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Jewish World Review July 12, 2000 /9 Tamuz, 5760

John Leo

John Leo
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What Jacoby had to deal with!

We reprint for our readers a column that first appeared in US News & World Report on November 17, 1997. Was Jeff, as the Globe claims, punished for journalistic misconduct? You decide.


http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- BY 1994, editors at the Boston Globe were tired of hearing readers complain that the paper's editorials and op-ed columns were all saying the same thing, so they took a daring step: they hired Jeff Jacoby, a young lawyer, "to provide a conservative balance to the Globe's notoriously left-leaning stable of columnists," as the newspaper's ombudsman wrote last week.

Alas, the ombudsman, Jack Thomas, had some other things to say about Jacoby, some of them startling, most of them expressing the simmering newsroom resentments against the token outsider. He wrote that two of Jacoby's old 1994 columns had been "homophobic" and one recent one on gays was so toxic that publishing it was "a high price to pay for freedom of the press."

This is the story in brief of the recent column. Last month Harvard gays held a "National Coming Out Day." In response, a group called Harvard Law School's Society for Law, Life & Religion scheduled a "National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day." The second group's posters were torn down and some were replaced with parody versions comparing the sponsors to anti-Semites and racists.

Jacoby thought that disagreeing with gay activists is not the same as expressing hate. He wrote: "Dare to suggest that homosexuality may not be something to celebrate and you instantly are a Nazi....Offer to share your teachings of Christianity or Judaism with students "struggling with homosexuality" and you become as vile as a Ku Kluxer...." Jacoby quoted one of the self-described ex-gays who spoke at the "Coming Out of Homsexuality" panel discussion, noting that the man hadn't attacked or demeaned gays. He wrote that the man "knows that many gays are content with their lives. He also knows that many are not." Jacoby said it is "poisonously intolerant" to depict someone like this as a hate peddlar.

This was a column so awful that printing it was a high price to pay for freedom of the press? Please, Mr. Ombuds, try to get a grip. A conclusion like this about a mainstream and essentially harmless column says less about Jacoby than about the hothouse orthodoxy of the Globe newsroom.

Yes, Jacoby's style is blunt and polemical. In one of the 1994 columns, he wrote that gay-pride marchers of many different interests and political principles are unified by "carnal desire" and the demands of their bodies.
Jacoby
When I pointed out to the ombudsman that this questionable paragraph was followed in Jacoby's column by further explanations of gay unity (building pressure for gay-rights law, sharing the grief of friends lost to AIDS), the ombudman called this a rhetorical trick--first you insult, then you take the curse off the insult with a display of sympathy. Maybe. But it makes you wonder how many writers could survive close motivational analysis of allegedly feigned sympathy in three-year-old columns. In my opinion, what Jacoby was trying to say is that building your whole social and psychological identity around what you do in bed is not really a good idea. This should be OK to say, even in the Globe.

In going through Jacoby's columns, I found two other harsh phrases--"their peculiar behavior," "the swerve of their sex drive"--but none since June 1994 when some gays in the newsroom complained to management about his "infammatory, hateful words." Why go for his throat now? Jacoby told the ombudsman: "A lot of gay activists think that any point of view different from theirs is not only wrong, but so illegitimate and beneath contempt that it doesn't even deserve to be considered." Yes, and maybe those different opinions are so out of step with proper newsroom opinion that they ought to be suppressed. The banner headline on the ombudsman's article was very revealing: "Should a column that targeted homosexuals have been published?" So the real issue being raised isn't accuracy or fairness. It's censorship.

As it happens, Jacoby's two copy editors at the Globe --Robert Hardman and Peter Accardi--are both gay activists and members of the informal gay caucus. Hardman is also the chairman and principal investor of the gay magazine, Out. Hardman told me he has a cordial and "truly friendly" relationship with Jacoby. "I am not working as a PC cop," he said. "I think Jeff absolutely belongs here at the Globe."

Still, he says that he was one of the people who urged the ombudsman to examine Jacoby's column. He also admits that he tried to get the column killed in the first place. What remains of the Globe's honor in this case is wholly traceable to editorial page editor David Greenway, who refused to suppress the column. If there were a journalism review willing to look hard at the race/gender/orientation lobbies in the newsroom (there isn't), a fascinating analysis could be done here. What do we think about a gay editor who tries to kill a column on a gay theme, fails, and ends up pushing to get an ombudsman to intervene and make the column an issue?

The ombudsman wrote the standard chilling-effect conclusion: "For now, Jacoby's columns about homosexuality will be judged case by case." Translation: watch yourself, Jeff, and consider yourself intimidated. This just shows how much trouble these token columnists can be. Maybe the Globe should just go back to the old system of having everybody write the same thing.

PLEASE do something about Jeff's plight! The Globe's phone number is 617.929.2000. The fax is: 617.929.2098, Letters to the Ombudsman: Click here. Phoning and faxing (It's only about 10 cents per minute) have more of an impact, we've been told.

PLEASE keep your letters CIVIL, despite the temptation not to.


JWR contributor John Leo's latest book is Two Steps Ahead of the Thought Police. Send your comments by clicking here.

Up

07/11/00: Will boys be boys?
07/05/00: Partial-sense decision
06/27/00: Attitude toward death penalty gets in the way of facts
06/20/00: Double troubles
06/13/00: Fools paradise
06/06/00: Accidental conspirator
05/30/00: Faking the hate
05/23/00: Was it law or poetry?
05/16/00: Here, there and everywhere, people have gone bonkers
05/09/00: Tufts evangelicals are punished for acting on their beliefs
05/02/00: Elian's opera isn't over until nearly everyone sings
04/25/00: All the news that fits: The media serve up many stories from a standard script
04/19/00: Those darned readers: The gap between reporters and the general public is huge
04/05/00: Census sense and nonsense
03/29/00: Hollywood message films leave no room for other views
03/22/00: The Vatican confesses, but is it enough?
03/14/00: Watch what you say: The left can no longer be counted on to defend free speech
03/07/00: McCain's malleable messages
03/01/00: Bush's appearance at Bob Jones U. will dog him all the way
02/23/00: 'Multi-millionaire' show is new evidence we're insane

© 2000, John Leo