In Stanley Kubrick`s film ”Dr. Strangelove,” the title character, played by Peter Sellers, repeatedly battles the temptation to thrust his right arm skyward in the Nazi salute.
U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) seems to face a similarly difficult temptation-and one that presents the media with a quandary.
A populist-style liberal and the first Democrat from his state to be re-elected to the Senate in this century, Harkin is using a certain word in speeches as he tests the waters for a presidential run.
The word begins with a ”b” and ends with a ”t,” has eight letters and tends to be presented in large metropolitan dailies geared to family readers like this: ”b – – – – – – -.” Sometimes, large metropolitan dailies geared to family readers refer to it as a ”barnyard epithet.”
The word is ”part of the senator`s vernacular,” an aide said, and he has used it occasionally for a few years. But it has cropped up at a greater rate in recent months. Since he`s mulling a White House candidacy, the media listen more intently and catch lines like this:
”When I hear George Herbert Walker Bush and J. Danforth Quayle tell me that they`re building an opportunity society, I`ve only got a one-word reply: B – – – – – – -.”
The Gannett-owned Des Moines Register last week published a Page 1 story about Harkin`s use of the word, headlined, ”Harkin Finds Campaign Theme in One Word (Cover Your Ears).” It printed the word, and, as if the paper didn`t know exactly what it would hear, elicited response from the clergy.
A public radio station, WSUI in Iowa City, used the word, too, in a Harkin story, as has the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The out-of-state Milwaukee Sentinel did likewise.
Dave Campbell, news director of WHO-AM in Des Moines, whose alumni include Ronald Reagan, said: ”The Register made a big stink of it, and they seem the only ones really interested in it. We haven`t used it, and I don`t really know how we`d handle it.”
Dave Busiek, news director of KCCI-TV, the CBS affiliate in Des Moines, said he hasn`t really thought the matter through but hasn`t used the word.
Meanwhile, NBC`s ”Today” show, which is produced by a news division headed by Michael Gartner, who is an Iowan and a former Des Moines Register editor and chief operating officer, did a story on Harkin but bleeped the second syllable.
Back at the Ames Daily Tribune, of which the same Gartner is publisher, they`re taking a somewhat laissez faire approach.
”To be honest, we don`t give a s – – -,” managing editor Dan Geifer joshed. ”Tom hasn`t been around here for quite a while. We`d give it serious thought if it came up, considering it the same way we do (when it comes up)
with sports coaches.”
The Dubuque Telegraph Herald, like some Iowans, is less concerned with the word than with Harkin`s initial justification, namely, ”That`s the way we talk in Iowa.” He has altered that slightly of late, to something like, ”We Iowans are very upfront people.”
In an editorial Monday, the Telegraph Herald conceded that Harkin isn`t the first politician to use such language and can persist if he so desires.
”But,” it concluded, ”he shouldn`t explain it away by saying, `That`s the way we talk in Iowa.` That`s, well, excrement.”
Don`t you love it when Iowans talk dirty?
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Here`s a difference between Chicago-or most of the world-and New York City:
Gary Covino, a co-host (they prefer the title ”provocateurs”) with Ira Glass and cartoonist Lynda Barry of ”Wild Room,” an eclectic Friday night show on WBEZ-FM, Chicago`s public radio station, ran out of gas on Lake Shore Drive, near the Field Museum, driving from Hyde Park to the show last week. He pushed the car up an exit ramp, got to a pay phone and called the station, announcing on the air what had happened.
Within 15 minutes, seven listeners, including two cabbies, showed up or were on their way to help Covino, a free-lancer and National Public Radio producer. He got to the show, albeit late, and pronounced the seven good Samaritans ”heroes of People`s Radio.”
Imagine a New York radio host disclosing the same problem and his location.
He might be left holding his tire jack and Jockey briefs-if lucky.
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Newspaper executives, while striving to maintain profit margins that might make the Mob envious, could peruse a study of 1,328 newspaper journalists at 27 papers ranging from USA Today to the Fargo Forum in North Dakota, completed by the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. It`s largely about race-related personnel policies and news coverage, and reiterates that non-whites and women, far more than whites, see chances for advancement at their papers as slim.
But the most telling aspect of the report-fashioned by Ted Pease, who ran the university`s Midwest Newspaper Workshop for Minorities until being named recently as head of the journalism program at St. Michael`s College in Colchester, Vt.-involves deeper unease.
Half the respondents don`t want their children to go into the business, citing stress, low pay, long hours, ”corporatization” and ”McPapering” of newspapers.
”We never expected that negative a reaction,” said Pease. ”And their open-ended comments were just horrible for the industry.”
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Chicago media do poorly in tracking votes and performances by the state`s delegation in Congress, and not much better with members of the state legislature or local citizens with big jobs in a presidential administration. At election time, many voters tend not to have the foggiest notion about an incumbent`s recent record. Papers routinely use small type to present sports fans with such critical data as qualifying times in Florida stock car races or high school gymnasts` decisions on what colleges to attend. But readers will look in vain for the weekly votes of House and Senate members, brief summaries of bills passed in Springfield or lists of sponsors and beneficiaries of the new legislation.
It was thus left to CBS News producer Howard Rosenberg and correspondent Eric Engberg to disclose that taxpayers own stock in what amounts to Skinner Airlines.
CBS reported Transportation Secretary Sam Skinner`s penchant for manning the controls of government jets to fly around the world on purported business or to upgrade his own skills as a pilot, in the latter instance logging 47 hours at an estimated cost of $40,000.
Chicagoan Skinner says that such instruction is especially important to learn about the aviation system and for morale within that system, that the troops are buoyed by knowing that Mr. Transportation is honing his skills at 30,000 feet.
I agree and hope his Bush Cabinet colleagues follow suit.
It`s hereby suggested that Labor Secretary Lynn Martin work shifts in a Minnesota meat-packing plant and see if she can avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp work a midnight security shift at Chicago`s Cabrini Green housing project, and that Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady labor as a teller at a Federal Reserve Bank branch.
It might also boost spirits if Housing and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan moonlighted as a brain surgeon in a hospital emergency room; Energy Secretary James Watkins worked a full-serve island at an Exxon station, making sure to check tire pressure to save energy; and Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr. spent summer weekends as a park ranger at Yellowstone.
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For the third time in a month, the Sun-Times beat up on WMAQ-Ch. 5 backup sportscaster Jon Kelley, a new hire at a job whose duties seem to be reading scores, puffing local teams and engaging in profound, theological discourse with an anchor.
Do critics think that Kelley, a former University of Nebraska football player fired from his previous TV job in Kansas City for an ethical lapse, forced his way into the studio with an Uzi? Instead, why not wonder about the managers who took an earnest, perhaps talented but inexperienced fellow and thrust him into a spotlight?
New economic realities-namely, NBC trying to do things on the cheap-seem to have melded with a laudable goal of raising minority employment. It`s interesting how executives who make questionable decisions so often avoid press scrutiny.
If papers want to pick on someone their own size, how about the engaging, endearing, increasingly error-prone but seemingly untouchable Harry Caray?
