HISTORY ONCE LIVED HERE

Posted on November 20, 2024 by admin

Headline: A GOVERNOR’S PLYMOUTH TWP. HOME IS UP FOR SALE

Published with permission of the Detrout Fre Press

Byline:  BY JOEL THURTELL

Pub-Date: 7/23/2006

Memo:  PLYMOUTH, CANTON, NORTHVILLE

Correction: 

Text: There’s not much action these days in the shady little sub known as Plymouth Colony.

It’s a neighborhood with mostly 1950s ranch houses, gravel roads and big trees where the day’s most exciting occurrence might be someone walking a pair of dogs.

But back when these homes were new, there were real doings. One of the houses was built by the man they called the “boy wonder” of Michigan politics. He was a Canadian-born World War II veteran whose legs were blown off by a German land mine. He went to college and law school and entered politics to become the youngest state senator in Michigan, elected in 1954.

Two years later, he built his elegant ranch house at 44525 Governor Bradford Road and was re-elected to the state senate. In 1958, he was elected lieutenant governor and in 1960, campaigning from that modest house in Plymouth Township, John Swainson was elected governor of Michigan.

It’s a significant thing that Plymouth had a governor and a governor’s home. But the man and his house were unknown to the keepers of Plymouth history.

Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens is a local historian, an archivist and author of two historical books about Plymouth.

“I’ve never heard of him,” Kerstens said. She checked the archives of the Plymouth Historical Society and found one item – a 1962 Free Press article noting that Swainson, a Democrat, had been defeated by Republican George Romney.

There’s no historical marker to tell you a governor once lived there. This reporter heard about it only when he moved to the sub west of Sheldon Road in 1991, and that was thanks to Swainson himself.

Today, the Swainson house, that ranch on Governor Bradford, is for sale.

Husband and wife Bob and Joan Marquard own the home. The asking price is $274,900.

Bob Marquard said he told their real estate agent, “This is a historic house.’ She said, “No one cares.’ “

Other towns with governors’ homes make a big deal of it. Pontiac has the Governor Moses Wisner mansion, and Farmington has the home of another governor, Fred Warner.

There’s something classy about a house that belonged to the state’s chief executive, even if he served so long ago that few remember him.

Consigned to oblivion

So why is Swainson, who died in 1994, unknown to the keepers of history?

Because he was a Democrat in a traditionally Republican township? Because he was convicted of a crime?

In 1975, Swainson was indicted by a federal grand jury in Detroit on bribery and other charges. He thought he was targeted by the Nixon administration because he was considered a likely successor to U.S. Sen. Phil Hart, a Democrat.

Joan Marquard said she’s found people were reluctant to talk about Swainson or the history of the house. “I thought maybe it was because he’s not well-known and didn’t have the purest reputation. It’s not a positive.

“It’s hush-hush,” she said.

Although he was acquitted of bribery charges, Swainson was convicted of perjury. He lost his license to practice law for three years and was forced to resign as a state Supreme Court justice. His political career was ruined, he fell into boozing, was arrested for drunken driving and also for having a marijuana cigarette in 1977. He got sober and made a comeback, serving as a Wayne County Circuit Court mediator. But his political career was ruined.

Laura Ashlee knows the significance of the Swainson house. She grew up a few blocks away, on Hartsough Street in Plymouth. Ashlee is a historian in the State Historic Preservation Office, part of the Michigan Department of History in Lansing. She knew Swainson, because before his death in 1994, he was chairman of the Michigan Historical Commission and the Manchester Historical Society.

“What’s intriguing is that you have the place from which he campaigned for governor, but also it was designed for him to meet his particular physical limitations,” Ashlee said. “That house may be eligible for the national register, I don’t know – or maybe for a state marker.”

Joan Marquard believes Swainson’s wife, Alice, designed many of the home’s special features. The hallway connecting living room to bedrooms is extra-wide, as are all the doorways. They could easily accommodate the governor’s wheelchair. There is a barely visible concrete ramp leading to the front door, and a bigger ramp leading down to the garage floor. All the closets and drawers are built into walls. Beside the fireplace, the stereo and its loudspeakers also are built-in.

“I love the reclaimed bricks,” said Joan Marquard.

Years ago, the Marquards got a sense of the grand times that once took place along this shady lane. G. Mennen (Soapy) Williams, the Democrat who governed Michigan in the years before Swainson, came to a retirement party for a reporter who lived next door, Bob Marquard said.

