutes the fundamental problem confronting newspaper columnists, or any other so-called professionals, for that matter.  In the case of Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe columnist, criticism of the Boston Globe, its editor, and, of course, other columnists constitutes that taboo.  For example, Jacoby will certainly not write a column decrying the egregious anti-white racist writing of his fellow columnist, Renee Graham.  And sadly, his silence serves, like it or not, to support the black good/white bad narrative pushed by the latter.  Over the years, I’ve submitted a number of highly critical op-eds, including several critical of Graham’s blatant racism (see Black Racists with Press Badges” and “Racism, Racism, Racism Ad Nauseam, Ad Infinitum, Ad Obscurum") to the Globe, all of which were categorically rejected.  After all, I, plebe, uh, troll, have no voice.  

The idea of career columnists, who end up forming an elite group, is a bad one, because it demands one voice over and over each week, as opposed to different citizen, uh, troll voices.  It requires the career columnist to come up with something each week for his or her weekly column… and in the absence of a good idea, fluff is always a viable option.  And indeed Jacoby’s latest column is a good example of the latter, “Column-writing in the Internet age is much better. And much worse."  Sure, there’s the opportunity of plebe letters to the editor, but that venue demands very short critiques.  Also, there’s the opportunity of a guest editorial, but that demands the approval of the editor.  Try getting an op-ed critical of an editor published in the editor’s newspaper!

“I have made a living writing opinion commentary for mainstream newspapers since the 1980s,” notes Jacoby in his column.  In essence, that constitutes the very crux of the career columnist quandary because “making a living” (career) inevitably must conflict with truth telling.  Career is the crux of the professor problem, the politician problem, the lawyer problem, the journalist problem, the poet problem, and on and on.  Career vs. truth!  As a former professor, I was able to experience that problem first hand.  But unlike most, I chose truth over career.  In fact, I was fired from my last teaching job at American Public University because I disobeyed a direct order from my bosses to cease expressing my point of view regarding criticism lodged against me.  How many newspaper columnists would choose  truth over career?   Likely, very, very few… because money (and collegiality), for most professionals, always tends to trump truth.  Would Jacoby and other careerists be able to fully comprehend that quandary?  Have they ever even contemplated it?  Self-satisfaction (ego), of course, demands a failure to comprehend.  For those incapable of understanding, Solzhenitsyn’s powerful essay, “Live Not by Lies,” ought to be required reading.  

Jacoby does not, of course, address in his column the questions I address here.  What he does, instead, is address a more or less superficial issue:  writing columns in the age of the internet.  “I leave it to others to sketch the view of the digital landscape from 30,000 feet,” he notes. “Here’s what it looks like at ground level to one guy who has been in the opinion business since the era when opinions were crafted on typewriters.”  Well, opinions should not be crafted on typewriters… or computers, but rather in the mind and with TRUTH and FACTS always as the editor, not the BOSS as the editor.   

Careerists always cave.  Truth-tellers do not; they fight vigorously against the vague orthodoxy that tries always to get them to cave/to conform/to be collegial.  Jacoby cites an example, though to simply support his superficial account of the wonders of the internet, “In a 2012 column about vulgarity, I referred to a cable program that used the F-word 38 times in a four minutes. I wasn’t about to quote the scene—but I could supply a link to a video clip.”  Why does Jacoby write the F-word?  Why is that less vulgar than “fuck”?  For me, the two are the same, though evidently the former contains a touch of cowardly conformity and superficial politesse.  Careerists embrace word control.  Truth-tellers fight against it.  “Vulgar” is a subjective determination, made by faceless cultural apparatchiks and educrats, in an effort to control vocabulary and opinion, and deflect from truth.  

      Jacoby laments, “And while the extraordinary vistas opened up by the Web have made the job of a columnist so much more efficient and rewarding, the new norms of online culture are sour, angry, and tense.”  But “sour, angry, and tense” are simply epithets used to kill the messenger in an effort to deflect from truth, be it sour truth, angry truth, or tense truth.   The terms are used to denigrate truth or opinion, which the denigrator does not like and cannot, or fails to, challenge via reason and fact. For me, I’d rather speak the “vicious” truth, than receive an award like Jacoby:  the Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism…  or rather for Excellence in Turning a Blind Eye Regarding Bias Journalism!  

Jacoby laments, “the marketplace of ideas seems always at the point of exploding. The nastiness of social media, the bile of online comment sections, the viciousness of trolls—all are only too familiar. It is impossible to write these days without being aware of the online mob ready to pounce.”  Well, I surely must be part of that “online mob” because, well, I am a plebe, uh, troll, whereas Jacoby is an elite prize-winning journalist.  Unlike him, I openly express, for example, my full disgust against the platform provided by the Globe to egregious racists like Renee Graham.  

