Thanks to the Riverfront Times!

I found out earlier today that this blog was named a finalist for Best Political Blog in St. Louis. I'm proud to be in the company of Occasional Planet, PoliticMo, the Beacon Backroom, and even the St. Louis Tea Party blog. Thanks to whoever nominated this blog, to the other writers, and to the RFT for putting it on. Some of my favorite local blogs are also listed under "Best Neighborhood Blog" and "Best Architecture Blog," so I hope you check them all out.

Transphobic RFT Reporter Strikes Again

At the beginning of this year, I posted about the criminal insensitivity of Riverfront Times reporter Chad Garrison.  Now he is at it again with this transphobic blog post.*

"Shemale" is an offensive term often used to describe transgender people.  The term is most frequently used in porn that fetishizes trans bodies.  Please comment on Mr. Garrison's post to let the RFT know that you do not appreciate transphobia in their publication.


UPDATE 12/21:  Thanks to your comments, Chad Garrison has changed the headline of his post.  I hope that he will continue to educate himself on issues relevant to the trans community, so that his writing for the RFT will be more sensitive in the future.


* Thanks to Anita Fitzwater for alerting me to this post.

Our Racist Habits

In the River Front times this week there is an article about the East Saint Louis Flyers football team. I have not completed the reading. It is an article about a successful hard driving coach who has his critics and has been sanctioned by a governing board. I have no doubt it is an article worth the reading. There was however a sentence that gave me pause.

I am paraphrasing because I did not take the paper home nor can I find a complete version on line. “Behind the bleachers in a large room sit 40 players all of them black.” What is the point of the adjective black? Is it intended to evoke some kind of nationalism or tribalism in people who self identify as Black? Is it intended to evoke some kind of pity for the underprivileged which we can assume by knowing a person’s skin color? Is this an attempt to address the demographics of East St. Louis? Or maybe it is just a very bad habit.



There is a knee jerk reaction to call a person racist when someone does anything that is objectionable well, that is either silly or redundant. We are Americans, citizens of a nation founded on racism, and to some degree we are all racist. Think of it as original sin. We are all sinners, most of us choose to try to avoid sin but we slip.

Years ago I returned from the service and heard a radio report on KMOX. It referred to the Black Alderman. I was not at the time a political being and so confused I gave the station a call. I asked why they were referred to as the “the black Alderman”. Was there some acknowledgement of apartheid made in my absence and now a portion of the cities legislators were restricted by race to given districts? I must admit the fellow on the other line was patient with my confusion and explained the reasoning for the adjective.

(Shortly afterward in traffic reports I also heard of a portion of the city referred to as the Depressed Section. “How horrible”, I thought, “What must it be like to live in an area described like that in the media.”Thankfully I did not expose that particular ignorance until today. But I digress)



When I was about thirty I realized that I shared this habit of unnecessary adjectives. Why when I told a story of a person walking down the street, a person I conversed with or a person with whom I had a conflict did I say, “This black guy” or “black woman”? What value did the descriptor add to the information being imparted? I asked my wife to correct me when I used the modifier for no good reason and I believe I have made progress in reducing this negative aspect of myself.



There are times it is appropriate. In a crowd of people it might be practical to identify a person by a descriptor for easy identification of for instance when one is describing tension which is attributable to cultural differences but these events are fairly rare. Or if they are not rare they are at least assumed as an element of the story and that is a problem in itself. When I was a boy my Grandfather might make a statement like,”Some of my friends are black.”You see it was an extraordinary exception and showed how forward thinking the white racist was. We have grown past the dark days of the 60s and 70s but still we use these modifiers.



Why do I think we should care? In the 17th century some peo0ple saw the benefit in permanently dividing us by race. Economically and politically they benefited from this division. I think it is obvious that some still benefit from this crime against humanity. Yet here we are 300 years later participating in the preservation of the division without even being aware. Most of us are not racist but we do racist things and we owe it to ourselves and our country to self monitor.

Ed Martin Has Problems Telling The Truth Again

Lost in the entertaining circus of Peter Kinder's inept crisis-handling was another excellent RFT post that seriously damages Ed Martin's congressional campaign. Of course, problems telling the truth are nothing new for Martin, who had to resign in shame while Chief of Staff for Matt Blunt, and has only been going downhill ever since. But this instance is different for a number of reasons and it sure looks like the evidence against Martin is compelling.

