11 08 05

My Union newspaper arrived the other day. It’s always a good read. The bitter letters from retired pressmen, the assumption that “corporate” is an epithet, the column by the union’s president Linda Foley. In the latest installment, she suggests that God and the Founders would not have sided with the NLRB’s decision to throw out a vote in favor of union representation, and that the head of the NLRB does not believe in “liberty and justice for all,” and that the newspaper writers had endured “industrial hell” through the certification process. Yes, the floor of the newsroom was ankle deep in severed digits and coughed-up lung tissue of child laborers. I freely admit I don’t know the particulars of the case, but something about the hyperbole makes me wonder whether there might be two sides to it all. Because that's the one dominant theme of the newspaper guild’s newsletter: it’s horribly written.

Those who can, write; those who can’t, organize.

No, that’s not fair. I’ve known lots of good newspaper people who are good union members. And I will never forget how the union came to my defense when The Boss in the old regime came down hard on me for a matter of petty personal stupidity. I pay my dues without complaint. Good people staff the local, and they’re not crazy roll-the-bombs-under-Rockefeller’s-limo Eugene Debutantes. The national newspaper, however, is a different matter; it’s a frank lefty rag. Eight pages of grim news – layoffs and cutbacks, retrenchment, governmental WAR on labor. If you want more perspective on the global issues, you can go to the website, where my union dues advocate for such pertinent issue as the Senate Nuclear Option and the Congressional Black Caucus Agenda. (The latter includes a call to “[Reengage] with the United Nations . . .to help promote civil society, global health, fair trade and peace and to help combat terrorism and increase security at home.” )

It would be a mistake, of course, to assume that all journalists subscribe to these ideas. I guarantee you: most issues go right in the recycling bin. Who can blame them? Wobbly rhetoric, internationalist fantasies, to-the-barricades tubthumpers mixed with downbeat snapshots from the New Depression. It’s the most joy-killing mag I get.

But there’s always a spot of humor in the Parsons Corner: words we can no longer use. This month we have three. “Illegal aliens” is doubleplus ungood; the new term is “undocumented worker” or “undocumented resident.” Which slyly suggests that residency is the value that trumps legality. “Gyp” is forbidden, and I understand why; it’s derived from “gypsy,” and means “to cheat.” Fine. But now “codger” is forbidden, as an “offensive term referring to a senior citizen.”

Codger! “Offensive.” No word strikes more fear into the heart of modern journalists. “Offensive” could mean meetings and memos and warning notes and angry emails. Some journos love it; so I offend. Fine. It’s in the job description. Others fold up like a card table, horrified - but only if the offended person hails from a designated victim group; they don’t lose a lot of sleep if they’ve offended some nutball right-winger. That is merely a sign you’re doing something right.

The bad-word feature appears at the end of “Human Rights Watch,” a column that concerned itself with the horrid flaws in American society revealed by Hurricane Katrina. Here we learn another bad word that may lend offense:

“According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, a refugee is a person seeking asylum in a foreign country in order to escape persecution. Perhaps that’s what the people of New Orleans looked like fleeing Hurricane Katrina, but many of them found the label to be highly offensive – yet journalists continued to use it even after this was pointed out.”

Jesus wept. My dictionary define a refugee as someone forced to leave his home because of war, persecution, or NATURAL DISASTER. But if you can imagine the sin here: some journalists used the accurate word even after it had been pointed out that some people found it highly offensive.

Fargin’ codgers. The author continues:

“Talk about adding insult to injury! The first great injury – after the hurricane itself – was our federal government’s slow-motion response, eliciting cries of racism from coast to coast. Rappers accused President Bush of not liking black people, as some of those stranded on rooftops explained they had been unable to evacuate because they had no transportation and none had been provided.”

Mind you, this is a newsletter representing professional writers. Coast-to-coast cries elicited! Rooftop strandees, explaining!

“Although we had been pretending that it did not exist, we saw that poverty was alive and thriving.”

Who’s this we? Which newspaper in America pretends that poverty does not exist? Is she indicting the journalists? The N’Awlins Times Picayune? Did the author just pick up a paper for the first time in her life, and if so, will we be treated to a column that expresses guarded relief that newspapers have finally gotten around to covering sporting matches? She spends two more paragraphs on the big cutline controversy over looting vs. finding, then cuts to the meat of the matter. Mind you, this is a column about Katrina:

“The case of Sharlie Vicks, a member of the National Center for Transgendered Equity, underscored a different kind of injury; she was arrested and jailed for showering in the women’s facility at a shelter at Texas A&M University. Vicks was held for more than a week, separated from her family during a difficult time, and was released only after news reports alerted activists who brought pressure on local officials.”

Which has what to do with what? Well, Vicks was a NOLA resident who had been exported to Texas. Vicks, in other words, was a REFUGEE, and that one word might have explained what the story was doing in the middle of a story about a storm that hit New Orleans.

Mind you, women complained that there was a man in the shower room, and it made them “uncomfortable.” It’s an interesting calculus the officials have to balance – normally women’s complaints of a man in the shower room would be paramount, but according to my union's theoreticians, they’re trumped by issues of gender identification. ( It's not whether you have a penis that matters; it's your attitude towards it that counts.) But what if you wrote a sympathetic account of Sharlie Vicks, and described Vicks as a refugee? Would it all come out in the wash?

There was an episode of the Mary Tyler Moore show in which Rhoda expressed frustration towards her job, and said it was like “trying to make love in a straight-jacket.”

“Hey,” said Mary, with a lickerish grin. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

Journalists have tried it. They do it every day. Every paragraph is full of potential Offense. Here’s the punchline: if a journo uses “refugee,” and someone complains, the editor might write a vague explanatory note, but he won’t discipline the writer. There might be a memo that clarifies the use of the term, but no one gets in trouble. But should the editor choose to discipline the writer, who defends him?

The union.

Oh, the dues are worth it. The union's advocacy and support are priceless, and the newsletter is pure cake. It's like having a great lawyer on retainer who sends his cousin over once a month and does a killer stand-up routine.

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