“I went over and met Soapy,” he said. “He remembered this house.”

The Marquards are selling the house so they can move closer to their children and grandchildren on the East Coast.

Ashlee said she worries about what new owners might do to the house.

Bob Marquard installed six skylights in the roof and put white paint on walnut paneling throughout the house.

All of that could be corrected, said Ashlee. But what happens if a new owner decides to enlarge it or tear it down to make way for a new, bigger place?

“You know, I would be very concerned about the future of that house, because if you’ve noticed, in Plymouth, people are tacking second stories on ranches …  Plymouth is just becoming a hodgepodge,” said Ashlee.

Karol O’Connor, the Marquards’ real estate agent, said she didn’t dismiss the home’s history.

The history is okay with her, she said, and it might even help sell the house.

Of Swainson, though, O’Connor admitted, “I’ve never heard of him.”

Contact JOEL THURTELL at 248-351-3296 or thurtell@freepress.com.

Caption: File photo by TOM VENALECK/Detroit Free Press

Gov. John and Alice Swainson posed for this 1960 portrait. While in the U.S. Army, Swainson lost both legs to a World War II land mine. His former home has many special amenities designed for him, including ramps, built-ins and a super-wide hallway. The former Michigan governor died in 1994.

PATRICIA BECK/Detroit Free Press

Joan and Bob Marquard in the living room of their Plymouth Township home. The house was built in 1956 for John Swainson, then a state senator and later governor of Michigan and a state Supreme Court justice.  The Marquards have put the house up for sale; the asking price is $274,900.

A newer brick paver patio surrounds a brick grill believed to have been used by Swainson. The house is for sale, but the real estate agents weren’t interested in advertising the home’s historical significance, according to current owners Joan and Bob Marquard.

Photos by PATRICIA BECK/Detroit Free Press

The Plymouth Township home, built in 1956 for then state Sen. John Swainson, is virtually unknown even to Plymouth historians.

Illustration:  PHOTO PATRICIA BECK DETROIT FREE PRESS; PHOTO TOM VENALECK DETROIT FREE PRESS

Edition: METRO FINAL

Section:  CFP; COMMUNITY FREE PRESS

Page: 1

Keywords:

Disclaimer:  THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE

Posted in Adventures in history, Bad government, Politics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

PICKING UP THE JUMBLED PIECES

Posted on November 20, 2024 by admin

Reproduced with permission of the Detroit Free Press

Headline: EX-GOVERNOR REBUILDS LIFE

Sub-Head:

Byline:  JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Pub-Date: 3/7/1985

Memo:  ALSO RAN IN WAYNE WEST AND DOWNRIVER ZONES

Correction: 

Text: Almost a decade ago, state Supreme Court Justice John B. Swainson, his

wife, Alice, and their two lawyers stood facing a locked security door on the

16th floor of the FBI’s Detroit office building.

  The door swung open, revealing a tall, blond FBI agent who announced, “Mr.

Swainson, I have a warrant for your arrest.”

  Swainson’s arrest on charges of bribery, mail fraud and perjury just before

 the July 4, 1975, holiday signaled the end of a long career in public service

— a career that had brought Swainson, once known to news writers as

Michigan’s “boy wonder,” to the governor’s mansion and  to the state’s highest

court.

  Before the federal grand jury indicted him that year, Swainson had appeared

as the most likely successor to Philip Hart’s seat in the U.S. Senate.

  Ruined politically,  Swainson looked back on his life and pondered why it

was that disaster followed him.

  “I’ve often said it’s a long road that takes no turns,” the Free Press

quoted him as saying. “I think sometime  some of this will make sense.”

  This was not the first tragedy Swainson had suffered.

  In 1944, he was a 19-year-old machine gunner in Gen. George Patton’s 3d

Army when 15 pounds of TNT in a German  land mine exploded. Swainson, who a

year earlier was captain of the Port Huron High School football team, lost

both of his legs.

  On the wall of the staircase leading to the study at his 165- acre  farm

near Manchester hangs the Swainson coat of arms. Under it is the family motto:

“While there is breath, there is hope.”

  TODAY, the former state senator, former lieutenant governor, former

governor, former Wayne County circuit court judge and former state Supreme

Court justice has picked up some of the pieces.

  He takes part in local affairs, and he is sought after for advice on how to

deal with  state and county authorities.

  In general, though, he lives a life far less public than his early career

would have suggested.

