Considering the New ‘Insiders’, a view from the outside

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I should’ve known better.

For weeks after her high-profile October 28 arrest, local print and broadcast media have heaped scorn and derision upon former State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, accused of extorting $23,500 in an FBI sting — captured stuffing her bra in a grainy video still. With her fellow senators, the media, public opinion, and the Black ministers arrayed against her, Wilkerson resigned her seat and retreated into seclusion.

Hinting at more revelations to come, FBI agents next rousted Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner on November 21, whisking him away in handcuffs to a federal district court arraignment in Worcester. Reader responses to the arrest posted at Boston.com that afternoon were overwhelmingly, even gleefully, negative — tending to focus more on the man’s radical politics than on the allegations of wrong-doing leveled against him.

Worse still, the Globe is aggressively marketing the notion of a rising, intergenerational rift threatening to topple the Old Guard — those veterans of the civil rights era, variously described as “dinosaurs,” “mired in the status quo,” or “race-baiters.”

Reading “Insiders seek to recast black politics in Boston,” by Michael Levenson (Boston Globe, 12/2/08) my first reaction was, “is this all he mined from a forty-minute telephone interview and three long follow up calls?” The idea that there’s a brewing political coup d’etat against incumbent Black leaders generated the article’s provocative headline and a photo depicting presumed “insiders,” Kevin Peterson, Rev. Mark Scott and Ego Ezedi brainstorming “how to reinvigorate Black politics in Boston.”

Consistent with the Globe’s youth-insurgency scenario, Peterson predicts dire consequences for the Black community if fails to “generate a new corps of leaders…[to] realign and develop a new philosophy and practice.” Scott, echoing a recent nationally-televised interview of mentor Rev. Eugene Rivers, equates social justice struggle with the politics of “complaint, grievance, and deficits.” According to Scott’s logic, then, fighting for justice contributes little to society.

Care to hazard a guess on who will comprise this New Leadership stratum, or what the general content of their New Leadership Philosophy might entail?

The Globe article follows the basic trajectory of recent editorials, metro-columns, and news coverage of the bribery scandal: Black incumbents abuse their power; Black incumbents are out of touch; Black incumbents nurture dependence on racial politics; and Black incumbents are sabotaging efforts of the African American community to move forward.

Since resigning her Senate seat last month, Dianne Wilkerson has kept a surprisingly low profile; taking a radically different tack, Counselor Turner is not only vigorously protesting his innocence, but aggressively challenging the motives and tactics of his accusers and detractors — the US Justice Department and tabloid media.

“Naturally there are no racial overtones to this,” stated Warren T. Bamford, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston office. “We are looking at public corruption at any level and it really doesn’t matter to us ethnicity, religion or other factors…The idea that this has some racial overtone or is racially motivated is not correct” (“The man they knew,” Boston Globe, 11/22/08).

The routine denials ring hollow given the FBI’s long and sordid history of repression against radical dissent and grassroots reform movements. For some 15 years (1956-1971) the FBI devoted considerable time, energy and manpower to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, neutralize, and otherwise discredit” the various expression of the Black freedom movement (our term for the so-called civil rights movement, back in the day). Bureau tactics evolved from the wholesale roundup and deportation of dissidents in the Palmer Raids, into COINTELPRO’s covert attacks against so-called “Black Nationalist hate groups,” into the systematic harrassment and shaming of Black politicians including Mervyn Dynmally (D-CA), Richard Arrignton (former mayor, Birmingham AL), William H. Gray 3d (D-PA), and others — likely inspired by the racist philosophical concept called Fruhmenschen (“primitive man”), which assumes that Blacks, as a group are inherently unsuited for leadership. And, indeed, the Bureau, which Turner has called “an evil institution,” is even known to target its own agents for racial harrassment.

In light of this troubling history, US Attorney Michael Sullivan has been understandably tight-lipped about Turner’s contention that his pending prosecution was racially-motivated.

However, local media pundits have been quite vocal in proclaiming Turner’s complaints of biased media coverage completely unfounded — intended to cast himself as a victim.

“An argument of racial oppression overlooks the parade of white politicians taken down in Massachusetts,” declared Globe opinion columnist, Joan Vennochi (“Turner plays the race card,” 12/7/08). For Venocchi, raising the possibility that Turner was set up is merely another instance of “playing the race card.” Citing Charles Flaherty, Tom Finneran, and Salvatore DiMasi as examples of ethically-challenged white politicians falling before FBI scrutiny, she dismissively concludes, “Perhaps there is a conspiracy to go after Beacon Hill legislative leaders?”

Yet, it’s obvious that the careers of certain federal felons are never permanently disabled — or even greatly inconvenienced — by the experience.

