The cover story in Sunday’s New York Times magazine was written by a former drug dealer about his “supplier…mentor…role model.” You could argue about the importance of the subject, or the quality of the writing (which I found a bit mannered), but not, in my mind, about the timing. Putting this story on the cover on Christmas Eve seemed not only insensitive but in your face.
The lead review in the Book Review was of a new biography of Magic Johnson. Undoubtedly, the Times feels it is making amends for decades of inattention to Black Americans, but Sunday it seemed – by featuring an athlete and a drug dealer – to be perpetuating stereotypes. In an interview last week on “Fresh Air,” Cord Jefferson, the director of the new film American Fiction, complained that when he was a television writer the stories he would get asked to write, as the Black man in the room, invariably involved drugs or guns or prison. It annoyed him that a whole swath of the Black experience – the lives of law-abiding, middle-class Blacks – was being ignored. It’s why he made his latest film.
In his memoir Losing My Cool, Thomas Chatterton Williams remembers his father saying he’d be happy if he never saw another Black athlete or entertainer. If he’s still alive, I hope he doesn’t read the New York Times.
I’ve been reading over the journal I kept my last year at the Sun-Sentinel, a year that, because of what was happening to newspapers in general, and to mine specifically, was one of the worst of my life. Yet reading through it I’ve been struck by how rich the year was, especially compared to the last two, in events and drama.
Yesterday’s New York Times carried an Op-Ed piece by Jerry Seinfeld on the greatness of New York City. It was inspired by an acquaintance who declared on social media that the city was finished and he was moving to Florida. The comedian countered, with occasional humor, that the city was not finished, that it would survive the pandemic as it’s survived a number of other crises over the decades.
He was right, of course. But his paean to his hometown was weakened, for me at least, by his cheap shots at Florida. “We all know the sharp focus and restless, resilient creative spirit that Florida is all about,” wrote Seinfeld, before noting the man’s “enervated, pastel-filled new life.” What bothered me was not so much that he was resorting to the usual tired clichés about Florida but that he was employing the same sad tactic his acquaintance had: painting a large and extraordinarily diverse place with a broad brush.
I give the Miami Herald credit for not discontinuing its Weekend section. Today’s cover story was devoted to Mother’s Day, and instead of featuring restaurants to take mom it gave us restaurants to get takeout for mom.
I am now getting pop-ups in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen from the Sun-Sentinel, which is annoying enough. But when I try to scroll and accidentally click on them I’m taken to a story that, I am immediately told, I’m barred from reading.
It’s not enough, I guess, that they laid me off. Twelve years later they have to taunt me too.
Craig Pittman, environmental reporter for 21 years and author of the popular book Oh, Florida!: How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country, was laid off from the Tampa Bay Times this week. Apparently he got a call in the morning, telling him he had to have his desk cleaned out by the end of the afternoon. Craig was not only a diligent reporter for over two decades, he was (is) an author who brought acclaim to his paper through his books (his most recent is on the Florida panther). And for this he was ushered out of the newsroom with all the dignity of someone who had been caught plagiarizing.