
Les Payne
July 4, 2009
As Venus
and Serena Williams made the
We then switched to the unfolding last act of Michael Jackson, the
greatest show on earth. As a picture is worth a 1,000, the
spoken word must also be allowed to stand for itself.
So, let's go to the audio tape:

Les Payne
June 27, 2009
The eulogizing of Michael Jackson occasionally stoops to compare this soaring genius to Elvis Presley of the one-trick, and even Madonna of the clay-feet.
This is truly freakish.
I lived through the Elvis era and endure, as we still must,
the con of the Material Girl. Neither of these magpies had a creative pinion in
their wings. What flight they enjoyed was due mainly to mimicry, tribal lust,
and press-agentry. The base talent of Madonna, alas, can be pulled through the
eye of a needle; while that of the “king,” as compared to
All artists go through an imitative stage; the trick is to strike out boldly for one’s own territory. The creative impact an artist exerts upon his generation is measured not by hoopla but rather by the distance his work outpaces that of those who came before him.
Michael Jackson took pop music to a new frontier.
The claim he staked--with imagination, hard work and sheer will--ranged beyond rote method as his art challenged the limits and toyed even with science itself. Whether moon-walking
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Les Payne
June 24, 2009
John McCain is still crazy after all those votes; and angry too. After losing the ‘08 election, the senator thrives at critiquing the every move of the President who vanquished him.
Worse still, the media have also enabled former
vice-president Dick Chaney to assess his White House successor, a tact
equivalent to allowing a man to grade the performance of his ex-wife’s new
husband. As the scowl of Cheney drives away viewers the networks turn more and
more to the
McCain-Palin, lest we forget, carried the white vote, 55-43 percent nationally. Thus, they remain something of this group’s preferred choice for the White House, as the media pretend to be undecided.
When President Obama said he was “appalled and outraged” Tuesday at the deaths and government crackdown in the streets of Teheran; McCain said he should have spoken even “more strongly.” By now, this preferred candidate presumably would have taken to the barricades personally and, perhaps, declared himself and all Americans as “Iranians.”
McCain, after all, is the hot-tempered maverick who—without checking with us—
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Les Payne
June 25, 2009
Speaking of nutty politicians, consider the 37th President
of the
The secret, White House recorder he rigged to snare enemies and loose quotes for his version of history continues to slash at his presidency like some celluloid Freddie Kruger that just won’t keep to the crypt.
Another passel of secret tapes and telephone recordings has been released covering the year 1973. In addition to executing the “Saturday Night Massacre,” Nixon found time to noodle over the horrors of miscegenation.
As if firing the special prosecutor investigating White
House involvement in the Watergate scandal was not enough, Nixon made it a
massacre by forcing the resignations of the
Lest younger generations consider “massacre” an exaggeration, be assured, it was a remember-where-you-were moment for baby-boomers worried about...
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“Negro Soldiers In Action.”
This 1863, Harper’s Weekly’ illustration by Thomas Nast
shows a full infantry charge of the First
during the
Civil War. In the
Les Payne
June 19, 2009
The thorny issue of a
“To be honest with you,” he told The Trotter Group of black
columnists, “I’ll have to think about that. My question is who is apologizing?
If I’m the [
Such an apology by a black president, Obama implied, would be tantamount to a wronged people simply apologizing to themselves. This curiosity was enacted in Feb. ‘07, when both chambers of the Virginia State Assembly approved an apology for slavery—a resolution generated by legislators who were themselves descendants of slaves.
The U.S. House avoided this conflict of responsibility
somewhat last July. It passed by voice vote a resolution apologizing for
slavery that was spearheaded by Rep. Steve Cohen (D. Tenn.), described in the
Washington Post as “a white Jew who represents a majority-black district in
In a move coinciding with Juneteenth this week,
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Les Payne
June 15, 2009
Could NYPD behavior in the shooting of Officer Omar Edwards add up to the recklessness of a manslaughter case, or perhaps even second-degree murder?
After a white cop gunned down Edwards—in his home
precinct—he was left bleeding unattended on
Even if the cop who shot Edwards, one Andrew Dunton, misidentified him, the critically wounded, housing patrol officer should have been recognized immediately on the ground by fellow officers. Edwards had signed out of the nearby 25th Precinct only minutes earlier.
