Tomlinson Agonistes
The weird campaign of abuse against Ken Tomlinson gets weirder. Not long ago, you may recall, Tomlinson dared to suggest that public television and radio, which he oversees as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, should meet minimum standards of balance in its public affairs programming. According to Section 19 of the Public Telecommunications Act, this is what the CPB chairman is supposed to do. The steps Tomlinson took to ensure that such an obligation was being met were rather mild--including hiring "consultants" to monitor PBS and NPR programs for balance. The idea made sense. Would you listen to The Diane Rehm Show unless you were being paid?
The public broadcasting establishment struck back, quickly mobilizing its surrogates in the press--beat reporters like Stephen Labaton of the New York Times, Paul Farhi of the Washington Post, and David Folkenflik of (gasp) NPR--to stoke the story day by day with "leaked emails," tremulous comments from "officials who requested anonymity fearing retribution," and the other artifices of scandal journalism. The polemicists have been mobilized as well. In the Times, the left-wing columnist Frank Rich launched an attack that, in its viciousness, spineless insinuation, and inaccuracy surpassed even his own high standards.
With a mention of Tomlinson's tenure as head of Voice of America in the 1980s, Rich dismissed him as a "professional propagandist." Beyond the real estate and food sections, readers seldom have reason to suspect that a Times columnist will know what he's talking about, but really, Rich might have asked around a bit before making his choice of smears. Tomlinson's VOA stint--as those with long memories will recall--was most notable for his resistance to efforts to "politicize" the agency's broadcasts. He left VOA a far more reliable and objective news outfit than he found it, as professionals there said at the time.
Rich also cites a 1996 book by Peter Canning about Reader's Digest, where Tomlinson worked as editor in chief after leaving VOA. As editor, Rich says, Tomlinson was a "kind of Manchurian candidate" figure, responsible for a "spike" in the magazine's "pro-CIA spin." Rich won't come out and accuse Tomlinson of being a spook--indirection is always the better course when tiptoeing through libelous territory--but Canning did, almost, and quickly regretted it. Shortly after the book came out, Canning and his publisher were forced to furnish Tomlinson a letter (which Tomlinson happily furnished us) repudiating any hint of a connection between the Digest's editor and intelligence agencies. Will Rich make a similar retraction?
No doubt Rich was merely recasting (in his vigorous, muscular prose!) a sheaf of raw research handed to him by his friends in the public broadcasting establishment. Fine--that's what professional propagandists do, and Rich long ago abandoned claim to any other job title. But it's odd that such a figure should lecture other people about journalistic standards, and odder still that public broadcasters should orchestrate the abuse. There's a lesson here, for Tomlinson and others.
Yes, a lot of the clichés about public broadcasters are true. They really do drive Volvos, and they really do like Birkenstocks and woolen turtlenecks, and every single one of them has a weakness for Ben Shahn prints. And yes, their devotion to a more peaceful world is beyond questioning. But don't be fooled. These guys play dirty, and they play for keeps.
The Spoils System
The Scrapbook spent its week off flipping through back issues of Texas Lawyer magazine and came across this fascinating historical footnote: In 1992, you may recall, the Republicans held their quadrennial convention in Houston, Texas, a city known for its waterways, megachurches, and . . . well, myriad minority set-aside contracting regulations, otherwise known as "Minority/Women Business Enterprise (MWBE) Procedures."
Under Houston law, you see, "prime contractors" must apportion anywhere between 11 and 25 percent of their contracts to businesses owned by women, blacks, Latinos, "Asian-Pacific Americans," Native Americans, or any combination thereof.
We'd explain more, but it gets a little confusing. So confusing that compliance became an issue for the Republican National Committee in 1992. The RNC's municipal liaison, the Houston Host Committee, handed the job off to its volunteer legal counsel. Ensuring compliance took up a lot of his time. It took up so much of his time, in fact, that a few days before the convention began, the assistant counsel--a partner at the Houston law firm Vinson & Elkins--told Texas Lawyer that "most of the work in the weeks leading to the convention dealt with ensuring that the host committee made a good-faith effort to see that at least 15 percent of the city's contribution" was "spent with minority-or women-owned businesses." And ensure a good-faith effort he did. Without complaint or criticism.
But what do you expect? The assistant counsel was none other than current U.S. Attorney General, and possible Supreme Court nominee, Alberto R. Gonzales--probably not the top choice of those legal eagles who've spent the better part of recent decades litigating against minority set-asides.
An Embattled Free Press Bravely Perseveres
The Washington Post's Robin Givhan, ace fashion critic, reporting from ground zero as U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan sends New York Times reporter Judith Miller to prison for contempt of court--thus gravely imperiling the public's sacred right to know . . . stuff like this:
Miller arrived at U.S. federal district court dressed in black trousers, a quilted black jacket, a yellow shirt and tortoise frame sunglasses. . . . Miller was smiling. It was a pleasant smile. And it was still spread across her face as she was driven off to jail. . . . She was wearing the sort of practical, comfortable and just-stylish-enough clothes that can be worn in any situation, never looking quite right but never looking too terribly wrong either. With her sensible pageboy and its trim bangs, she has the look of an English lecturer at Barnard. Her quilted jacket speaks of Barbour and the Upper East Side. And the black reads like a nod to glamour and chic and the thing that proclaims: I'm a New Yorker and not some well-to-do lady from Chicago. Her style shouts smart, organized and efficient. But mostly, it's flexible.
Given the panic and confusion of the moment, of course, it was more than understandable that eyewitness accounts might slightly differ on certain minor details. It may be, for example, that Ms. Miller's smile was not still spread across her face as she was driven off to jail. To her Times colleague Adam Liptak, quite the contrary, "Ms. Miller appeared shaken and scared as she left the courtroom." Moreover, her style may have been shouting something a bit more complicated than just "smart, organized, and efficient." Speaking later to Liptak by phone from the Alexandria Detention Center across the Potomac in Virginia, Ms. Miller remembered having been primarily concerned, from a fashion point of view, with the fact that the U.S. marshals who escorted her out of Judge Hogan's courtroom "put shackles on my hands and feet."
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