THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512060033
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: HE SAID, SHE SAID
SOURCE: KERRY DOUGHERTY & DAVE ADDIS
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
DAVE SAYS:
Every male in the free world and I have been massively sensitized through the 1990s to the horrors of misogyny, the need for cultural diversity, the importance of gender equality, and the absolute necessity of avoiding any statement, thought or body motion that might in any distant way be construed as harmful to any other human being, animal, plant or microbe.
I've even been instructed that dripping suntan lotion onto the beach might kill the dolphins, and that wiping crankcase oil on my garage rags and then laundering them probably will destroy the last four oysters in the Chesapeake Bay. Stupid me. I thought I was being careful.
I've stayed quiet and obeisant through it all. Partly because I want to be a good citizen and a good human being. And partly I don't need anybody picketing my house.
But if all things truly are equal, Kerry, you're going to have to answer one question for me:
How in the world can Ann Landers get away with calling Pope John Paul II a woman-hating Polack?
If there's one honest nerve ending in your body, Kerry, you'll admit that if a male newspaper columnist had tagged the most revered religious figure in the world with a gutter-level ethnic slur, by the next morning he'd be begging for a job swabbing down the johns in the press room.
Think of what might happen if George Will off-handedly called Ann Landers ``a wrinkled old . . . '' well, pick your own anti-Jewish slur. Are you going to tell me, Kerry, that he'd be let him off with ``40 lashes with a wet noodle''?
And that's how just about every newspaper - including ours - played Ann's slander, as if it was just a cute little blooper. An unfortunate use of slang, she called it, in a sort-of apology.
It was more than that. It was ugly and hypocritical. In that same magazine interview, she ripped John F. Kennedy for treating women badly and complained that his father, Joe Kennedy Sr., was anti-Semitic. Oh, my. Imagine that, being insensitive to a religion and an ethnic group.
So how does it happen, Kerry, that America's favorite advice columnist got off with barely a twitter? If I did something that insensitive, my fat would be in the frying pan. And you'd be there with a spatula, making sure I was evenly done on both sides.
KERRY SAYS:
Davey, Davey, Davey. You know as well as I why Ann Landers isn't joining the throngs of the unemployed this Christmas after she spat an ugly racist slur at the leader of the largest Christian denomination in the world.
It's not gender, Dave. It has something to do with money. Ann sells papers. You don't.
Regardless of how buffoonish and out-of-touch you and I might find that lacquer-headed scribe, the fact of the matter is, Ann Landers is the most popular thing in our paper.
Yes, Dave, even more popular than us.
There are millions of people who can't drink their morning coffee unless they've read what Ann has written - or recycled, as the case may be.
Indirectly, she helps pay our salaries.
When you get that big, when you have hordes of readers who will storm newspaper buildings across the country if your column is left out because we've gone to war or something, you've got a writer who doesn't have to worry about whom she offends.
Ann Landers may be insensitive, but she's also untouchable.
No newspaper concerned about revenue is going to cancel a column with the clout of Landers'.
Writers like you and I, on the other hand, have to be very careful. We can't afford to offend anyone - or we're history. We even have to tiptoe around when writing about Charles Manson. We need to watch what we say about O.J. We need to make nice to Princess Di, for heaven's sake.
And this has nothing to do with the fact that Ann Landers is a woman and you're not.
Ann Landers, for reasons that escape me but I'm certain have nothing to do with gender, is so popular her fans will forgive her anything.
The good thing is the old windbag is in her 70s - how much longer will she have the energy to keep offending people in print? by CNB