The basic story is that Martin was sued a while ago by a former employee of his, Jeanne Bergfeld, when he ran the Elections Board. The employee sued Martin for allegedly firing her because she "wasn't Republican enough." They eventually reached a settlement out of court that included a provision that Martin would not disparage Bergfeld.

However, in last year's RFT cover story on Martin, Martin said the following about Bergfeld:

Martin denies [that he fired Bergfeld for not being Republican enough]. "She said she was a Republican; nobody ever questioned that," he tells RFT, adding that Bergfeld was a patronage employee who had enjoyed "twelve years of not having to do anything" and who "wasn't interested in changing."

Martin concludes: "We did everything we could, appropriately, to have her do her job, but it wasn't in the cards."

Bergfeld promptly sued Martin for violating the settlement agreement. In Martin's initial court filing, he denied the charges. In a later deposition, he claimed he "couldn't remember." But the problem for Martin is that the RFT has audio recordings of the conversation, and it sure looks like he said exactly what they reported (although, I should note, I'd be more confident about this claim if they provided the full, unedited part of the conversation rather than separate sound bites). Even more disturbing is the fact that Martin appeared to have tried to pressure his former press secretary into making false claims on his behalf. Her statement

After the conference Ed pulled me out of earshot from everyone and asked me [to confirm his recollection that] the RFT reporter had divulged statements made by Jeanne and that only then did he comment. I told Ed I wasn't in the meeting he had with the RFT that day, and therefore did not know. That is when Ed looked at me with a stern, serious face and in a firm tone told me that that was indeed what happened.

Given the delivery of his comment, in my opinion, he was implying he expected me to go along with it and back him up in his statement. I didn't say anything at the time, but knew I would tell the truth.

I may have questioned a lot of things I had to write and put my name on while working for the campaign but I refuse to just stand by while someone, in this case a good, fair reporter, is unfairly called into question.

Of course, Martin being dishonest is not news to readers of this blog. But this situation is different because (1) a lawsuit is involved, (2) he's playing by a new set of rules now that he's competing against another tough and well-funded Republican challenger, and (3) it sure sounds like he screwed over his Republican press secretary. Even conservatives who previously turned a blind eye to Martin's ethical problems might have trouble brushing this story aside.

Peter Kinder Ridiculously Blames Governor Nixon for His Latest Scandal

Peter Kinder finally has a statement out about his embarrassing scandal that has many Republicans wondering if they might be better off with a different sacrificial lamb to run against Governor Jay Nixon. Like any good Republican, Kinder thinks his problems are entirely the fault of some Democrat rather than his own decisions, and he explicitly blames Jay Nixon for the story. The KC Star's Steve Kraske tweeted a portion of the statement:

Kinder putting blame on Nixon's shoulders for news coverage: "Jay Nixon may want to make up false stories about the past..."

However, the idea that Nixon's people planted this story is ridiculous, as can be seen from even a cursory glance at the Riverfront Times' description of how the story unfolded. The RFT first posted a photo of Kinder in a joking post. Then commenters who frequent local bars recognized the woman in the picture and the RFT tracked her down for an interview. Here's the RFT's description:

...the whole sordid tale began unfolding last Thursday, when we jokingly published a photo of Kinder "pressing the flesh" at a St. Louis bar. We (honestly!) had no idea that the bar, Verlin's, was known for its "pantsless parties," in which bartenders sling drinks in their panties. Or that he was posing with a former "Penthouse pet of the month" -- or that the "pet," now a 39-year-old, openly gay bartender, would be interested in sharing her story when we tracked her down. We just thought the picture was moderately amusing.

Really, the only reason any of this came to light is because RFT readers are such barflies, they almost immediately recognized the bar -- and the bartender. The GOP may want to claim this was an organized effort, but it looks a whole lot more like that new-fangled "crowd sourcing" thing to us.

If you were going to plant an attack piece on an opponent, there'd be better ways to go about it then sending a random photo, then hoping the outlet would track down a woman based on comments on the web site.

