The Boston Globe this morning reports that Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley yesterday publicly excoriated WEEI talk-show hosts for their offensive attacks on Erin Andrews:
Stomping onto the dangerous turf of talk radio, gubernatorial candidate Martha Coakley called out a WEEI radio host for an on-air tirade in which he lambasted FOX Sports reporter Erin Andrews, cursing about her and telling her to “drop dead.”
The rant on the “Dennis & Callahan Show” Wednesday morning prompted Coakley to contact a reporter covering the story to weigh in and later prompted an apology from the radio personality.
“Everybody understands fair criticism,” Coakley told Boston.com. “But when it becomes personal, when it’s demeaning, and when it goes over the line as this did, that language is inexcusable, and it’s offensive. I just felt it was important for me to weigh in.”
Let me see if I get this straight. The Boston FBI office hires a “disabled” ex-Oakland CA police officer who left his prior employer under the cloud of a settlement in a police brutality case. That officer, as a member of the Boston FBI office, went on to shoot and kill an unarmed witness with multiple shots, several to the back of the head after the victim was already dead. The killing occurred in the victim’s home, while the victim was in custody, and with a contingent of MA state police present. Yet Ms. Coakley has nothing to say. No concern about the history of Aaron MacFarland. No concern about the “investigation” done by Florida authorities.
So trash talk by radio hosts with a long history of trash talk merits an outraged response, but the events surrounding the killing of an unarmed witness by government authorities, with Massachusetts State Police present, does not.
This brings up several more questions for me:
1. Does Martha Coakley feel that this will increase her support among women? What does this say about her view of female Massachusetts voters? It says to me that she feels that women voters in Massachusetts care more about a talk show host saying offensive things about a women reporter than they care about police brutality and a local FBI office with no compunctions about killing inconvenient witnesses. I find that an offensive and demeaning view of women voters.
2. Does Martha Coakley care about the chilling effect such statements by the sitting Attorney General have on media and journalists? The outburst was clearly offensive, yet was still well-within First Amendment boundaries. What does this episode say about Martha Coakley’s respect for the First Amendment?
3. Does this reflect Martha Coakley’s priorities? It seems that this outburst crossed some interior threshold and motivated her to speak out. The events surrounding the killing of Ibrahim Todashev did not. What does this say about the personal values of Martha Coakley?
4. What does this say about the role that a motivated Attorney General can do and say about abhorrent but legal behavior? There were no such outbursts about the Probation Department scandal. No such outbursts about the several housing authority scandals. No such outbursts about the rampant pension and disability abuses by Boston police and firefighters. Only the most tepid “tut-tut” about the Annie Dookhan scandal.
For me, the bottom line is clear: When Martha Coakley truly cares about something, she finds a way to publicly express her outrage. I think it is therefore fair to observe that she apparently did not and does not care about the long list of things that she has chosen not to speak out against.
Which means I have no way of knowing whether the comments Coakley responded to were out of the accepted norm for talk radio hosts taking on sports reporting. The portion printed in the Globe certainly doesn’t seem to reach the level of offensiveness you hear about from figures like Rush Limbaugh, but maybe my sense of the context is off? I mean, if the full attack on Andrews was notably excessive compared to what’s routinely directed at male journalists, and there’s reason to suspect some pattern of gender-based animus against her, I can understand this incident being the proverbial last straw for Coakley, or for anyone with a public platform.
On the other hand, if this level of trash talking isn’t unusual for the show, or when it does occur it’s as likely to be directed at men as at women, then no. It is not feminism as I would like to know it to say that you can’t treat what you see as bad journalism from a woman exactly as harshly as you’d treat the same bad journalism from a man. All that does is perpetuate the notion that women can’t be taken as seriously as men.
And not so much by the way, it’s getting really depressing to see the way nobody is addressing any of the civil liberties questions that have been raised in any of the statewide races. I wonder how many voters you’d need to sign onto a pledge not to vote for any candidate who didn’t at least say something about their stand on this set of issues, before it was sufficient to outweigh the perceived risks of talking about them?
I happened to hear the comments in question. I hate morning radio and sometimes put on Dennis and Callahan for as long as they can go without Callahan making snide right-wing comments. Usually I don’t make it five minutes.
