It`s no big deal for a newspaper columnist to ask readers to send in suggestions. But the request issued May 8 by Deb Price of the Detroit News clearly was unusual.
”There`s no confusion when a woman says, `This is my husband.` But how do I introduce the woman I`ve lived with for six years to my boss?” Price wrote.
”Is she my `girlfriend` or my `significant other`? My `longtime companion` or my `lover`?”
Price, 34, the paper`s Washington news editor, was introducing herself and an apparent first in mainstream newspapers: a column on gay issues by a lesbian.
”I had been here three years, focusing on disability rights and gay rights issues, both of which were ignored by the mainstream press. I came to think strongly that there was a chance to take this one step further,” Price, a Stanford University graduate and former Washington Post copy editor, explained in a phone chat last week.
The Detroit News is part of the Gannett chain, the nation`s largest. The chain undertook a company-wide exploration of future changes in how the news gets covered, called News 2000.
Price kept that endeavor in mind when the paper`s managing editor came to Washington and she asked Price about her own career plans.
”I could feel my heart stopping,” Price recalled. ”I could seize the opportunity and perhaps risk my future with a woman I didn`t really know, or have some miracle happen.”
Price suggested the column and argued that it represented the very cultural diversity that News 2000 claimed to be seeking. She argued that it could represent a first and bring needed context to important issues, avoiding the sense of detachment that even sympathetic straights may unwittingly exhibit when writing about gay issues.
The paper approved and is running the column each Friday, along with placing it on the Gannett News Service. Reader response has been positive, judging by Price`s mail, and the gay press, including Chicago`s Windy City Times, has been supportive.
The column is being used in papers in Marin, Stockton and Palm Springs, Calif., as well as ones in Muskogee, Okla., and Rochester, N.Y. Gannett-owned USA Today ran one installment.
Her first 10 efforts have been good, at times quite funny, none polemical. They`ve succeeded in understatedly seeking to deflate stereotypes of the gay community as some isolated world filled with the radical, the angry, the AIDS-stricken and child molesters.
For example, a June 19 column examined two Washington, D.C., gay men raising two children born with the assistance of surrogate mothers. Their parental status over one child has been formalized by a court, while a decision is pending over their status toward the second, born May 18. The point of the column was clear: There can be loving, non-traditional family structures.
Friday`s column focused on polling and survey data on bigotry. The point was that anti-gay bigotry is not necessarily any greater or less than other forms of racial, ethnic and sexual bigotry.
Column-writing of a personal kind is risky. Price`s challenge may be all the more formidable, especially as she tries to accomplish aims such as making lover Joyce Murdoch, a Washington Post reporter with whom she has been seven years, an integral part of the column so ”people realize that gays are in long-term, stable relationships.”
So far, Price`s touch has been rather adroit.
Writing of gay love: ”For most gay couples, the benefits of domestic bliss are intangible. We watch our siblings get 8 silver trays, 12 pickle forks, a fondue pot and a trip to Hawaii for settling down. And then our relatives give us a hard time or nothing at all.”
On high school proms: ”If you`re 18 years old and the hand you want to hold belongs to someone of the same sex, learning to `swim` often means learning to deceive, to hide, to be secretive. My first girlfriend and I went to our Senior Prom disguised as heterosexuals. Each of us had the one essential accessory: a boy.”
On Republicans and gays: ”But it`s not just the Republican Party that treats `lavender elephants` with dismay, if not scorn. Many gay Republicans say they feel as if they need to live in a double closet-hiding their sexual orientation in political circles and their political orientation in intolerant gay circles.”
On how her lover pursues an interest in gardening at a gay social club for hobbyists: ”Sensing that I`d rather read Virginia Woolf than duplicate her lover Vita Sackville-West`s white flower garden, Joyce has turned to the gay Four Seasons Garden Club.
”Plants that Joyce doesn`t even know by a first name get introduced there in Latin.”
Oh, as far as reader suggestions for what to call Joyce, they included
”queer friend,” ”my better half,” ”lady lover,” ”quiet light,”
”partner in perversity,” and one that strikes her as especially fun and maybe endearing, ”lovemate.”
”I`m game,” she told readers in a June 26 column. ”I`ll try subbing it (lovemate) for `And this is Joyce.` ”
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Baseball Commissioner Fay Vincent rankled Tribune Co. by ordering realignment of National League baseball divisions, including moving the Cubs to the Western Division from the Eastern. The Cubs` displeasure, which resulted in a much-publicized lawsuit last week, has partly to do with the impact of West Coast games on scheduling and revenue for WGN-Ch. 9.
But how about about a Tribune Division? Jim Dowdle, the boss of Tribune Broadcasting, chuckled knowingly when I suggested the idea, since he understands well even what many sports buffs may not: namely that there will soon be a common denominator linking the Cubs, White Sox, Yankees, Angels, Phillies, Dodgers and expansion Colorado Rockies.
Tribune-owned TV stations currently broadcast the Cubs and Sox (WGN-Ch. 9), Yankees (WPIX-TV), Angels (KTLA) and Phillies (WPHL).
Further, KTLA will start broadcasting Dodgers games next year, while the Tribune`s KWGN has cut a deal to handle games of the expansion Rockies.
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I offer a new feature, Sucker Bets, a handy vehicle for late-night tavern wagers. It`s inspired by the scene in ”Guys and Dolls” in which Nathan Detroit tries to lure Sky Masterson into a wager on an arcane matter secretly ferreted out by Detroit: namely how many pieces of cheesecake were sold the day before at a local eatery.
So, how many golf balls are hit on a Sunday at the Chicago Park District`s Diversey Driving Range?
The call went to Ted Lecesne, the district`s golf director and uncle of TV`s Greg and Bryant Gumbel; and Tom Nicolini, the golf manager.
Answer: about 1,400 buckets are sold on a good Sunday. Figuring about 55 balls in a bucket, that`s roughly 77,000 balls. And at $3.50 a bucket, it amounts to nearly $5,000 in receipts.
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The American blue-collar worker has been bashed frequently for alleged productivity declines. But how about white-collar workers who wear black robes?
The U.S. Supreme Court just finished its year with a bunch of decisions, including that on the Pennsylvania abortion law. It was one of 108 cases decided during the 1991-92 term.
Linda Greenhouse, a stellar Supreme Court reporter for The New York Times, has kept tabs and says that the figure is the lowest since the 1970-71 term, when it decided 109 cases.
In the interval, the court was often in the 140 to 150 case range, but started dropping in recent years, to 129 and 112 cases, respectively, in the preceding two terms.
Are the boys and girl on the court going the way of allegedly slow-poke blue-collar types, perhaps lucky that they don`t have to compete with Japanese jurists?
Greenhouse doesn`t necessarily think so. It`s partly speculation, but she points to a 1988 technical change that gave the court more jurisdiction over its docket and resulted in it not having to deal with a category of case known as ”mandatory jurisdiction.” It had to decide those.
She notes, too, that there are more Republican lower court judges, resulting in more government wins and fewer government appeals.
Still, a drop from about 150 to 108 is dramatic. Remember, the pay is pretty good ($160,600 for the chief justice, $153,600 for the others) and you basically get five months off.
So next time you hear somebody bad-rapping postal workers or carpenters, remember a group known to some as the Supremes.
