Correspondence
Correspondence MOYERS ON MOYERS STEPHEN F. HAYES opens his attack on me ("PBS's Televangelist," Feb. 25) by claiming that in PBS specials following September 11 I interviewed, among others,...
...You get the drift...
...Furthermore, as I told him, I follow the same proprietary rules as every other independent production company in the field—from Ken Burns and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions to productions of Firing Line and McLaughlin and Company...
...He has an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that is considered one of the most important pieces to come out of the intifada regarding the Palestinian political landscape...
...Ensler's appearance was a pretaped monologue (what else...
...BILL MOYERS New York, NY STEPHEN F. HAYES RESPONDS: Bill Moyers writes that my article on him features "paragraph after paragraph" of "willful misrepresentation, deceitful juxtaposition, and outright error...
...Instead, he sought to draw a distinction between what he says on the air and the politically partisan red meat he serves up on the lecture circuit...
...Moyers claims that I "didn't" and "couldn't" substantiate this...
...But Khalil Shikaki himself, whose background and reputation Jo-Ann Mort accurately describes, is not...
...DEMS SHOULD JUDGE NOT TERRY EASTLAND is correct...
...I regret having failed to make that clear...
...I have been unable to confirm that rumor, but because of the credibility of the source—an anonymous "Republican adviser"—I have decided to publish it...
...So much for what I "didn't" and "couldn't" substantiate...
...from Columbia University, teaches at Bir Zeit, and heads the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research...
...It is unfortunate that the Democrats have decided to return to their ways of opposing good Christian men on false charges...
...Not necessarily...
...JO-ANN MORT National Secretary, Americans for Peace Now Brooklyn, NY DAVID TELL RESPONDS: In the early 1990s, Khalil Shikaki shared Tampa, Florida, office space with the man who would soon succeed his brother as head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad...
...He didn't because he couldn't...
...But it's the standard (no pun intended) Hayes maintains for the remainder of his game...
...The next time David Tell wants to write about Khalil Shikaki, he can easily find his academic bona fides on the web at www.tru-man.huji.ac.il...
...Hayes seems to think he was being spun when he called my office seeking an interview and was told my doctor had advised me not to talk "on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays...
...Leaving aside the fact that the source was speaking sarcastically—a type of rhetoric that Bill Moyers otherwise shows great facility with—I provided several examples of such comparisons in my brief chat with him...
...But he says nothing about all the interviews I have conducted over the years with such widely admired conservatives as Ronald Reagan (for a full hour on PBS, from his ranch—the first such interview he permitted there), George H.W Bush (also a full PBS hour), Sandra Day O'Connor (another hour), Edwin Meese, Robert Bork, Leon Kass, Thomas Wolfe, Mary Ann Glendon, John Lukacs, etc...
...He should be confirmed...
...My use of the word "dialogue," echoing PBS's spiel, may have been imprecise...
...11 programming "is that he keeps comparing conservative Republicans to the Taliban...
...If so, I'm certainly willing to stipulate that Bill Moyers doesn't personally interview or meet all the people who appear on his shows...
...PBS called the show a "dialogue from Washington, New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco . . . co-anchored by Moyers (in New York) and Ms...
...Two errors on the opening pitch: Not a promising start...
...Bill Buckley used to make speeches all the time to Republicans and conservative audiences, even while he was conducting the longest-running show in PBS history...
...Yaacov Shamir, in conjunction with the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at Israel's Hebrew University...
...Moyers is unhappy that someone carped to me: "The only qualification for Moyers" to be selected to anchor PBS's post-Sept...
...Check the transcripts yourself: I used that description once in a broadcast to describe Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell when they piously agreed with bin Laden that "what happened on 9/11 was God's judgment on a decadent America...
...My piece was about Al-Arian, whose association with and support for international terrorism are now the subject of a major "academic freedom" dispute...
...I was tempted to take out an advertisement to reprint it here to demonstrate just how grossly Hayes distorts my meaning, but I hate to think I'd be subsidizing Rupert Murdoch...
...I asked Hayes to provide chapter-and-verse for his source's allegation...
...And of course, the speech at the LBJ library that he references is one long exercise in drawing parallels between terrorists and conservatives...
...In fact, when I asked him about the LBJ speech, he said "That's fair game, you've got it on the record there...
...CAIN AND ABEL DAVID TELL'S editorial on Judy Genshaft was a case of either bad reporting, bad editing, or racial profiling ("Judy Genshaft's Ordeal," Feb...
...attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Vagina Monologues playwright Eve Ensler...
...Hayes had a job to do, and he did it...
...To have included such information, of course, would have spoiled Hayes's polemic...
...Hayes makes a big to-do out of the fact that I wouldn't disclose to him what my income is, but as a journalist I am no more obligated to publish my earnings than is Weekly Standard editor William Kristol—less so, in fact, since I took no money from Enron...
...T. KENNETH GRIFFIS JR...
