Today in tone-deaf newspaper columns

An 84-year-old, mouthy white guy gets pulled over for failing to signal, and now he totally understands what it's like to be a minority who worries about getting shot and killed by police:

Ol' Clark has run-in with the law

 

And he got suspended indefinitely because ... wait for it ... he wasn't truthful about his encounter with police. People were more mad about how he conducted himself with police and the fact he claimed police treated him unfairly than with his line that he now understoods the plight of the minority.

Tribune editor responds to Bill Clark column

 

Presuming the column was edited (no certainty in today's cut cut cut environment but let's assume).....why would he ever be suspended for a line that was left in?

People/readers can voice opinions about it, be angry about it, think its in poor taste, but in terms of the company if it got through the editing process I think it'd be wrong to punish the columnist.

I think its distasteful but from a company standpoint, if you don't cut it, it'd be weasel-y to punish a guy based on public backlash. Punishing him based on inaccuracies is deserved.

 

I've known Bill for years. Longtime MLB scout, member of the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame. He's a good man with a big heart. As Bill wrote later, he lost his cool and made a mistake.

And I think Jimmy has a good point. Doesn't Gatehouse own the Trib now?

 

The column reminds me of those days when you'd go to traffic school to get a ticket wiped off your insurance. The older white guys were the best, complaining about why cops were hassling them instead of going after the drug dealers and real criminals.

 

If he's been writing for them since the '50s, he probably has carte blanche.

Until the public backlash, that is.

 

Hmm. Carte blanche. Another term for white privilege?


(I know, MC, it's not. Just Saturday morning word play and musings by me.)

 

I didn't think he was suspended for the minority line. I think he was suspended for mischaracterizing how the police treated him and accusing the deputies of behavior a video proved they didn't exhibit. The minority line was in poor taste but the stuff about the sheriff's department is what got him in trouble.

 

Yeah, sure.

 

Read the comments on the original column, read the editor's rebuke and Google Bill Clark and you'll find there were a whole helluva lot more people pissed at what he said about the police than the minority line.

 

Sheriff's story and dash cam video:

Boone County Sheriff's Department - The law has a run-in with Ol' Clark

And here is his follow up column:

Clark's response: I made 'a lousy call'

I've got a couple of issues with this. First, I didn't care for the umpire blown call analogy.

Second, he's still defending himself, using the word "allegedly" and wasn't "in" the intersection. He was partially on the shoulder before the light. He was not, in city terms, "in the box" and not an obstacle to traffic coming from the left.

I think this follow up column isn't the right tone to help the fallout situation at all. Expect a long vacation, Bill.

 

This line doesn't help: "Overreact, yes; liar, I am not."