  While the scope of his life has narrowed, his relationship with the  little

Washtenaw County town has deepened.

  After his conviction, Swainson was disbarred for three years. Able to

practice law once again, he has been offered partnerships in several law

firms. Instead,  he earns a living as a mediator of civil cases for the Wayne

County Circuit Court and as a Michigan Employment Relations Commission

arbitrator.

  “Have robe, will travel,” Swainson jokes.

  Although  the jury found him innocent of the U.S. attorney’s bribery

charges, convicting him on perjury counts, Swainson has no thoughts about

returning to political life.

  “That would be almost impossible  . . . because instead of saying ‘John

Swainson, former Democratic governor of the state of Michigan, said today . .

. (news stories would say) ‘John Swainson, convicted felon.’ “

  Foreclosed from  political activity, he applies his executive talents now

to Manchester Historical Society projects. Swainson is in his second one-year

term as president of the local society.

  BEFORE THE TROUBLES  with the Justice Department began, Swainson had little

time to take part in local life.

  “He was a busy man then,” recalls Maynard Blossom, a retired Manchester

High School government teacher. Swainson  was not well known in Manchester

nine years ago, and because people didn’t know him, “there were many who

obviously took it for granted he was guilty,” Blossom said.

  Out of public life, and with  his work load much lighter, Swainson has

taken time to meet local people, and “he’s a very well-received man here now.”

But 10 years ago, when Swainson’s daughter, Kristina, was 17 and a senior in

Manchester High School,  the other “kids considered John guilty without a

trial,” Blossom said.

  All in all, though, Manchester was not a bad place to weather a storm.

  Today,  Swainson says, “I am completely  accepted in this community as the

person I am, not what somebody else said.”

  “We all survived and have a good life and still have a good life,” he said.

“But it isn’t what you would pick.”

  FIVE  DAYS after the jury found him guilty of lying to a federal grand

jury, Swainson handed Gov. Milliken his resignation as Supreme Court justice.

  That night, after a press conference , Swainson walked across the

Manchester High School football field beside his daughter.

  It was Father’s Night, and as Swainson stepped onto the field, the audience

applauded.

  The worst was yet to come.

  The  U.S. Supreme Court in 1977 would refuse to hear his appeal, he would

serve his sentence for perjury — 60 days in a Detroit halfway house — and in

October, he would be disqualified from practicing law  for three years.

  “It was a very depressing situation, as you can well imagine, and I was

having a hard time — when you’re used to working long hours, and all of a

sudden you’ve got nothing more  to do, that’s real tough,” he said.

  “I learned that a job is the most important thing a man can have . . . What

do you do with yourself? It isn’t a question of starving, or anything like

that —  we were fortunate we did have some income, but it’s a terrible,

terrible thing to have to live through.”

  When he resigned from the Supreme Court, his only income was a war

disability pension.

  He was feeling morose — worse than usual, on Nov. 15, 1977. It was the 33d

anniversary of the explosion that cost him his legs.

  Swainson went to a party in Lansing, drank three martinis, then got  into

his car and headed for Manchester.

  Near Napoleon in Jackson County, he was pulled over by state troopers who

arrested him for drunken driving and later found a marijuana cigaret in his

jacket  pocket.

  Swainson admits he had been drinking, but denies any knowledge of the

marijuana cigaret.

  “I have never smoked marijuana in my life,” he told the Detroit News. “All

of a sudden my world  is tumbling down.”

  “I regret this more because of my family,” he said, and “I’m terribly

disappointed.”

  But the drinking continued.

  A second drunken driving arrest in 1980 finally convinced him to seek help.

  “I’ve got a problem, I want to cure that problem, I want to save my life,”

Swainson told reporters.

  JOHN GOAD BURLEY Swainson, 59, is a ruddy-faced, sandy-haired man with blue

 eyes and gold wire-rimmed glasses. He smokes Kent IIIs as he flips through a

World War II scrapbook his mother kept for him.

  A yellow newspaper clipping from 1945 tells how a woman saw the legless

war hero sitting in a train station.

  “Oh, you poor boy, were you overseas?”

  “No, lady,” Swainson responded. “The Army drafted me this way.”

  “Wise-a–, ey?” Swainson murmurs, smiling, turning  the scrapbook’s pages.

  Always, the conversation turns back to the grand jury and his trial — a

case that began under former Attorney General John Mitchell as a political

assault on a popular liberal  Democrat, according to a 1976 article in The

Nation magazine.

