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Is
Kathleen Parker an Ann Coulter Wannabe?
Did
You Ever Hear Anyone Say, "They Should All Be Lined Up and
Slapped"?
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
Poor Kathleen Parker. As a
syndicated right-wing columnist she is a bit of an anomaly, because
there are actually occasional strings of sentences in her columns that
sound like they were written by a sane person. She has moments of
appearing ... well, thoughtful. Yes, she is partisan and parrots the
right-wing message points, but she seems like someone you wouldn't have
to warn the kids to stay away from. That's what makes her unusual for
a right-wing shill.
But
Parker has always seemed a little bit envious of the right-wing nasty "slash and burn" prime-time
celebrities like Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter. So maybe she was in
her Coulteresque-wannabe mindset
when she wrote the following for a recent column:
[Zell] Miller is not alone, though some are more sanguine when it comes
to evaluating the roster of contenders. Here's a note I got recently
from a friend and former Delta Force member, who has been observing
American politics from the trenches: "These bastards like Clark
and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and
that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined
up and shot.
"All
this carping and undercutting of our foreign policy — whatever happened
to politics stops at the water's edge? — is giving strength
and hope to our enemies. That makes them fight harder and longer and
in the end costs the very lives they claim to care so much about."
OK,
so he's a little emotional. We'll pardon him, given that earlier in
the day he had learned of a pal's death in Afghanistan with whom he
served several years. His friend was a veteran of many wars. A Native
American Indian, they called him "Chief," which he liked just
fine so everybody in the ethnic sensitivity guard can relax. [LINK]
Readers
of BuzzFlash know what comes next, since we were the first to break
this story. Parker changed the scurrilous firing squad quotation,
at the request of the anonymous source she has explained, to say that
the Democratic candidates should be lined up "and slapped." Except
some of her column postings still included the "lined up and shot" line.
A BuzzFlash reader documented the variations, including at least one
publication that had the good taste to completely exclude the quotation
that expressed a desire to murder candidates for the highest office in
the land [LINK].
Another one of our readers took it upon himself to query Parker's primary
newspaper affiliation, the Orlando Sentinel:
Dear
Buzz:
I wrote a letter to the Jane Healy, Editorial Page Editor of the Orlando
Sentinel (which Kathleen Parker describes as her "home paper"),
about
Parker's controversial column:
**********
Dear Ms. Healy,
In her
11/2/03 column, Kathleen Parker quotes a "friend" who
states that the
Democratic candidates "... should all be lined up and SLAPPED."
Yet
in the Boulder News version of this column, her friend states they "...
should all be lined up and SHOT." [LINK]
As a daily subscriber to the Sentinel, I have a couple of questions:
1) Is it policy for journalists writing for the Sentinel -
even columnists -
to submit different versions of a direct quote to different media outlets?
In my days as a journalist, I was told by my editors that a direct
quote
should be considered sacrosanct; is that not the case anymore?
2) Parker
describes the Sentinel as her "home paper"; can
we assume that her
journalistic methods are a reflection of your own?
3)
Leaving aside the obviously offensive notion that candidates should
be
shot - let's assume that the quote using "SLAPPED" is accurate.
Do you find
it more than a little ironic that Parker would lead an editorial decrying
personal invective in politics with this quote? Is this the sort of
trenchant commentary that the Sentinel is proud to publish?
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Mark W.
**********
For my efforts, I received this form mail reply back:
**********
Following
is a statement Kathleen Parker has prepared for readers who ask
about changes in her recent column.
Michael
Murphy
Op-ed editor
[Orlando Sentinel]
Dear Reader,
Your
confusion is perfectly understandable. I will attempt to clear out
some
of the underbrush of rumor and innuendo and explain. There's nothing
mysterious or sinister here, just a breakdown of communication. Here's
what
happened:
I
included a quote in my column from an Army friend who is retired
from the
Delta force - that mysterious branch of the Army that doesn't really
exist
except when you need someone rescued from behind enemy lines.
He
commented in an email to me that the Democratic candidates "should
be
lined up and shot" for what he considered aiding and abetting
the enemy. As
I explained in the column, he had just lost a friend in Afghanistan
that day
and was emotional. But, his feelings accurately reflect the feelings
of many
in and out of the military.