How many of us have identified a colleague in street darkness and rendered aid to one struck down in night traffic? Or even a perfect stranger?
The cops caught on video were not so moved by human kindness. They idled and chased away witnesses as life ebbed from the body of the young, African-American man they had riddled with 9mm bullets. Whether thief or cop, the NYPD should have moved to preserve life.
They would have shown more concern for a downed Doberman, to say nothing of a wounded white cop.
This failure to assist Edwards constitutes endangerment after the fact;
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June 10, 2009
“A “coup” has been staged in the capital city of a state government masquerading as a democracy. Yes, that’s as in “coup d’etat.”
The will of the voters of
The revolt may well hold dangers for the governance of the
nation, as Republicans in
By last call, two Democrats, Pedro Espada Jr. and Hiram Monserrate, had been “talked into” switching their party. The tab was reportedly paid by billionaire Tom Golisano who handed the GOP a 32-vote majority and a new speaker, Espada, in fact, who would be second in line to the governor.
The two Democrats, by all accounts, are considered slimy
even by the salamander standards of
Party-switching Sen. Monserrate is under indictment for slashing a 20-stitch gash in his girlfriend’s face and blackening her eye. His comrade, Espada,
<< MORE >>Les Payne
June 2, 2009
A key target of my last posting took strong exception to my analysis of how the Omar Edwards' tragedy might start the cleansing of the bad-blood between the NYPD and the black community in this “post racial” Obama era.
Along the way, Marquez Claxton, a cop himself, certified the very remedies objected to, and intensified the urgency of moving on them while the window is yet open.
With all the respect he afforded me, I am moved to rebut the defense of the “100 Black Men in Law Enforcement Who Care” offered up by Claxton, a co-founder of the group.
In wake of the killing of Officer Edwards by a white cop, my modest proposals to the group asked simply that as NYPD insiders they should: sensitize white cops to behave with racial fairness; and that they increase the token presence of black officers on the force to a proportion of, say, 20 percent.
Officer Claxton flatly rejected my suggestions as he had
when we publicly debated these matters at
The 20-percent African-American force is not a quota but a guesstimate in a city occasionally rattled by race-tinged police terror.
In a
Currently, the token black presence has every man scrambling for himself. Naked ambition blinds such individuals to the need to
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Police respond to scene in
in pursuit of carjack thief. (Keivom/News)
Les Payne
May 31, 2009
“The greatest fear I had as a police officer on duty was
being shot by a white cop,” said a NYPD veteran over lunch in
The 25 year old officer was chasing a thief caught rifling through his car when a plain-clothes sergeant and his partner arrived. “Even a black cop running with a gun,” said the veteran officer, “is all some of these hot-heads need to start shooting.” Such a sight moved Andrew Dunton to squat behind the door of his unmarked anti-crime car and squeeze off 6 shots.
The rookie officer likely never realized that his stalkers were cops. A fatal bullet struck Edwards in the back, two others in the left side and arm. He died in his Police Academy T-shirt, his shield and identification in his pocket.
The white cop-shoots-fellow-black officer scenario is all
too common. It recalls: the ’94 case of Desmond Robinson, shot in the back 4
times by Peter Del-Debbio; the ’98 incident of Sgt. Dexter Brown wounded in the
back by Louis Lopez, a white Hispanic; and the ’06 incident, in which Alfredo
Toro was shot dead in the
It is impossible to eliminate race/ethnicity as the prime factor
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Les Payne
May 22, 2009
Quarterback Michael Vick walked out of prison this week as
the loneliest superstar on the planet. After 19 months with the hyenas of
“Should Vick be allowed to Play Again?” screamed one tabloid. “Ban Vick for Life,” said another. Others put it to a vote. If the thousands of my e-mail fans had their way the defrocked quarterback would twist forever in the wind like a gridiron Prometheus beyond the reach of grace and pardon.
The tragedy of Michael Vick, a peculiarly American tragedy, combines elements of race, privileged power and money, all played against a backdrop of fanaticism—denial--and injustice.
