And hit "send"
Washington Post classical music critic Tim Page ripped DC Councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry in a widely-distributed company email recently, calling Barry a "crack head" and "useless."
The trouble began with an email from Barry's Communication staff that went out as a "blast" to several dozen reporters and media organizations. Page received a copy of the Barry email even though he doesn't cover the former Mayor or the DC government and apparently wasn't too pleased to hear from Barry. According to veteran newscast Bruce Johnson, Page fired off an email response to Barry's Communications Chief:
The trouble began with an email from Barry's Communication staff that went out as a "blast" to several dozen reporters and media organizations. Page received a copy of the Barry email even though he doesn't cover the former Mayor or the DC government and apparently wasn't too pleased to hear from Barry. According to veteran newscast Bruce Johnson, Page fired off an email response to Barry's Communications Chief:
Must we hear about it every time this Crack Addict attempts to rehabilitate himself with some new--and typically half witted--political grandstanding?Johnson also says Page has confirmed that his supervisors at the Post have already taken disciplinary action against him. According to a source, Page has been placed on leave.
I'd be grateful if you would take me off your mailing list. I Cannot think of anything the useless Marion Barry could do that would interest me in the slightest, up to and including overdose.
Sincerely, Tim Page
POSTED at
12:48 AM
12 Comments:
What's the so-called problem with Tim Page's e-mail? It's not racist or profane, it simply drips with well-deserved disgust for Mr. Barry. Oh well, working for The Washington Post is in essence being in the pay of official warmongers, so maybe Page is better off in the long run.
so this is the real story behind the USC sabbatical? Or was this a subsequent development?
So, he's not a crack head?
Enough about the content. That capitalization is disgraceful.
The problem with Page's message would arise if he sent it from his Washington Post address. (I don't know if he did so or not, but it seems likely.)
Post management would want to discipline a writer who sent a nasty message like that from a Post address (however much anyone else might agree with Page's sentiments) because -
(a) that kind of invective coming from a Post writer on a Post address would simply make the Post look bad, and
(b) the next time the Post reports damning info about Barry, Page's message can give Barry and his partisans ammunition to claim that the Post hates Barry and can't report objectively on him - and so anything bad they publish about him (though that info may be true) can't be trusted.
That's why the Post has to discipline - and has to be seen to discipline - anyone who has done what Page has here, even if the offense seems minor to onlookers like us.
Clearly Page never heard -- as I did -- Marion Barry's performance of Steve Reich's Crackenlieder at Constitution Hall acc. by small orchestra, or he'd never have responded so severely.
- Hans Lick
@Micaela: Win!
I don't believe this is about protecting the Post's journalistic integrity, nor being sensitive to the race issue. It's simply a repeat of the Joe McLellan story, Page's predecessor as top critic of the paper, who was pushed out of the job after writing a review of James Wolfensohn's daughter, that implied her only success was due to her father's connections. He was, of course, the head of the World Bank, and ran the Kennedy Center before that. Sarah (?), his daughter, was an atrocious pianist, yet seemed to have a lot of Kennedy Center performances on her resume. McLellan was forced to retire from the post after this, and I was told by the PR director of one of DC's major presenters that this was due to threats from Wolfensohn against the Post from his new position at the World Bank.
The Post has never been a shining example of integrity, despite the mythology built around it from Watergate. They've always bent to pressure from politicians, that's how they maintain their "connections". This isn't about integrity of the Post's reputation, it's about the very low position that arts reporters hold in a political town. He really should have known better, as I've corresponded with him on parts of his coverage (notably opera) that I dissagreed with, and always found him to be open-minded to other views. He's far too bright to have let himself get trapped in the very same situation that sunk his predecessor. Pity.
When Paul Henry Lang dissed Margaret Truman's singing (and was threatened with violence by her daddy the president) his paper stood by him. I bet it wasn't the Post.
For the record, Page is right about Marion "Bitch set me up" Barry. But who cares about facts?
Actually, the critic who gave Margaret Truman the famous unfavorable review was Paul Hume, who was with the Washington Post from 1947 to 1982. Hume wrote the review in 1950, and the Post stodd by him. I believe that Harry Truman's angry letter about the review is now in the Bill Clinton Presidential Library. Hume died in 2001, and here's a link to his obit in the Post, which gives details about the famous review and the brouhaha that followed:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A19305-2001Nov26
Pardon my typo, please. Of course, I meant to type "stood," not "stodd."
Joseph McLellan should have been "pushed out" of the Washington Post years sooner than when it actually happened. I can't tell you the number of times I watched/listened to him literally snooze through performances and then he'd write a rave review.
As for Page, he became too much of a cheerleader, though his recent reviews had more bite maybe because of his upcoming sabbatical.
Certainly Page did not deserve to be placed on leave because of his comments about Marion Barry, who has long been a sad, pathetic figure hereabouts.
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