I had a nice exchange yesterday with Barry Goldberg about Kim Hendren’s “That Jew” comment and subsequent coverage of it. Mr. Golberg posted a thoughtful comment that I hope you will read. During our conversation he wondered at what point the nature of the coverage of Mr. Hendren perpetuates existing labels and stereotypes (backwards and racist come to mind).
On Twitter, an enthusiastic Arkie Tweeter, melissaar, raised a similar concern. She wrote, “Kim Hendren was bad for the Republican Party and bad for Arkansas. We don’t need anymore publicity regarding bigotry.”
Not too long after Mr. Hendren’s episode it was revealed that Arkansas GOP chairman, Doyle Webb, had been traveling the state giving speeches attacking Democratic state Rep. Kathy Webb’s sexual orientation in an effort, one can only presume, to fire up the far right (fire them up for what, exactly? Kim Hendren’s charred toast. The GOP’s shooting blanks when it comes to candidates for any other statewide office).
Mr. Webb’s comments drew the ire of the editorial board of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette today who declared that the GOP “must be bankrupt in the ideas department for its party chairman to resort to so blatant and irrelevant an appeal to low prejudice.”
Arkansas News Bureau columnist John Brummett wrote a column a few weeks back arguing that no one should be writing about the disclosure of the list of those that supported a constitutional amendment in Arkansas to prohibit gays and lesbians from adopting children or serving as foster parents. His argument was that it would only entrench those that were anti-gay.
(Of course, Mr. Brummett jumps on the Webb bandwagon today prompting Max Brantley of the Arkansas Times to write, “But wait. Won’t calling Webb out on this merely harden his opposition to enlightenment?”)
Taking the concerns and observations of Mr. Golberg, @melissaar, Mr. Brummett and Mr. Brantley together, is it possible for news coverage of hate and bigotry to become counterproductive?
[...] The Hendren Gaffe: Lessons for All of Us! Posted on May 19, 2009 by lanceturner People are still writing about Kim Hendren, the possible candidate for U.S. Senate (no papers yet!) who stuck his foot in his mouth recently re: Chuck Schumer. There’s been all kinds of political commentary on that, including some discussion of the matter between Little Rock blogger Blake Rutherford and I. Barry Goldberg, an executive coach who writes a column for Arkansas Business. That discussion noted here. [...]
I don’t think coverage is counterproductive. I think our public servants need to understand with the internet making news viewable to everybody in the world that the world is watching and realize that we have a reputation of being “inbred stupid racist hicks” and anything that can be construed as such will be construed as such by the national media.