The case centered on Vick bankrolling relatives in a
dog-fighting operation across
On Aug 27, 2007, the Atlanta Falcons’ player pled guilty to dog-fighting “conspiracy” before a hanging U.S. District judge, Henry Hudson. Judicial treatment of Vick as first offender, to say nothing of his snitching cousins and negligent attorneys, constitute a singular mockery of justice.
Even his well paid lawyer, one Billy Martin, should realize the futility of a
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Danny Schechter of NewsDissector.org
won the Aronson Blog Award for his muckraking reports on economic, political
and social issues.
Ed Stein won the Aronson Award for Cartooning with a Conscience for
his graphic commentary on the economy, torture and other critical issues of
2008.
The Aronson Awards for Social Justice Journalism (filmmedia.hunter.cuny.edu/aronson) have been presented since 1990 to journalists who measure
business, government and social affairs against clear ideals of the common good. The awards are named in honor of James Aronson, the
distinguished
“In their 19 years of existence,” said Hunter
College President Jennifer J. Raab, “the James Aronson Awards for
Social Justice Journalism have consistently recognized and promoted journalism
that keeps a well-trained and principled eye on the common good. That is a
mission that Hunter, as a public institution with a diverse student body, tried
to pursue throughout its research and teaching.”
“Journalism that conveys a clear idea of forces and decisions that lead to
injustice has never been more needed than it is today," said Peter Parisi,
coordinator of the award and an associate professor in Hunter’s Department of Film
and Media Studies. “Yet too often journalists duck social
justice issues, fearing their commitment will be called partisan
or will draw political ‘flak’. This award is designed to embolden them to
pursue their highest ideals.”
Payne was cited for his career as an editor, manager and columnist
for Newsday. “Over the years, Payne has been variously recognized as
the most influential African-American editor and columnist in the

Les Payne
May 12, 2009
The flashing in my rear view mirror was unmistakable. The
NYPD indeed meant me to pull over. Both cops got out, neither wore his service
cap.
It was Saturday, 9:18 pm. I’d taken the last exit before the
Midtown Tunnel. Stiffing Mayor Bloomberg for the $5 toll is a value-added
pleasure of our trips to
“Could I see your license and registration,” said the short cop, showing no sign of “Courtesy, Professionalism, [or] Respect.”
“May I ask why you stopped me? I asked.
Rattled, if not rankled, the cop paused just long enough for my BS detector to kick in. Every skilled reporter conditions the mind to filter answers for mendacity. This BS detector is not fool-proof, of course,
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to the Democratic Party before he
runs for re-election in 2010, at the White House in
Les Payne
April 29, 2009
On the morning of the 100th day, Barack Obama went public
with the senior senator from
Instead, some 200,000 GOP state voters have switched to the
Democrats, and Sen. Arlen Specter, a highly respected, 5-term lawmaker,
dramatically joined them Tuesday in seeking another term. President Obama
welcomed Specter not so much as a GOP defector but as a trophy of his envisioned
omni-America where there are “not red states, or blue states, but the
The 79-year old moderate said that his former party has moved too far to the right in valuing ideological purity over winning elections: “there should be an uprising.” Specter said he would not let “my 29-year record…be decided by that jury.”
The party-switch shocker is a rebuke to the prediction of Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) on the eve of the ’08 Democratic primary. The governor warned that white voters would
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Les Payne
April 22, 2009
A college professor, with my connivance, submitted my work for a Pulitzer Prize this year. My former newspaper allegedly had the will but couldn’t spring for the $50 entry fee; too little cash, so many executive bonuses.
I didn’t win the Big Prize, of course. Nor did my 10 columns place or show.
The commentary judges did themselves proud for the first time in a great while by selecting Eugene Robinson. The savvy Washington Post columnist had a great year clocking the long march in tall grass that Barack Obama made against heavy odds en route to shucking his senator’s cloak for the mantle of the 44th U.S. President.
My columns on the ’08 campaign will be rescued from their purgatory and fluttered here in this space, forthwith. But first, let me share the letter in which my professor friend over-estimated me and—annoyed the Pulitzer judges.
To the judges:
For any newspaper
columnist, 2008 was a gift. But no opinion writer ripped the wrapping off
this improbable present with as much gusto and grit as Les Payne of Newsday.