Flaherty, who pleaded guilty in 1996 to a Federal tax evasion charge and lying under oath about cooking his own books to justify bogus deductions, is today a successful Beacon Hill lobbyist representing the state’s lucrative gambling interests.

Finneran, succeeding Flaherty as Speaker of the House, was indicted on federal charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in 2001; however, his public shaming wasn’t an obstacle to securing a talk show slot at WRKO-radio, or to joining his former mentor on the Hill as a well-paid, and still well-connected, lobbyist for the liquor industry.

Apparently, in Massachusetts, even a disgraced politician can expect a soft landing into lucrative private-sector employment — that is, if he’s White. How likely is it that a convicted Wilkerson or Turner might so readily remake themselves as Beacon Hill powerbrokers or radio personalities?

Over at Metro, Vennochi’s colleagues, Kevin Cullen and Adrian Walker, also insist that Turner’s charges of media bias are baseless — only trading Vennochi’s subtle sarcasm for a bit of boldfaced character assassination.

“Turner isn’t corrupt, he’s nuts,” Cullen asserted (“Double standard,” 11/24/08). Charging that Turner, “who blames racism for everything but the weather,” is counting on liberal reverse-racism to silence press criticism. And then there’s that crack about “[Turner’s] pal, that guy who runs North Korea and looks like Roy Orbison in a cheap suit.” Shades of Caribou Barbie, Turner’s “pal,” indeed.

Where Cullen relies on off-kilter humor and innuendo, Walker, a longtime Turner critic, trades on his racial credentials to inject more venom: “The man is either full of righteous anger or just plain delusional” (“Spin cycle to wind down,” 12/5/08). Still, Walker is correct on one point: “The court of public opinion is nothing if not easily manipulated.” He should know.

Meanwhile, the skilled use of unflattering photographs, cropped to portray Turner in the worst possible light, paint him as arrogant, erratic, disruptive, and divisive — a crazed rabble-rouser unworthy of respect or a fair hearing. But, wait, the FBI isn’t prosecuting Turner for being a radical activist — at least, not officially.

One might reasonably ask, what does the media’s negative appraisal of Councilor Chuck Turner’s character have to do with specific FBI allegations of malfeasance?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

In this information-saturated society, where traditional media is hard-pressed to compete with new forms of mass communication, the tabloid media's pursuit of the sensational, the unusual or the perverse leaves it particularly susceptible to cooptation by government sources needing a non-official channel for disseminating damaging or prejudicial information — or, propaganda. The readiness of prominent media personalities to engage in covert campaigns stigmatizing certain disfavored groups or individuals was vividly revealed in the “outing” of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame.

Add to this unhealthy brew the pronounced shift away from a healthy journalistic skepticism about government (trust the dealer but count the cards ) to a toxic form of cynicism that encourages fatalism and estrangement (shoot the dealer, burn the cards), and the result is overheated, cheap-shot journalism — and “Zippergate.”

The US media establishment has a long and well-documented history of meddling in the political affairs of Black communities across the nation — selectively shaping popular opinion of Black political leaders and reform movements to either discredit and devalue challengers, or endorse and promote defenders of the status quo. In fact, even though criticizing and challenging the records and behaviors of public figures is well within the legitimate scope of media reporting, one wonders why so many (white) pundits and (white) columnists seem to relish opportunities for demeaning and disrespecting public figures who happen to be not-White?

In the post-Reconstruction period, Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass endured serial attacks on his integrity and competence for protesting post-Reconstruction concessions that preserved White supremacy. By contrast, when Jim Crow apologist Booker T. Washington assured Whites that “The wisest among my race understand that the agitation on questions of social equality is the extremest folly,” he was all but canonized by the national and Southern regional press.

Likewise, the meteoric rise of Martin Luther King, Jr. — too often viewed as the political and ideological foil to the militancy of Malcolm X, John Lewis and H. Rap Brown — was easily surpassed by his dramatic fall after “breaking the silence” on the war in Vietnam, calling for a “revolution in values” that recognized the essential humanity of the poor and oppressed everywhere.

Perhaps the most surprising outcome of Obama’s historic victory is the media’s growing enchantment with the notion that “a new paradigm of leadership, eschewing racially polarizing tactics and emphasizing collaboration and cooperation” will sweep away the Old and lead Boston’s Black community to the Promised Land of a post-racial America. How fortunate for us that the Globe has already determined who these leaders are.

Finishing Levenson’s article, the puzzling thrust of his follow up questions were now apparent: what was the “tone” of the meeting, he probed — “was there tension in the room…were some people frustrated…I heard there were tears.”

Tension? Frustration? Intergenerational conflict? Tears? With a bit of critical reflection, the not-so-Invisible Hand of an editorial agenda seeking attribution is obvious.

Like I said, I should’ve known better.

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[Note: an earlier version of this article is posted at Open Media Boston http://www.openmediaboston.org/node/457]