Elite career columnists, journalists and newspaper editors have grown thinner and thinner skin over the years just like academics and poets.  They cannot bear criticism.  How easy it has become for them and other establishment cogs to reject hard-core criticism with simple phrases like “go away troll” (poet Eileen Myles—see “Dyke Poet, Smyke Poet, Who Gives a Damn!”) or “the shrillness of your rants” (editor Chris Busa, Provincetown Art—See “BULLSEYE”).  In essence, just call the writer of unwanted criticism—no matter how factual and logical—a “troll.”  Jacoby’s entire essay is an anti-alt-opinion screed against so-called “trolls.”  He laments, “Too many readers have no interest in absorbing a column’s argument or weighing its merits. They read instead to validate beliefs they already hold. They desire not to better understand ideas they oppose, but to see those ideas denounced, refuted, and mocked.”  

Why has it become so difficult for columnists like Jacoby and Graham to brook, let alone encourage, alt-opinions?  That’s the real problem, not trolls!  As editor of a small literary journal, I always encourage and publish the harshest criticism lodged against me and the journal.  What’s the big deal?  Well, apparently, that is a big deal!  Jacoby concludes, ever lamenting, as if somehow he were forced to read comments about his columns:  “Opinion columns aren’t tweets, but we live now in a culture that conducts far more of its political conversation on social media than on op-ed pages. The norms of that culture have adjusted accordingly. The results haven’t been pretty. Just ask a columnist.”  

Well, if you can’t take the heat, get the hell out of the limelight, dear well-paid elite columnists!  Now, do you think the Globe and its editor, Brian McGrory, who I dared satirize in a cartoon, “The Journalists—Racism Here, Racism There, Racism Everywhere,” a year ago, will publish this counter opinion?   In fact, that summarizes the very crux of the Boston Globe problem, the one Jacoby will never address in a column…  

Brian McGrory and Renee Graham

Renee Graham

Hypocrites at the Helm... of Journalism

--Let's Have a Monologue about Race--

From: George Slone

Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 8:50 AM

To: renee.graham@globe.com

Cc: mcgrory@globe.com; cathleen.cusachs@globe.com; Rosalyn Becker; Gary Goude

Subject: Racism! Racism! Racism! Ad Infinitum. Ad Nauseam. Ad Obscurum.

To Renee Graham, Assoc. Editor and Columnist, The Boston Globe:

Below is a counter-argument essay I just finished regarding one of your racist column essays on Trump.  Check it out.  Who knows?  Anything’s possible.  You might even learn something.  Would the Globe publish it?  Of course not!  Is the Globe “fair and balanced”?  Of course not!  Will you respond?  Of course not!  Thus is the state of the nation today…

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[Graham did not respond to the email and essay, which follows.  That is what she calls "let's have a conversation about race."]

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Racism, Racism, Racism 

Ad Nauseam, Ad Infinitum, Ad Obscurum

Firewalls that once strictly separated news from opinion have been replaced by hopelessly blurred lines. Once-forbidden practices such as editorializing within straight news reports, and the inclusion of opinions as if fact, are not only tolerated; they’re encouraged. 

—Sharyl Attkisson 

Reason and Freedom of Speech will always be the enemies of hard-core ideologues, left or right-wing, whereas double standards and ad hominem (racist! racist! racist!) will always be their friends.  Reason cannot defeat ideology.  Sadly, ideology throughout history has defeated reason (e.g., Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Castro).  Will left-wing ideology defeat reason in America?  It is certainly making progress in that darkness…

Normally, I do not read biased columns, that is, not unless I feel like writing a retort, underscoring the egregious bias.  Also, it is simply not possible to reason with a highly biased individual.  The Boston Globe, via race-obsessed black columnist Renée Graham, is ever pushing fake news and the Democrat-Party narrative.  Why?  Shouldn’t it/she be more concerned with evoking facts and writing objectively?  Well, evidently, fake news sells.  After all, the Globe is a business above and beyond anything else.  Its clients likely tend to be left-wing and want to eat fake news in the morning, every morning.  