These comments were by the new guy on the show, Kirk Minihane, brought in a few months ago specifically to spice things up. Personally, I think the point he was trying to make was essentially correct (happy to discuss if anyone cares), but the terms used went farther than usual. He called the reporter a “gutless bitch.” I can understand a feminist reaction to that, but I genuinely believe he’d say something just as harsh about a guy in the same circumstances, just using a different word.
My question is whether Coakley really was offended or just wants to score political points by being offended.
A happy coincidence, in this case.
I agree with you that Minihane would be just as harsh on a male reporter, but Martha’s goat was gotten, and she said so. So there’s that.
My only real objection to Minihane is his open contempt for the callers. Yesterday he called a caller a liar, because they were having trouble answering a question under withering cross-examination.
The thing about D&C, as bad as they are … they know a LOT more about the local sports scene than anyone else on the radio. ’cause they’re old.
There’s that shock jock (emphasis on jock) attitude that makes the hosts more likely to harass and dismiss callers than have a conversation. Of course some callers are pretty bad too (both obnoxious and not too bright). That’s why I consume only in small doses.
When Callahan actually sticks to sports it works pretty well. Too bad he’s so damn snide and bitter.
“whether Coakley really was offended or just wants to score political points by being offended”.
Hence my item 1.
What Gretchen Carlson is to news.
Smart, elite college educated women choosing to be eye candy and saying unintelligent things. My fiancee has called Erin Andrews unkind names before, and strongly feels she is setting the cause of women sports broadcasters back. And she was doubly embarrassed by former NESN figure Hazel Mae, whom she felt set the cause of Filipina sports broadcasters back.
It’s also dumb politics, didn’t she tangle with these guys in 2010? Aren’t there more important issues we should be concerning ourselves with? I don’t recall Mitt ever calling into Stephanie Miller to complain about Mormon jokes, and I am pretty sure we’d mock him if he had.
It seems to me that the question of whether Erin Andrews or Gretchen Carlson deserve criticism for the roles they’ve chosen is apt and worthy of discussion.
I think responses like this from Ms. Coakley hurt, rather than help, such dialog.
I, too, found the talk-show commentary as described revolting. Not so revolting, though, for me, as the still un-answered (and in Ms. Coakley’s case, unasked) questions about the killing of Mr. Todashev and the recruiting (and subsequent retention) of Mr. MacFarlane.
Link. And we didn’t mock him for it.
Also for the record — you and your fiancee are right about Hazel Mae, but generally speaking Erin Andrews knows what she’s talking about. Sideline reporting is not exactly war correspondence, but she knows sports.
Of course she’s no Heidi Watney, who (moments after this clip ends) told Dan S. to not count his chickens before they hatched.
Just saying.
And yes, she isn’t as bad as Hazel Mae was. Glad NESN had the good sense to send her packing to Canada. Her reporting during the World Series was infuriatingly bad.
And more importantly, Tom’s point that this doesn’t help women in the long run and is a typical cheap stunt we have come to expect from this AG.
This seems very important to you.
So, what has your candidate had to say about Aaron MacFarland?
Is your support of that candidate based solely on their stance on Aaron MacFarland?
My candidate (for Attorney General) said (5:50):
yes, I would have investigated.
I am just as eager to hear Don Berwick’s response as Martha Coakley, and Steve Grossman’s as well.
On the other hand, Martha Coakley is the only one of the three who is the Attorney General. She is, after all, uniquely positioned address the questions surrounding Mr. MacFarlane in her official capacity.
Where’s your poutrage?
Since he failed finding a comment from his candidate for governor.
I know, methuenprogressive, you would just love, love, love to win points off of Berwick and Grossman supporters. And how much delightful fun you must collect from doing so!
But you’re being stupid.
Right now, Coakley is overwhelmingly likely to win the nomination. Frankly, I don’t like that fact one bit. As it is, the Democratic Party is going to have a tough time convincing a lot of activists to get behind Ms. Coakley after September. Idiot, point-collecting, abrasive pro-Coakley partisans make that task ridiculously harder.
you don’t value your vote very much.