Each week, in a spare
600 or 700 words, Payne used his independent eye and X-Acto-knife way with the English
language to chronicle the presidential campaign of “the possibility that is
Barack Obama.”
With commentary
always rooted in reporting that dug deep,

Les Payne
4/5/09
Rashad couldn’t risk watching the UConn games without some
logo wear. An
The Big Dance is serious two-step action this year for the
This hadn’t happened since the men and women won NCAA championships in ’04.
Invoking lightning to strike twice again, Rashad pulled his rally cap tight to his ears. It all looked silly to his mother indoors. Only at halftime, with UConn down 2 points, did I risk telephoning my intense nephew.
“What am I to make of our teams’ chances?” I inquired of my family expert on UConn basketball. Not even Rashad’s rally cap could resuscitate the men's team,
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Les Payne
March 20, 2009
Updated - March 23, 2009
As with the auto industry,
The best baseball is no longer played in the
By losing to Japan Wednesday,
As for the inventor of baseball, the
This globalization of baseball is all good. It's better for
nations to pick their opponents off first-base than to bean them with roadside
bombs. But, as

Les Payne
March 9, 2009
The reluctant role model was made an example for kids anyway -- a bad one.
That would be Charles Barkley, the star
Alternately sheepish and defiant, the jock paced about in a sumo-sized, blue and red-trimmed sweat-suit, chatting with the media that have long grooved on his inane musings. Barkley accommodated by spinning the dial about Bernard Madoff, the battering Chris Brown dealt Rihanna, then over to his “good friend” President Obama. When reporters asked why wasn’t he wearing the zebra-striped uniforms as other inmates, the sports commentator for TNT was not amused.
“I know when [someone is] famous,” he shot back,
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The front view of
fledged interracial policy with six African
American Trustees and twenty
African Americans on staff. (Walter Sanders, LIFE
Magazine 1944)
Les Payne
March 03, 2009
With the devil scrolling down his dossier, Ed Koch admits to
a single regret. It is a doozy committed at the height of his power as mayor of
The cagey 84-year old politician may outlive all of us, but, according to the New York Times, he has selected a burial plot, purchased a headstone and even had the marble engraved; it awaits only his departure date. “I’m not morbid,” he told the paper after recounting his “wonderful” life; pausing even to forgive those he felt had trespassed against him, such as former Gov. Mario Cuomo.
One deed, however, lay heavy on the mayor’s conscience.
During his first term, Koch faced a protesting Harlem
concerned about losing
Critics complained about care at Sydenham. And--despite having campaigned on the promise to keep it open--Koch saw a chance to save some money. Besides, he never cared much for back-talk from the black community; he took it personally.
A key leader of the heated rallies was Rev. Timothy P.
Mitchell, of
Instead, Mayor Koch boldly shuttered the dwindling, once-699-bed hospital in early 1980, sending its indigent patients home and driving the doctors, eight interns and 32 nurses out onto the street.
As a freshman columnist, I could barely find words for the
merciless act. Health options in

Les Payne
February 22, 2009
Upon discovering that my description of the lips of
President George W. Bush as “simian” meant ape-like, a former
“What if a Newsday columnist had referred to the lips of the Revs. Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson in that way,” Ed Koch wrote. “There would have been a flood of complaints, pickets…cancellations of subscriptions. Rightly so.”
Faced with another example of Mayor Koch’s misplaced concern, I wrote a second column four years ago explaining racial stereotypes to him and others. A “simian” reference to Jackson and Sharpton, I agreed, may well constitute a provocation. However, this same word applied to a white, Anglo Saxon male such as Bush is not a racial stereotype, but a simple adjective. It would be as if the ears of President Obama, say, were described as “owlish,” or even “elephantine.”
With tempers raging over the recent New York Post cartoon, my ’05 primer on such offenses might shed some light.
Reasonable observers have concluded that the chimpanzee described as the “someone” who wrote the stimulus package targets President Barack Obama, at the exclusion of all others. Every African American I know was sickened by the image and none, as Post editors suggest, waited for a signal from Rev. Al Sharpton.