The
problem occurred when I changed the quote at his request -- pre-publication
but after distribution of the column. As is my practice,
I
sent my Army friend a copy of the column pre-release to make sure he
was
comfortable with his words. Even though I didn't identify him, I felt
this
was a reasonable courtesy. As we all know, what you fire off in an
email can
look very different when it appears in print, especially in the context
of
someone else's opinion. I gave him a chance to change/withdraw his
quote.
When
I didn't hear back from him, I took his silence to mean approval,
my deadline was bearing down, and I sent the column off to my editors. "Charley" emailed me later that he would like to tone it down and
to change "shot" to "slapped." I said I already
had released the column, but would do
my best to make the change.
I
called my editor at The
Orlando Sentinel. No problem. This was late
Thursday and the column is embargoed until Sunday. He contacted my
editor at
Tribune Media Services. Again, no problem. She sent out an amended
version
to subscribers. I personally contacted my online clients - Jewish World
Review and Townhall.com. - because I know that they set up a weekend
edition
and would miss the syndicate's corrected version. My emails were
acknowledged. Once again, no problem.
When
emails started rolling in Saturday morning, I realized that Townhall
inadvertently had posted the original version with "shot." I
emailed the
editor to ask what happened and he immediately went in and changed
the
wording (by 9 a.m.) as had been requested pre-publication. Unfortunately,
many had seen the original version and, understandably, wondered what
happened.
No
one was trying to do anything except what was right from the beginning,
but boy, what a mess. I appreciate your concern and hope this helps
clear up
any confusion.
All the best, Kathleen Parker
**********
Here's my response to Mr. Murphy:
**********
Dear Mr. Murphy:
Thank
you for your prompt reply. I found Ms. Parker's statement quite edifying.
I'd like to ask you a question:
Suppose
Kathleen Parker had decided not to change her "friend's" statement;
would you have run her piece?
Would
you have run a column which spoke admiringly of a man who believes
that the Democratic candidates should be "lined up and shot"?
Sincerely,
Mark W.
BuzzFlash
wants to express kudos to Mark W. and his bafflement at Parker's reply.
But before we get to that, here is Parker’s explanation as it
appeared in the "changed" column on townhall.com [LINK]:
Note:
Some confusion has arisen owing to a word change in this column after
it was posted last Saturday for a few hours. By
way of explanation, the source that I quoted asked pre-publication
(but post-distribution) to change a word. A corrected version was
sent out
immediately, but for a few hours Saturday morning, the incorrect
version was posted on the web. It was corrected by 9 a.m.
And
here's where it gets murkier and murkier for Parker. You see, BuzzFlash
copied Parker's explanation (on townhall.com) for the "shot" to "slap" change
when we were first alerted to it by a reader, and, yes, you guessed it:
the first explanation was changed (to the one posted just above). Here
is Parker's original footnote to her column on townhall.com:
Note:
Some confusion has arisen owing to a word change in this column after
it was posted last Saturday for a few hours. By
way of explanation, the source that I quoted asked pre-publication
(but post-distribution) dsto [sic] change a word. This is not uncommon
when
a source rethinks how sarcastic he wishes to be. A corrected version
was sent out immediately, but for a few hours Saturday morning, the
incorrect version was posted on the web. It was corrected by 9 a.m."
So Parker
thought, at some point, maybe in response to a second volley of criticism,
that characterizing her source as rethinking "how
sarcastic he wishes to be," when he is saying that the Democratic
presidential candidates should be shot ... well, maybe Parker just thought
that the original explanation might have included a poor choice of words
on her own part.
Curiously,
Parker describes her "source" as being "a
little emotional." "We'll pardon him," she wrote, "given that earlier
in the day he had learned of a pal's death in Afghanistan with whom he
served several years. His friend was no kid, but a veteran of many wars.
A Native American Indian, they called him 'Chief,' which he liked just
fine so everybody in the ethnic sensitivity guard can relax."