  Nixon was president and Watergate was still largely undetected when

convicted burglar John Whalen told federal prosecutors he had passed  a

$20,000 bribe to Swainson through a bail bondsman. The case was shelved,

apparently because of insufficient evidence, and lay dormant for three years.

  He harks back to the dark days after he resigned  as Supreme Court justice.

  “It was very tough, very tough. It was harder to recover, obviously, from

that than it was from the loss of the legs.”

  OF THE FIVE men who went out on night patrol Nov.  15, 1944, only two

survived.

  One, a man named Brousseau, suffered a concussion and never regained his

mental faculties.

  While he was still a senior at Port Huron High School, 18- year-old John

Swainson decided to enlist in the U.S. Army’s specialized training program.

The Army would give him a college education, then commission him as an

officer.

  “But they decided they would invade France,  and they needed infantrymen a

lot more than they needed students.”

  Swainson had been in the Army about seven months by Nov. 15, 1944, and

Patton’s 3d Army was battling the Germans near Metz in Alsace-Lorraine,

France.

  He volunteered to help take rations and ammunition to part of the company

that had been cut off.

  “We’d take turns sitting up all night on the machine gun. So I figured,

here’s a way I  can go out on this patrol a couple hours and I can come back

and sleep.”

  “There was a tree down across the road. The jeep is loaded with ammunition

— mortar shells, small arms ammunition and one driver.”

  Two soldiers walked alongside the jeep, while Brousseau and Swainson went

ahead to look at the tree.

  The jeep had stopped over an anti-tank mine designed to be set off when a

heavy weight  was removed from it.

  Swainson had returned to the jeep to tell the others to come help move the

tree. As he turned back towards the tree, the mine blew up.

  “The man who was driving, they only  found parts of his hair.”

  “So I get all the blast in my back. My one leg was severed at the time. The

other was so badly broken they had to take it off at the aid station.

  “I woke up at Verdun  four days later. I couldn’t see my feet sticking up.

So I picked up the sheet, and I ain’t got no feet.”

  Later, from a hospital in England, Swainson wrote home: “The pain is quite

bad, but there  are guys here who are worse off than me.”

  AT FRANCO’S, a pizza and coke restaurant in Manchester, the cooks and

waitresses are used to the jovial, middle-aged man who walks with the barest

trace  of a limp.

  A waitress sets a hot pizza on the table and asks, “Can I get you anything

else?”

  “Yeah,” comes Swainson’s deep chuckle. “I’ll have a Manhattan.”

  It is a wry little joke for Swainson,  who claims, “I haven’t had a drink

since 1980.”

  Away from his house, Swainson’s mind roams far from the past.

  His thoughts are never far from politics, however.

  He speaks of the Vietnam war,  which ignited a minor firefight in the

Swainson household. Swainson, then on the Supreme Court, was a hawk of the “My

country, right or wrong” variety.

  Eventually, his sons persuaded him Vietnam  was a bad war.

  And the Vietnam veterans got a raw deal — they have no GI Bill and were

treated like it was they who lost the war, he says.

  His opinion of the Reagan administration is nearly  identical to his view

of the Republican Party.

  “The thing that distinguishes Democrats from Republicans in many

instances,” says Swainson, the veteran Democrat, “is compassion.

  “We can empathize  with other people’s problems; Republicans don’t have

that.”

  Back in the Swainson kitchen, the telephone rings, and he soon is

discussing with his caller the Manchester Historical Society’s quest  for oak

chairs to match a table in the blacksmith shop the society restored.

  He throws himself into the project as if it were an interstate highway that

needed his backing.

  HE ADMITS, however,  that the mediation he does for Wayne Circuit court is

not very challenging for someone who once sat on the Supreme Court.

  In 1962, after his defeat for a second term as governor, a portrait of

Swainson  was hung in the Capitol rotunda at Lansing. The artist refused to

paint in the details, however, claiming Swainson’s political career was

unfulfilled.

  “The unfinished portrait,” Swainson calls the  picture.

  Now, his political career apparently permanently derailed, he tunes in a

news program on a portable television and adjusts the sound so it is barely

audible.

  He followed the news even  in the dark days of the 1970s, when it seemed to

be running against him.

  Swainson believes he was tried largely in the newspapers, that federal

prosecutor Robert Ozer timed his moves — such as Swainson’s  July 3 arrest —

 to coincide with major holidays, making it impossible for Swainson to

respond.