So, what is fake in Graham’s latest Eugene Robinson-like column, “Donald Trump isn’t just a champion of white supremacists. He’s their leader.”?  Well, she did get one thing right:  “I was wrong” (the first sentence in the article).  Perhaps she needs to take a long look in the racist mirror… because she really does come off as a black racist white-hater.  “Trump was a racist long before he had a base to mollify, branded Mexican immigrants as ‘rapists,’ and tried to ban Muslims from entering this country,” she notes.  The reality is—and I am not a Trump fan, but rather an Anti-Liar-Hillary fan—that Trump never argued ALL Mexican immigrants to be rapists.  Why does Graham keep pushing that lie?  Why doesn’t Globe editor Brian McGrory tell her to cease pushing it?  Also, Mexicans are NOT a race, nor are Muslims.  What school did Graham go to?  Are there no fact checkers employed at the Globe?  Did she go to the School of Affirmative Action?  Also, a reason existed for Trump wishing to put a temporary halt on Muslims, though not all Muslims.  Why does Graham choose to ignore that reason?  Well, it counters the narrative pushed by the ideology.  That’s why.  One need only look at the EU to see the mess of un-assimilating, freedom-hating Muslims living in no-go zones.  One need only consider the increasing number of examples of Muslim/Islam terrorist attacks.  If one were to do that, then one might actually be forced to intellectually agree with Trump.  OMG!

Regarding Graham’s birther criticism, Obama failed to present an authentic birth certificate.  Period.  The brouhaha was his fault!  Why blame that on Trump?  The document Obama presented has been proven to be a later-day computer compilation.  The fake news has chosen not to examine the objective facts with that regard.  Instead, it opts for ad hominem, friend of ideology:  Birther! Birther! Birther!  Moreover, Obama is not the St-Obama that Graham perhaps prays to every night.  He has been an opponent of free speech (e.g., Resolution 16/18), a liar (Benghazi and Obamacare), a horrendous opponent of the Freedom of Information Act, a friend of black racists and white communists, etc..  He, more than anyone else, has caused the great divide confronting the nation today.  

Graham needs to be informed that black people are NO LONGER in chains!  Constantly evoking slavery will only help increase the Obama Great Divide.  Graham is a privileged black woman who needs to get off the unreality “woke” bandwagon and wake up to reality!  It is that constant racism, racism, racism ad infinitum, ad nauseam, ad obscurum that will only succeed in deepening and deepening the Great Obama Divide.  Graham argues, "White supremacists love him [Trump] because bigots always embrace one of their own."  Well, do black supremacists love her and/or Obama because bigots always embrace one of their own?  Graham further argues, “Trump wouldn’t have gotten to the White House without them and racists wouldn’t feel protected and understood without their personal president.”  Well, Obama wouldn’t have gotten to the White House if the majority of whites had been the racists, racists, racists that Graham, Robinson, Obama, and the bulk of other white-privilege-racist pushers wish everyone to believe they are.  

Egregious lies like the ones Graham writes in the Globe need to be corrected.  Graham conveniently forgets that Obama was even more reluctant to decry racist (since she wants us to believe Muslim is a race) terrorism attacks by Muslims.  Recall that he wanted to wait until all the facts were in before making a statement.  In fact, has he ever condemned Muslim supremacist terror attacks, as Muslim attacks?  Was it not shameful of him to state, “the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam”?  Clearly, that statement counters freedom of speech, since Muhammad was an enemy of it.  Recall also how Obama failed to attend with other world leaders the post-Charlie Hebdo march in Paris!  Double standards.  That’s Graham’s m.o.  

Finally, “Racism Judge” Graham lists a number of shaky accusations to support her racism judgement that Trump is a racist… just like every other white person in the country, which seems to be precisely what far too many of the nation’s indoctrination universities are teaching today.  Contrary to Graham’s false narrative, both sides in Charlottesville were indeed violent.  Antifa is a left-wing fascist movement, one that crushes free speech, one that demands fascist groupthink and groupchant.  Graham needs to be reminded that nazism and fascism were both left-wing socialist movements.  Mussolini was a devout Marxist and Hitler was a devout socialist.  The Black Panthers and Nation of Islam are both fascist black organizations.  Hopefully, affirmative action re-education will not succeed in erasing those realities from history, though it seems to be making progress in that endeavor.  “Hate” has become the new term to kill free speech and vigorous debate, democracy’s very cornerstones.  In Boston, it was recently used to kill the free-speech event which, contrary to fake newsers, was not a racist event.  Thanks mostly to the left, ad hominem is what it’s all about today, not reasoned debate.  Yes, as Maya Angelou once said, “When people show you who they are, believe them.”  Well, I do believe Graham, who ended her article with that quote.  It is highly unlikely that Graham is at all capable of heeding journalist Sharyl Attkisson:  “I’m commonly asked, ‘Can ‘the news’ be fixed?’ In simple terms, there are two components necessary to do so: We must correctly identify (and admit) our problem, and then take steps to correct it.  We have yet, as an industry, to take step one.”