Okay,
we don't want to say that Parker made up the "Chief" anecdote
and Delta Force quote. We would never think that. We can't imagine that
she would. But would the editors of the Orlando Sentinel like to check
out whether any Americans answering to the nickname of "Chief" have
been killed in the last few days in Afghanistan? There aren't, fortunately,
many Americans killed in Afghanistan nowadays, so maybe, just to give
Parker's anonymous source the credibility that he deserves, the editors
might check that out and confirm it. Not that we doubt Parker's unnamed
source's story. But when anonymous sources are quoted and curious changes
in quotations occur, it might just help everyone breathe a sigh of relief
to learn more about the actual death of the "Chief."
And then there is a third variation of Parker's explanation, which another
BuzzFlash reader is said to have received (italics added by BuzzFlash):
My critics will do what they want no matter what I
say or do. Been there, done that. My editors know that we changed "shot" to "slapped" last
Thursday. Some outlets didn't make the change, that's all. When I emailed
townhall this morning to ask why they had failed to run the "slapped" version,
they went in and changed it. As I told the editor, I thought it
was silly to change it once it had been posted. Whatever.
This thing has taken on a life of its own. I've had enough experience
with these Internet flog-fests to know there's nothing much I can do
about it. Who are you, by the way? Everyone knows who I am, but I never
the benefit of an introduction.
Thanks,
Kathleen
First of all, BuzzFlash is proud of the role it played in exposing Parker
as a closet Ann Coulter, who, apparently, got cold feet when she tried
to do her vampire imitation. Actually, her anonymous source got cold
feet for her. That's what we meant to say.
But her explanations strike us as a bit odd, to say the least. Nonetheless,
unless proven otherwise, the benefit of the doubt goes to Parker as to
what happened.
But
the real issue here is how the right wing continues to get away with
saying and printing statements wishing violence against anyone who
disagrees with them. And, remember, we are talking about wanting people
to be killed. Parker indicates that she felt just fine
about the "firing squad" comment and only changed it at the
last minute after showing it to her friend who wanted "shot" changed
to "slapped." (Are you snickering at Parker's claim that a
former Delta Force member would say that he wanted to see people he didn't
like "lined up and slapped"? We are.)
Another
BuzzFlash reader recently sent us a reflection on the "Vicious
Right":
Barbara
Bush saying if you come after her family you're dead.
Kathleen
Parker's Column quoting someone saying that Democratic candidates
should be
lined up and shot.
The
wife of Maryland Governor saying Britney Spears should be shot.
Pat
Robertson saying the State Department should be nuked.
Clear
Channel DJs inciting drivers to pelt bicycle riders.
Bill
O'Reilly saying Peter Arnett should be shot.
Ann
Coulter saying liberals should be killed, and that it was too bad
the terrorists didn't fly
into the NYT building.
John
Derbyshire of the National Review implying that Chelsea Clinton should
be killed.
Is it me or is there a pattern here? Just wondering.
A BuzzFlash
Reader
And
BuzzFlash might add that Robert Bork (who almost made it to the Supreme
Court) showed his judicial temperance by saying that Clinton
should have been hung (the remarks were made at a "celebration" party
shortly before Bush assumed office). And Charlton Heston, barnstorming
for Bush and the NRA in the 2000 election, told a crowd of Michigan gunnies
that Al Gore deserved a lynching. Of course, the list of right wingers
who have violence on their minds and in their hearts goes on and on.
In this case, Parker, using an anonymous source, let someone else express a desire to see Democrats murdered.
Parker
is a card-carrying Clinton hater. She even wrote a column in 2002 lambasting
Paul Begala for saying something factual about Clinton
during an interview with BuzzFlash [LINK].
Personally, BuzzFlash doesn't wish anyone dead or injured. Honestly.
We have spent a lifetime working on non-violence advocacy. There are
a lot of people in the Bush administration who we hope to see behind
bars, but we wish them a long and healthy life, with 10 minutes of exercise
a day and plenty of time to iron overalls in the prison laundry.
Frankly, we just don't get this whole violence bent in the right wing.
Maybe they never got their rabies shots.
A
BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
*
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BuzzFlash
Note: If you go to the Kathleen Parker column in dispute on townhall.com,
on the bottom of the page there is an advertisement
for the "Ann Coulter Talking Action Figure." We are not making
this up! [LINK].
See
also: "The Hypocrisy of Kathleen Parker" [LINK]
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