...Periodically for twenty years now the right-wing complex in Washington has come after me in order to get at PBS (always—surprise, surprise!—just before the appropriations process in Congress...
...Also in that office at the same time were a principal founder of the organization and a third man, University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian...
...What raised the ideological ire this time is the recent Middleton Lecture at the LBJ Library, where I talked once again about how the nexus of corporate power, market fundamentalism, and money in politics is transforming democracy, undermining capitalism, and polarizing America...
...So it goes: Paragraph after paragraph, replete with willful misrepresentation, deceitful juxtaposition, and outright error, with a little hypocrisy thrown in for flavor...
...During the Clinton years, the Democrats decried John Ashcroft's opposition to a Missouri judge that he had strong concerns about...
...Both are "true believers" who "threaten our democracy," he says...
...His assignment was not to get it right but to get it Right...
...Judge Charles Pickering is being borked ("Borking Judge Pickering," Feb...
...Contrary to the impression Moyers's letter left, Dershowitz and Ensler did appear on the show...
...But did you find those things he said in his speeches in his show...
...When I interviewed him, Moyers didn't deny, as he does now, that I was able to substantiate my source's gibe...
...Let's deal with the more important complaint first...
...Here's what he said in a speech last March 22: "When [producer] Sherry [Jones] and I reported the truth behind the news of the Iran-contra scandal for a Frontline documentary called 'High Crimes and Misdemeanors,' the right-wing Taliban in town went running to the ayatollahs in Congress, who decried the fact that public television was committing—horrors—journalism...
...But that was a real case of severe laryngitis and the doctor had indeed said that I shouldn't talk if I wanted to broadcast later in the week, a point I would have shared with Hayes if he had asked...
...He also conducts an ongoing polling project with Dr...
...Judge Pickering's confirmation process only proves that the Democrats will change their position depending upon what position best suits them at the moment...
...Pickering represents what is good about Mississippi and how far our state has come in the last thirty years...
...25) by claiming that in PBS specials following September 11 I interviewed, among others, "Cornel West, O.J...
...Then he compared himself to conservative eminence and longtime Firing Line host William F. Buckley...
...For example, by garbling the record, he tries to score points on comments I once made about interviewing right-wingers who want to "hit first and ask questions later...
...Ifill (in Washington...
...While I don't always agree with his decisions—especially the ones against my clients—I respect Judge Pickering and his performance as a member of the judiciary...
...The laryngitis mysteriously struck, by the way, soon after a rumor circulated that a voodoo doll bearing my likeness had been delivered to the office of Dick Armey from the Heritage Foundation, where Hayes served his apprenticeship in polemics...
...He comes up with just two examples...
...So I will just recommend that your more fair-minded readers check it out for themselves at www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/ press.hom/lecturetext/moyerstext.asp...
...I was shocked to read that one of the reasons Tell is attacking Al-Arian is for his links to Khalil Shikaki, whom Tell smears by association, since the only biographical identification he gives for Shikaki is that Shikaki's brother was a leader of Islamic Jihad...
...I wrote that a PBS special Moyers co-hosted with Gwen Ifill on September 20 featured "two hours of live dialogue between Moyers and, among others, author and rapper extraordinaire Cornel West, O.J...
...As for the other allegation of error, Moyers says that he has "never met or interviewed Alan Dershowitz or Eve Ensler...
...Pickering is indeed guilty of being a hard working Christian who exemplifies Christian values in his daily life...
...He gets it right only once...
...I have never met or interviewed Alan Dershowitz or Eve Ensler...
...Had he done some very simple reporting, Tell would have easily discovered that Khalil Shikaki's politics bear no resemblance to his brother's...
...I will only vouch for one person about whom he writes—since I know little about Judy Genshaft, the president of the University of South Florida, or the professor, Sami Al-Arian, who is the editorial's subject...
...The identity of Khalil Shikaki's brother is relevant to that dispute...
...Ridgeland, MS...
...attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Vagina Monologues playwright Eve Ensler...
...And he has literally put his life on the line by openly working with and supporting academics at the Hebrew University, along with Israeli and American Jews who are working toward coexistence and peace (unless it is that Tell opposes the Israeli peace camp and, therefore, Shikaki...
...Shikaki, one of the most respected political scientists in the Palestinian world, has a Ph.D...
...Dershowitz, interviewed by Emily Rooney, appeared live from WGBH studios in Boston...
...Their position then was that judicial confirmation should not be about partisan politics...
...Indeed, Moyers was a pioneer in deploying the conservatives-as-Taliban trope...
...Another example: Hayes bravely quotes an anonymous "Republican adviser" as saying that "the only qualification for Moyers [in hosting the new PBS series NOW with Bill Moyers] is that he keeps comparing conservative Republicans to the Taliban...
...It's not a pretty sight—Reed Irvine wielding a bludgeon or David Horowitz an axe—but as Hayes so patently demonstrates, since when do Tony Soprano's boys concern themselves with aesthetics in dispatching their quarry...
Vol. 7 • March 2002 • No. 24