Furthermore, the sad fact for Kinder is that Nixon's campaign wouldn't want to plant a hit piece on Kinder because they want to run against him. At this point, it's pretty obvious that Kinder has little to no chance of winning, barring some dramatic turn of events. Why would Nixon's campaign want to force him out of the race in August of 2011 for a November 2012 race? It's just silly, and journalists like Jo Mannies and Jake Wagman should know better.

Thanks for the RFT Nomination!

Thanks to the folks who helped St. Louis Activist Hub become a finalist for the Riverfront Times 2011 Web Awards. We are now in the great company of other blogs like St. Louis Volunteen, Slow Food St. Louis, Preservation Research, Next Stop STL, Show Me No Hate, and Urban Review STL.

Thanks to those who voted for me and thanks to the RFT for doing a great job highlighting local bloggers and covering stories and issues that the mainstream media passes by.

RFT “Criminally Stupid” When Reporting on Mental Illness, Trans Issues

With all due gratitude to the Riverfront Times for featuring the Activist Hub as one of its favorite blogs and our beloved Adam Shriver as “Best Gadfly” of 2010, I feel the need to call them out on something. The RFT has been incredibly insensitive when reporting on people with mental illnesses and those who are transgender.

Take Chad Garrison’s recent article about a man—Trip Powers—shot by a police officer on Sunday after allegedly breaking into a Denny’s restaurant. The article is posted online in the blogs under the “Criminally Stupid” category. Garrison quips that the man was shot, “while seriously craving a Grand Slam omelette. Or maybe it was a Moons Over My Hammy?”

According to Powers’s mother, Teri Powers, a licensed clinical social worker, her son Trip is suffering from a mental illness, and he is not a criminal. “Everyone involved should recognize that keeping Trip jailed and without psychiatric treatment and medication is doing him an injustice,” Teri told me via Facebook message. Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is doing a respectful series on Trip Powers and his situation. So why the stigmatizing sarcasm from a reporter for the Riverfront Times?

This is not the first time that the RFT has ridiculed someone with a mental illness. Remember Susan Stone? She was also written about under the “Criminally Stupid” category.

Now, I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’m pretty familiar with mental illnesses. I saw Stone at the Metro East Pride vigil in October. It seemed pretty clear to me then, based on some of the things she said, that she was suffering from some kind of mental illness.

While other local media showed disrespect to Stone, using her legal (male) name and referencing her with pronouns that do not match her gender presentation, the RFT went one step further by nominating her as “Ass Clown of the Week,” calling her “he/rself,” and “s/he” in that article.

It sounds to me as though the RFT could use some sensitivity training.

Shocker Michelle Malkin Uses Edit to Make It Appear That Tea Party Was Blamed for Attempted Arson

Michelle Malkin picks up on the story from the local tea party irresponsibly accusing someone of vandalism before the facts are out and falsely claiming that the media was "blaming the St. Louis tea party." I've already discussed much of this, so I'll just focus on her misleading edit.

Here's what Malkin quotes from Chad Garrison's post:

Police aren’t releasing the man’s name until charges are officially filed. No motive was given for the attack, though one could suspect that the perpetrator is not a fan of the congressman. Given what we know of him — 50, white, angry — he certainly fits the demographics of a Tea Party member.

Perhaps, he joined his fellow “patriots” earlier this year when they burned Carnahan’s photo in effigy or placed a coffin on the sidewalk outside his home.

And what was the very next line from Garrison?

On second thought, maybe he's not a Tea Party member. Firebombing your opponent's office seems a little too, um, sane for that group.

So uh, yeah, he didn't actually accuse the tea party of firebombing. But if the tea partiers want to go ahead and cry themselves to sleep about how unfairly they are victimized like they usually do, who am I to stop them?

Shameful! Ed Martin Touts Endorsement from Racist AZ Sheriff

Ed Martin is now bragging about an endorsement from Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, known nationally for his endorsement of racial profiling, for his support from neo-Nazis, for the deplorable conditions of his jails, and for his willingness to abuse power to terrorize political critics.

I believe the first person to report on this is Clark at Show Me Progress.

Sean at FiredUp Missouri and Chad Garrison at The Riverfront Times both add a lot of disturbing details about Arpaio's background (you can see the photo where Arpaio poses with a neo-Nazi at the RFT site).

Disgusting!