2007 Molly Ivins Award Acceptence Speech
| 2007 Molly Ivins Award Acceptence Speech by |
Delivered to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies on 9 May 2007[1].
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While most people in broadcast and mainstream print media, I think, suspended their disbelief for a period of time after 9/11 for the most patriotic and important of reasons, there was a danger of some sort facing the country. There was a government in power; we gave them the benefit of the doubt. It became very evident very shortly that this was not supposed to be a temporary arrangement but a permanent one.
And it is probably the only way out of the maze that we all found ourselves in; to follow the breadcrumbs left by alternate weeklies and monthlies; the blogs; the people who had some anger, and some doubt. And whereas they suspended their disbelief – to some degree in the same way we did – did not have to do so so publicly, I guess is the best way to phrase it.
I didn’t plan to do this work or become eligible for the first Molly Ivins Award, and it is overwhelming to me that I received it. It really was one of those circumstances – and I’ve used this analogy before, and I’ll use it again:
You’re at a firefighters convention, and the building next door catches fire. And everybody around you says, “You know, I would go in there through the third floor, and you bring seventeen trucks in from – well, no, you bring in fourteen trucks from over here, and go in through the fourth floor.” And you’re standing there, and you say, “Well, couldn’t you just go in and get people out of the building?”
And as they continue their technical discussion, you wind up saying, “Ah: I get it. I’m going into the building. I hope I’m good at it.” Fortunately, my grandfather was a firefighter, so the analogy is kind of apt. And I just went in to see what would happen, knowing that I might not get out; that there was enough power behind the people to whom we’re trying to speak truth to know that it’s very distinctly possible you might not get out of that building.
But I thought: you know, what the hell. To quote Archibald Cox: “If it worked, great. If it didn’t, at least I went down for a good reason.” So the only thing I can say that this is testimony to is the necessity for everybody at every level of the media to think. Now, this would seem to be a fairly evident, self-evident, concept: to sit there and think when you have a news story in front of you, but apparently it isn’t. I’ll use this as an example for you:
This latest story about the current “terror plot,” unquote, to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey. Posed as pizza delivery men. Who were going to shut off the power. And who decided to train, and take videos of themselves in the Poconos. And then had the video transferred to DVD. At Circuit City.
Anybody in the room see anything… less than terrorizing –
[laughter]
– and terrible than a plot with the individuals mentioned therein? Anybody else but me see that? And literally, that’s it. That’s the whole thread.
If it doesn’t add up, it’s incumbent on all of us to just say, “You know, the math just doesn’t work here.” I sit there with no doubt that there’s a threat. I have no doubt that there are terrorists. I have no doubt that many of the motivations in the people who are defending us against these things are absolutely sincere, and many of them are, at worst, misguided or overzealous or suffering from post-traumatic stress-disorder perhaps.
But still, when we look at it, we need to set aside any fear that we might have, any anxiety, and just look to see if there isn’t something that doesn’t add up.
So several times last year, these things came out in the form of the Special Comments, and I think it was prudent to show a short clip because I believe that one was nine minutes long –
[laughter]
– I have to go find out if I have a broken foot or not at about one o’clock, so I have to begin to wrap this up already. If we’d done a whole Special Comment, I don’t think either you or I would have been able to say anything here. But, as I said, it’s an extraordinary honor. Molly Ivins is a crossover icon, I would say would be the best description, in all forms of media. The sort of person who would be… another way I’d like to emulate her, and I think I have – I don’t recall her facts ever being attacked.
I recall her being attacked, which is something that I’ve gotten to experience in the last eight to ten months, in which I have been attacked in almost every imaginable way, personally. And I’m still waiting for somebody to come back with a rebuttal to the facts that I have tried to elucidate.
So I thank you greatly for the recognition, and greatly for your work. It may seem to some degree that you are hitting your head against the wall, sometimes, when it comes to the mainstream media. But as I’ve heard from so many of my colleagues: “Geez, I wish I could say what you said, or something like it.” And I say, “Well, then, you’ll get an opportunity at some point to say something like it. Go out and do it. Maybe one second out of your year. Or one paragraph out of what you write. But the opportunity will arise.”
So those of us who have had that sense of banging our heads against the wall, members of your organization included, remember that each time you do it, you knock another brick out of place, and make it easier for the next guy to get through.
So, thank you kindly. I will treasure this.
[applause]
