We Don’t Write the Headlines
A huge huddle of Redskins fans have been taking out their grief over Sean Taylor’s death on Len Shapiro for his Tuesday washingtonpost.com column headlined, “Taylor’s Death Is Tragic but Not Surprising.” Shapiro says he’s gotten hundreds of emails since the article appeared.
“This is the most I’ve gotten for anything since I started doing the column,” Shapiro says. “Every time I click over, there are three or four new ones, many of them starting with ‘Mr. Shapiro, you heartless, gutless prick.’”
The outcry, which has a hater/non-hater ratio of about 100-to-1, has caused Shapiro some second thoughts.
“The headline [which Shapiro didn't write] was a little tough, and a lot of the readers didn’t get past the headline,” he says. “And if I had it to do over, I probably wouldn’t have been quite as cynical about Taylor’s transformation. I probably shouldn’t have used the words ’so-called.’”
But he stands by the intent of the piece, which suggested that those familiar with Taylor’s past could almost be desensitized to news of his murder.
“A lot of the people were so emotionally involved, I’m not sure the message got through,” he says. “Maybe I said it inelegantly, and I’ll take full responsibility for that. But, look, these things are happening to African-American male athletes, and we’ve got to do something about it.”
“We don’t know the answers yet, and til we do we can’t make any conclusions,” Shapiro continues, “but I think it would be irresponsible and just wrong not to mention that this guy came to Washington and had some serious issues. But did he deserve it? Come on! Nobody deserved this.”
Shapiro has also taken a beating on WOL-AM’s sportstalk show, The Sports Groove. John Mitchell, a sportswriter for the Washington Times, went on the air Tuesday night and quickly nailed Shapiro with a one-two punch, calling him both a “racist, conniving skunk” and a “racist, conniving dog of a skunk.”
Last night, the barrage against Shapiro continued, as Sports Groove host Mark Gray boasted that he had invited the writer on the show to rebut the haters, of which he is a proud ringleader.
Shapiro tells me he was unaware of the invite, but he’ll be glad to discuss the situation with Gray.
“He hasn’t called me to appear on the show,” Shapiro says. “If he does I’ll go on.”
Grab some popcorn and pull up a chair. That’s going to be great radio.
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3:25 pm
To be honest, I was more ticked off about Shapiro’s previous column, in which he sang the praises of Sports Illustrated finally showing some gender-enlightenment by adding another female writer (NYT Selena Roberts). Read like a self-loathing middle-aged white male who puts the singer ahead of the song.
I want to read good writers telling great stories in Sports Illustrated. I don’t want the staff hired according to some politically correct, but not quality-journalism-driven agenda. When are you media people going to get over the fact and accept that jobs should go to the MOST qualified person, regardless of skin color or gender? If someone is a good reporter or writer, their skills should transcend their race or sex.
4:03 pm
SI is LUCKY to get Selena Roberts, and her particular, smart take on sports, and Times readers who don’t get SI are bereft. When will people stop throwing around terms like “politically correct” to protect straight, white (gasp-sometimes unqualified) men getting most of the good jobs in journalism and elsewhere?
The fact is, having people with different backgrounds and perspectives at any publication allows those media to cover more stories. If SI is a bunch of straight, white men, good luck covering a world where most people are not.
4:19 pm
It depends the criteria on which you are basing the notion of “most qualified.” Kat is right, having people with different backgrounds allows a publication to cover more stories.
What’s more, people from different backgrounds come up with different — often better -story ideas. When your entire staff are white middle class men, you tend to get stories that arise from the world view of white middle class men.
The result is a sort of bland sameness in which anyone different from a white middle class man is written about as an “other.”
4:22 pm
As to the column itself, I think Shapiro’s take is valid, if a little harsh. But the timing was all wrong. Did it have to be published the DAY after, when people are still reeling from the news?
Couldn’t we have given the poor man one day of sympathy before starting in on him?
4:24 pm
Is Mike Wilbon getting similar feedback for his article of the same day that expressed essentially the same thought?
4:31 pm
How much are we supposed to grieve over somebody who was not born here, did not grow up here, never lived here before he was hired by the Skins, and would probably never stay here or retire here once he was traded or fired???
Why is this city so obsessed with the Skins as “native sons” when all of the above applies? Football is a money-making corporation, not some rah-rah hometown alliance. Those players have absolutely no affinity or bond with this fair city…
4:34 pm
Kat says SI is lucky to get Selena Roberts and her “smart take” on sports. Is she talking about things like Roberts’ columns on the Duke lacrosse players, and how Roberts basically “convicted” the players shortly after they were falsely accused of raping the woman who danced for the Duke lacrosse team. If this is the sort of “smart” take that SI is getting, the magazine will soon have the lowest IQ in the media world. But maybe that’s appropriate. Between the swimsuit edition and the Roberts stories, SI will be filled with boobs.
5:12 pm
Yeah, nothing says quality journalism quite like falsely accusing a lacrosse team of rape.
5:24 pm
I thought Wilbon should be mentioned, too. I think the headline for Shapiro’s piece was built around Wilbon’s quote about “not being surprised.”
As for Looloo’s comments, you’re not supposed to feel anything. People feel what they feel. In this case, for me, it’s sorrow over another young life lost to violence. Just as you don’t want people telling you you should feel bad, I think it’s hypocritical to criticize others because they do.
6:27 pm
Selena Roberts publishing columns condemning the Duke lacross players was sort of like writers in the New York Times – and elsewhere – who relied on White House sources to report stories about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the threat they posed to Americans.
In the Duke case, reporters relied on info from police and the D.A. In the case of WMD’s, reporters relied on reliable sources in the White House and Pentagon. No rape and no WMD’s.
Both cases show a dramatic need for reporters to be much more suspicious of the information they receive from sources, especially when they are people in the highest places, be it criminal justice or national security. It also shows that a little independent investigating can turn up plenty that contradicts the official line.
8:34 am
“The fact is, having people with different backgrounds and perspectives at any publication allows those media to cover more stories. If SI is a bunch of straight, white men, good luck covering a world where most people are not.”
This is specious, and thus hardly a fact. Reporters typically spend years and big bucks on educations and experiences that allow them to navigate among sources of all sorts, reporting a vast array of stories. Clinging to the notion that you have to be a certain race or gender or sexual persuasion (thanks for introducing that element here, Kat) in order to report and write about something is like a cranky football player telling a writer, “Yeah, well you never played the game.” Most medical reporters haven’t performed heart transplants but many can do the work necessary to write about them. And so on and so on.
To me, it’s a form of stereotyping and racism/sexism/whateverism to presume that, by having a black and a Hispanic and a woman and a gay, a news operation therefore has captured THE voice of ALL blacks, all Hispanics, all women, all gays. As if one or even a dozen of any group speak for the whole group. I’d rather trust good journalists working hard to understand the issues, rather than a rainbow coalition in which membership was conveyed at birth.
Kat, you’ve got to stop picking on straight white males. They are, after all, swiftly becoming a minority in their own right. And the least protected one out there.
9:33 am
How about everybody take out there frustration on Michael Wilbon also, a black columnist for the Washington Post, who wrote the exact same thing in his article!!!!!
1:04 pm
As an African American male I feel that Wilbon should be dragged into this conversation too. His comments were equally as harming and judgmental and he should not be exclude for his insensitivity to the issue. Wildon deserves no pass.