Quote:
Originally posted by AKA2D '91
If you watch 'Good Fences' on Showtime, you won't have to wonder.
|
I need to watch that when it comes back on rerun.
But I also got to thinking about this topic and Janet Cooke. For those who don't know, Cooke is the disgraced Washington Post reporter who had to return the 1982 Pulitzer Price after making up a fake story about an 8-year-old heroin addict.
Ms. Cooke had a lot of the same issues we're talking about on this board. With that in mind, I found a GQ story on her, read it and picked up on several things that dovetail with this topic:
Her father, who was one of the top executives at the Toledo, Ohio gas company at one time, told her that the other black kids in their AfAm neighborhood "are not smart enough or cultured enough to be your playmates."
WTF?
Also, once she worked at the Post, she wasn't even cordial or civil to her AfAm coworkers. And other people noticed this -- in fact, her editor mentioned it in her job performance evaluation and said that Ms. Cooke should at least say hello to three black male reporters who had access to Ben Bradlee, who was the editor-in-chief at that time.
The editor also suggested to Ms. Cooke that "perhaps you might want to make some black friends within the newsroom. Maybe that would ease the pains you have in your stomach."
Well, suffice it to say, Ms. Cooke didn't learn.