It is the habit of this media-savvy, protest impresario to pick up the rage of his community and take it to the streets. Sharpton has the unfortunate history of playing off those he defends against those he attacks—and sometimes for a fee. As a result, the big-voiced preacher tends to discredit causes for which he marches, even as he highlights genuine abuses that might otherwise get downplayed.
“Shame on you for dodging the real issue,” said singer John Legend in a letter to the editor describing the Post cartoon as “blatantly racist and offensive…This is not about Rev. Sharpton.”
What then is the root of the offending Post cartoon?
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Les Payne
February 14, 2009
I come forth humbly now, as Alex Rodriguez did last week, to declare that where once I was blind--I now see the light.
In my case, it was about sports reporting. Years ago, as an aggressive newspaper editor, I diverted several young sportswriters into political reporting on the advice that they should put away childish things.
As with poetry, I considered sports reporting a sign of arrested development. The field was more clouded back then. Reporters rooted rather openly for the home teams they covered, objectively, of course. They routinely accepted gifts as not so subtle incentives to slant stories. They got free tickets; drank the team owners’ brandy, top-shelf stuff, and smoked his expensive cigars.
With vested interest in the outcome, sportswriters tended not to report the facts so much as to waylay them. Accordingly, when things didn’t go their way, which is to say, they lost the side bets, fist fights in the press box were not unknown as spats on the road had to be taken to a higher court.
The looms of the hometown papers spun yarns of splendiferous colors about local Spartans giving their all on the playing fields. But here, I risk spinning a yarn of my own.
The simple fact is that I most likely opposed young talent entering sports reporting because it was not the field I had chosen to make my stand. Over-zealousness, despite my love of sports, drove me to dismiss coverage of these diversions as unworthy of the journalist’s eye.
I was wrong.
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Les Payne
February 10, 2009
The community organizer returned to the hard-pressed people
of
As the winner in
“What I won't do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place,” he told the nation, “because those theories have been tested, and they have failed. And that's what part of the election in November was all about.”
Less theoretical later on, and with harder eyes, the president scolded Republicans attacking his fiscal responsibility. “It's a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they've presided over a doubling of the national debt. I'm not sure they have a lot of credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility.”
Extending the olive branch is not working with GOP members of Congress so the President hinted gently but unmistakably at the talons he keeps largely out of sight.
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President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office
from Chief Justice John Roberts to become the 44th
President of the
Les Payne
January 25, 2009
The
Maneuvering around a water main break, our huddled masses without tickets inched determinedly along the side streets of the Capital. At 10:30 a.m., we dog-legged up a hill past a tight column of blue, port-a-potty toilets and onto the western end of the National Mall, nearly two miles from the spot where the President-elect would swear his oath on the Abraham Lincoln Bible.
Decades earlier, I had tarried on these exact grounds
between the
The ’63 March got into the books on the strength of the “I Have a Dream” speech by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. The following year, in a BBC interview, the civil rights leader predicted that the nation would elect a Negro president by 1988. One of his lieutenants took a stab at the long odds,
<< MORE >>as broadcast on WBAI 99.5FM in N.Y.C.

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By Peter Eisner
January 6, 2009
With scant warning and no praise, the management of Newsday last week cast off the column by Les Payne from its opinion pages after a twenty-eight-year run. Undoubtedly, the column's disappearance is mixed in with a collapse of the news business in general and the budget cuts faced by Newsday and most of its peers. Yet I am driven to provide some context in this special case about a man whose vision guided Newsday's journalistic and moral compass. Les Payne deserves a far better sendoff.
Payne stepped back from his day-to-day duties at Newsday in
2006 after more than three decades, having served as associate editor, local
and national reporter and foreign correspondent. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for
detailing the heroin trail from
He was the conscience and unacknowledged leader of the Newsday that was, and some of us protested loudly when a higher-up passed over Les and chose someone else as managing editor a number of years back; in terms of leadership, journalist skills, mentoring, excellence and savvy, he should have been the only choice.
A founder and former president of the National Association
of Black Journalists, Payne was once described as the best and most influential
African-American editor and columnist in the
Murray Kempton once described Payne to Jack Newfield, of the Village Voice, this way:
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