November 13, 2007
Tim Page Apologizes for Barry Insults
Howard Kurtz's WaPo column today concerns the kerfuffle over Tim Page's angry email to Ward 8 Council Member Marion Barry's office that we told you about yesterday. As you'll recall, Page, who writes about classical music for the Post, received an unsolicited press release from Barry's office about the city's deal with Specialty Hospitals of America to purchase the Greater Southeast Community Hospital. Page then fired off an angry email in which he called the former mayor "worthless," a "crack addict," and that Barry wouldn't interest him even if he suffered an "overdose." The Post then placed Page on leave, though he had already been planning to take a sabbatical beginning Jan. 1.
"It's the stupidest thing I've done in 30 years in journalism," music critic Tim Page said yesterday. "I hope people won't judge me on this one explosion." ...
Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. called Page's e-mail "a terrible mistake" and said he has taken "appropriate internal action," but neither he nor Page would disclose it.
We also learn from Kurtz that Page's anger may have been fueled by having been cursed by a Barry staffer during an earlier phone request to be taken off the e-mail list -- though Barry's aide, Andre Johnson, said he had no record or memory of such a conversation.
Page has written a letter of apology to Johnson, in which he said that he was "deeply ashamed for what I did and I know how hurtful my words could be." Barry had called for Page's dismissal from the paper yesterday, but Kurtz says that the council member had a conversation with Downie in which Barry accepted an apology.
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Barry had called for Page's dismissal from the paper yesterday
As he well should! It's like the man was smoking crack on the job or something.
On last night's evening news, Barry said that Tim Page's email was "almost a hate crime."
(see: http://www.news8.net/news/stories/1107/471994.html)
I cannot believe how much attention our beloved former mayor is getting by acting like a baby and now playing the tired old race card. What a boob....
Ward 8, I hope you are proud of your delegate to the City Council.
How come nobody ever has the balls to stand up to the likes of Barry and his halfwit staff? If I were Tim Page, the demands for an apology would have been met with a firm "kiss my fu*king ass"!
I'm all for the Post taking whatever internal action it sees fit to reprimand this stupid (but not particularly harmful) mistake.
But it is nauseating to listen to Barry get indignant about something like this. I need not list all the ways that Barry screwed this town and fostered the corrupt culture that still plagues our government. Neither Page nor the Post should feel any need to prostrate themselves before Barry. It's Barry and all his cronies that should be permantly prostrated before the generations of DC schoolchildren whose futures were sold out for fancy SUVs and Maryland McMansions.
After reading about Mike Licht's run-ins with Mr. Johnson I have no doubt that Johnson treated Page unprofessionally and in a manner consistent with the boxing promoter Johnson aspires to be, rather than the press "consultant" he is paid (with our money) to be. It sickens me that a pulitzer prize winning author was forced to apologize to a tool like that, no matter how tacky the email was.
Barry: "lowlife activity"... hmm... yeah, that's a real shame.
Since when is the truth an insult?
It is sad we have come to the point when a person can no longer have an opinion. Unless this guy wrote a public article declaring the Washington Post's specific opinion on Barry, what he decides to call that inept, arrogant, drug-addicted embarrassment on his own is his own business. Far from being entitled to an apology, Barry should be continuing to apologize to all DC residents for the shame he brought our city and giving thanks that there are enough people out there ignorant enough to continue to vote for him.
Reid: Perhaps this is a distinction without a difference, but Mr. Page's letter to Mr. Barry's office states that he regrets sending the email. We can be sure he does. Is that an apology?
I have no doubt Mr. Page apologized to Leonard Downie Jr., and Mr. Downie apologized to Mr. Barry.
Perhaps now Mr. Andre Johnson will apologize to the Federal Trade Commission for violating the CAN-SPAM Act.
i'm judging mr. page on this one explosion (since i've never read anything he's written before) and i'm loving it!
The front page of today's Post reminded us that jail time for crack is coming more in line with time for cocaine...a good policy. Of course, this means that there will be less time between Barry's council terms from now on. Sigh.
Color me unawares that DC had added "crackheads" to its ever-growing list of civil-rights protectees. If it "almost qualifies as a hate crime" to call a crackhead a crackhead, I guess I'd better turn myself in.
Horrors! And naturally, the high WaPo mucky-mucks are clutching their pearls after a culture critic dares to tell off the publicist for a crack addict.
Yes, addict as in the present tense. Like alcoholism, once an addict, always an addict.
Marion Barry is an embarrassment to the nation’s capitol. I’d call him a craven opportunist, but that would be an insult to the overwhelming majority of craven opportunists in this world.
And as for Tim Page? There is only one appropriate punishment: fire Fred Hiatt and put Tim in the thankless job of WaPo editor. It would do the paper a world of good.
Meanwhile, I’m going to drop the Pulitzer committee a line strongly endorsing the addition of an award category for snarkiest journalist e-mail.
Hwonder:
Actually, you aren't far off.
Our own Councilmember Barry recently proposed adding convicted felons to the list of 'protected classes' that you can't discriminate against in hiring or housing.
Yes, that's right. Under his idiotic proposal you would be forced to allow, say, a three time convicted crackhead rapist to move in next door to the hot young girls living in Apartment 3b.
And under privacy laws you'd probably get sued if you even warned the hotties in Apt 3b that a rapist had moved in next door.
Or, as an employer, you could not refuse to hire a convicted embezzler.
We're missing the larger point here.
Barry himself chose to broadcast this email. It was private until Barry and his campaign sent it out, expressing their outrage at the 'character assassination'.
Um, if it was private how was this 'character assassination'.
And of course Barry used it to shameless inflame racial passions, accusing Page of contributing to 'almost open season on blacks' or words to that effect.
So Barry takes a private email, publishes it, and then calls it a part of 'open season on blacks'.
Sad. And pathetic.
If anyone wants to express these thoughts to the Post itself, it's appropriate to write to the ombudsman:
Deborah Howell - ombudsman@washpost.com
I, for one, read Page regularly and would hate to see him pushed out of his job over this. And I'm pretty sure that a Pulitzer prize-winning critic is more valuable to the paper than the goodwill of a cracked-up ex-mayor.
@Hillman:
I think you've infringed on my civil rights by not telling me about the hot girls in apartment 3B. Notwithstanding my residency in Ward 6, you've just lost my vote for Ward 8 council.
Now that they've (re)named the convention center after our first mayor, Page should pull some strings with the literati and culture-heads to see if we can't get something named after Barry...like maybe the courtroom where he pled guilty for tax evasion and was busted for crack and marijuana.
Can someone please forward this link to Andre Johnson? Repeatedly?
Leave it to Marion "Crackhead" Barry and Andre "Has a Small" Johnson to help set race relations back a couple of decades.
I can't believe a dislike Barry even more than I did before this incident. Seriously, Tim Page should not feel bad about this. It was his right to say what he did and he did so in a personal exchange. If anything Barry violated Page's privacy and it is Barry who should apologize for this.
Barry should also apologize to me for being a big crackhead jerk who acts like a dick every chance he gets. Taxes=don't pay them; driving=do it while driving; screw DC=always.
Hwonder:
I think the city is forever a poorer place because none of us had the foresight to go buy all the furniture and such from the hotel room Mayor Barry was busted in. They renovated that whole hotel some time back and apparently nobody thought to save all the Mayor Barry crack room stuff.
Now that would have been an exhibit at the City Museum that I would have paid to see.