Tom’s obsession with MacFarlane, and his constant trolling of any/all threads with it claiming it damns Coakley’s candidacy, rings hollow since his own candidate for governor has never mentioned it.
I apologize to you if I’ve committed an offense by simply pointing out the obvious flaw in Tom’s “logic”.
activism.
Might I add that being condescending — complete with scare quotes — is just not helpful either?
Face it. Coakley looks as if she is going to win the primary. What possible value are you going gain by pointing out “logic” errors? To increase the win from 55% to 56%? Are you employed by the Baker campaign?
When that comment gets several “likes”, including one from Tom, shouldn’t your question be “Is BMG working for the Baker campaign?”
You’re still trying to “win points” off of Berwick and Grossman supporters.
The crucially important thing to do here is to convince people that Coakley is better than Baker. I submit it doesn’t matter at all whether Coakley is better or worse than Grossman or Berwick because, at this stage, the chance of either winning is remote. On the other hand, the chance of Baker beating Coakley in November is anything but remote. We’ll need all those Berwick and Grossman supporters doing GOTV and the like if we don’t want Republican cabinet secretaries. Making all those people hate Coakley by being abrasive and obnoxious here is shooting yourself in the foot. Of course, you get to be smug and sarcastic and all.
If you want Coakley to be the next governor, don’t do it.
If that makes me different from you, I can live with it.
We’re in violent agreement about that.
…which isn’t completely unreasonable either. Coakley, in addition to being a candidate for Governor is the incumbent AG and was the AG when the McFarlane thing went down. I don’t remember the timing exactly, but Berwick may still have been in DC running Medicare/Medicaid much to the GOPs chagrin and earning Glenn Beck’s “second most dangerous man in America” moniker at the time.
You could sub Healey for Coakley and the quote still stands.
For real? Can you get away with that stuff if you’ve got a badge next to your name?
he’s having a tough day.
It would be useful if you engaged my points above rather than responding incoherently, but it seems that you value being snide more than helping Democrats retain the governorship in 2014. Well, I suppose we all have our priorities.
*
And he?
You are going to put yourself into the hospital if you plan to get upset every time a politician tries to get some attention this summer by saying some inane thing about baseball.
As for me, I am not supporting AG Coakley for governor, but the other night I was kind of impressed that she knew the word “Stravinsky.” To each his own, I guess.
n/m
🙂
Like the sad Petrouchka one I am hearing unless we Democrats can start making a better case why someone should entrust us with another 4 years at the State House.
Sorry good sir.
Each time our Attorney General makes a comment on a topic of only middling importance, we can be invited yet again to meditate on why she has said nothing with respect to A. MacFarland.
So long as our Attorney General continues to refuse to address these important issues facing all of us, I probably will continue to invite us to meditate on why she insists on ducking the questions.
I don’t remember any complaints (except from Scott Brown himself) when he didn’t want to discuss his role as “advisor” in that vapor-ware scam outfit and journalists kept asking anyway.
At least we seem to agree that so far, our Attorney General seems to have a habit of restricting her comments to topics of only middling importance.
A fair observation, worth repeating.
Women’s access to healthcare is of “middling importance” to some.
I’m glad that Ms. Coakley supported this necessary bill. So do all the Democratic candidates.
I guess it took courage to confront anti-abortion extremist lobby in Massachusetts — were it not for Ms. Coakley’s gutsy position, I’m sure this bill would never have happened.
Women’s access to healthcare is of fundamental importance to nearly all Massachusetts Democrats, and precisely because of that her comments on the legislation are about as important as commenting that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow morning.
On a matter of “middling importance” to some.
More at link: http://www.pplmvotes.org/newsroom/press-releases/265-legislationfiledtoenhancesafeaccesstoreproductivehealthcenters.html
Of course she helped draft it, she is the ATTORNEY GENERAL. It’s her JOB. I’m sure all supporters of women’s rights are happy that Ms. Coakley did her job — on this issue. Too bad she hasn’t done the same on so many others.
Here’s what would be newsworthy — it would be newsworthy for a candidate to announce that they OPPOSE this legislation. It would be newsworthy for a candidate to announce that they SUPPORT the Supreme Court decision, and that Massachusetts should take no further steps on the matter. Suicidal, but still newsworthy.
