The phones were ringing off the hook with readers complaining about… the butterfly ballot. That was then, and this is now, when in a refreshing change, the post-election comments to this desk were actually about the newspaper’s election coverage.
Most comments concerned the “How the states voted” for the presidency chart in Wednesday’s state and national elections section. Editors eventually caught and fixed problems in that tabulation, which was updated throughout election night, but not before the edition that went to Sanford Greene. He called noting that his chart had named President Bush the winner of 12 electoral votes in Sen. Kerry’s state of Massachusetts, while also showing Sen. Kerry having 62 percent of the vote.
“You’re in a position to scold them, so I’m going to rely on you to do that,” said a Mr. Baker, who cited a raft of other glitches in the chart. Joe Abramson of West Palm Beach echoed the sentiment: “Your election coverage on Page 2AA was unacceptable,” he said via e-mail. “My wife got up and read your paper and was totally confused by the inaccuracies. I can certainly understand that she would have expected the totals printed by you would have some relationship to the numbers in the columns above them.”
That chart clearly was a significant slip despite all the election facts and figures the paper’s staff got right, because readers relied on it, too. Meanwhile, another reader, Chuck Norris, said that although “everything else was covered thoroughly,” he would have liked “more of the results of legislative races throughout the state.”
Said a lady who did not give her name: “I enjoy reading your paper and like everything about it, except I don’t appreciate reading about our president as ‘Mr. Bush.’ It’s just not proper, and it doesn’t teach kids to be respectful.” President Bush is referred to as such on first reference, however. Her call provided another chance to point out that The Post is one of the rare newspapers that uses courtesy titles in its Opinion section to create a more respectful tone. Though that doesn’t go as far as she would like, I explained, it’s farther than most.
Then there was this e-mail exchange with J. Vaughn regarding Thursday’s state and national elections section: “I don’t understand. Whose decision was it to put the losing team (the Kerrys) on the front page of this section and the winning team (President Bush and family) on the back? I think that it is disrespectful of The Palm Beach Post.”
My response was, “Dear J. Vaughn, President Bush is (pictured) on the front of the newspaper; on Page 10A in a striking photo with his daughter and VP Cheney; on the editorial page, 18A; twice in the election section, including huge on the back. The photo you cite of Kerry for whom almost as many in the nation voted is the sole picture of him I noticed in the paper. I think a supporter of his would have more basis to criticize the editors. All the best… cbh.”
To which Ms. Vaughn replied: “Thanks for responding. You’re right!” That left me with more hope of reconciliation in our 50-percent nation, or of at least the possibility that fewer readers will suspect that political partisans of whatever stripe are running the newsroom.
About that editorial cartoon that showed an elderly white couple sitting in a car pulled over to the curb. The driver is speaking to an African-American man leaning in the window: “Ethel, I said, there are no flu shots! How do we get through the winter? That’s why we’re here looking to score some blow!”
“As an avid reader of the Palm Beach Post, I was appalled,” Bruce Glover e-mailed from Tequesta about the Oct. 21 drawing by Post editorial cartoonist Don Wright. “I thought your paper would be beyond such blatant typecasting. To portray African-Americans as drug dealers only helps to perpetuate these beliefs to the general public. You can do better.” Said Palm Beach County Commissioner Addie Greene: “You talk about stereotypes, that was the ultimate. It really upset a lot of people, black and white.” That includes me. But would I have run it? Yes. It made me think perhaps more than I wanted to, which is part of the point of good satire.
Mr. Wright, however, said he considered the dissent “a classic denial of reality. Those who protest the truth, or advocate such censorship, are in danger of becoming caricatures themselves. To suggest that some African-Americans don’t sell drugs on street corners is to deny not just my work but the creative energies of many award-winning black authors, historians, filmmakers and comedians, including Spike Lee. And to so easily hint of racism skirts the edge of racism itself.
“In fact, I suggest that devoting this much energy to anaylyzing a single figure in a single drawing out of 261 such drawings that appear each year is to take one’s eyes off more important prizes. African-American liberties are being systematically eroded in voting rights, health care, economic opportunity and education. Surely, time spent protesting those losses is time better spent.”