But you aren’t?
I’m also on record as not feeding trolls.
To most Massachusetts voters, something the Coakley campaign hasn’t figured out yet.
If the debates in the fall are “I supported buffer zones” “so do I”, then Coakley loses. They’d look like these debates
I don’t know if our collective memory stretches back far enough, but there was a time when Roe v Wade was viewed, here in Massachusetts, as firm, settled, and unshakeable law — trumping anything we might do locally.
During that time, the common stance of “liberal” Massachusetts Democrats (including, sadly, Ed Markey if I remember correctly) was to publicly oppose Roe v. Wade, and publicly advocate (and pander to) the anti-abortion movement. When interacting with liberal pro-choice supporters in more private settings, they would confide that pro-choice voters had nothing to fear because of Roe v Wade, and assured us that they would never support or encourage overturning Roe v. Wade.
Today, every Massachusetts legislator who wants to stay in office finds a way to be pro-choice. Few candidates for any statewide office will be publicly joining the GOP war on women — witness the conversion of Ms. Polito.
In that context, trumpeting sponsorship, co-authorship, or support for absolutely necessary legislation like this is like a CEO trumpeting the fact that her company just released their annual report.
It must be done, of course, and in that sense of course it is “important”. It would instantly become very much MORE important if it were NOT done (the point I made upthread).
It is not, however, newsworthy. It is also not helpful in advancing a campaign (as you correctly observe).
Abortion rights will not be threatened by Governor Baker in any way shape or form. What will be threatened are the critical public investments we need to make for our future, investments that need to be funded by progressive revenue streams. And unfortunately, I hear nothing from the Coakley camp assuring me she will fight for either of those things either, and a lot of talk about ‘cuts for waste and fraud’.
So if we have two fiscally conservative, socially liberal candidates running in the general, one of whom is connected to a patronage machine and one of whom isn’t, whom do we think independent voters will select in the fall?
This is all I get from Coakley:
1) I will win the nomination no matter what
2) Grossman and Berwick supporters MUST support me or that evil anti-gay, anti-choice Republican will win
3) Oh he isn’t anti-gay or anti choice? Well then, um, vote for me because I’m a woman
That’s about all I’ve been hearing since day 1.
…I can think of a few legislators who are very publicly prolife, including some with Ds after their names, but you are correct about anyone with statewide ambitions I think.
I feel like that number continues to go down. Lynch has backed away from it, for the statewide ambition reason, Fallon will be replaced by a pro-choice rep in Malden, and Miceli is getting quite old. What other vocal advocates are left?
…is Colleen Garry of Dracut. There are others in the Merrimack Valley that at least don’t seem terribly enthused about abortion rights.
Ms. Garry was elected just before or shortly after I moved out of her district (Dunstable).
An enormous benefit of living in Somerville is that my rep is now Denise Provost — enormously preferable to Colleen Garry.
She is responsive even if you don’t live in her district, and worked with Rogers, Hecht and Brownsberger on issues with the Alewife T stop. I also note that a lot of our best public servants got their start on school committees. Katherine Clark, Provost, and Jehlen among them.
She lost Dunstable to the neighboring faithfully Republican district in the 2000 redraw. She is a pretty good fit for her district to be honest.
I don’t remember the specifics now, but I remember that I never liked her. During the 1990s, I was active in open-space preservation and that sort of thing. I mostly remember her as an anti-tax right-winger posing as a Democrat. But perhaps I’m mistaken about that.
In any case, I’m very happy to be represented by Ms. Provost. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine Colleen Garry marching in a picket line outside a Davis Square restaurant that was screwing its workers. That’s how I first met Denise Provost.
She’s taken other votes that make me glad we have her rather than an actual Republican, however.
By weighing in on a non statewide governmental issue, offensive as it may be, Martha Coakley exemplifies a problem of too many candidates, R or D. They harp on incidents, and do not clarify their policy positions. Further there are no agendas actually based on what really works. The field of candidates must be held to the fire, and tell the voting public what they really think, and what they’re going to do about it. The food fights and political grandstanding is getting out of hand.