  Ozer boasted of conducting “investigation by terrorism,” The Nation

reported in 1976.

  Swainson  is convinced the federal government, in Republican control, set

out to destroy a promising political adversary.

  But that bitter conclusion was not easy for a man who, as a judge, had

symbolized the  process of justice.

  “I found myself in a very difficult position . . . as a member of the

Supreme Court to say that . . . the system is no good.”

  “I can’t go screaming around, ‘I got screwed.  I had an appeal, that’s about

all we can promise anybody.”

Chronology

  Here are some of the highs — and depressing lows — in the life of John

Swainson, once known as Michigan’s political “boy wonder”:

  * July 31, 1925: John Goad Burley Swainson is born in Windsor, Ont., the

son of a salesman.

  * April 1926: The Swainsons move to Port Huron, Mich.

  * 1940: John Swainson becomes an  Eagle Scout.

  * 1942: Swainson is elected captain of the Port Huron High School football

team.

  * 1943: Swainson graduates from Port Huron High School.

  * 1943: Joins U.S. Army.

  * 1944:  An infantryman, he is assigned to Gen. George S. Patton Jr.’s 3d

Army and shipped to Europe.

  * Nov. 15, 1944: Swainson loses his feet and lower legs when a land mine

explodes.

  * 1946: Enters  pre-law program at Olivet College.

  * 1946: At Olivet College, Swainson meets and soon marries Alice Nielsen of

Detroit.

  * 1947: Toboggan accident injures a leg, forcing further amputation.

Swainson is advised by physicians to live in a warm climate.

  * 1947: Transfers to University of North Carolina.

  * 1949: Earns bachelor’s degree from University of North Carolina.

  * 1951: Earns law  degree from University of North Carolina.

  * 1951: Becomes case investigator for Wayne County Bureau of Social Aid.

  * 1952: Forms law firm in Detroit.

  * 1954: Becomes a Democrat and is elected  state’s youngest senator for

18th District in northwest Wayne County.

  * 1956: Re-elected to Senate and elected minority leader by Democrats.

  * 1958: Elected lieutenant governor of Michigan.

  * 1960: Elected 40th governor of Michigan, the state’s second youngest

chief executive and first who was not native-born.

  * 1962: In second race for governor, Swainson is defeated by Republican

George Romney.

  * 1962: FBI electronic bug records top underworld figures who mention

Swainson’s name.

  * April 5, 1965: Elected Wayne County Circuit Court judge.

  * 1966: Internal Revenue Service  probes income matter at time when

Swainson is possible federal judge candidate.

  * June 1969: Becomes president of NARCO, a group aimed at combatting

growing problem of drug abuse.

  * 1970: Elected  associate justice on Michigan Supreme Court.

  * 1972: U.S. attorney under Attorney General John Mitchell begins

investigation of possible bribery charges against Swainson.

  * 1975: Newspapers report  Swainson as possible candidate for U.S. Senate.

  * July 3, 1975: Federal grand jury indicts Swainson.

  * Nov. 2, 1975: Federal court jury acquits Swainson of bribery and mail

fraud charges, but  convicts him of three counts of perjury before a grand

jury. Swainson is highest Michigan official ever convicted of a felony.

  * Nov. 7, 1975: Resigns from state Supreme Court, exactly 30 years after

his discharge from Army.

  * 1976: State Bar Grievance Board starts disbarment proceedings against

Swainson because of perjury conviction. Board adjourns case to wait outcome of

Swainson’s appeal.

  * 1976: Swainson withdraws from practicing law. Joins lobbying firm.

  * Early 1977: Federal appeals court and U.S. Supreme Court reject

Swainson’s appeal.

  * Early 1977: Swainson secretly enters  a Detroit halfway house to serve

60-day sentence for perjury.

  * Oct. 6, 1977: Grievance Board disbars Swainson for three years.

  * Nov. 15, 1977: Anniversary of the land mine blast that cost Swainson

both legs. Attends party in Lansing, drinks three martinis, drives toward his

Manchester home.

  * Early morning of Nov. 16, 1977: Ten miles from Manchester, state police

arrest Swainson on drunk-driving  charge. Police find marijuana cigaret in

Swainson’s coat pocket.

  * Oct. 29, 1979: U.S. Supreme Court refuses to block Swainson’s trial on

marijuana possession and drunk-driving charges.

  * January  1980: Pleads guilty to drunk-driving charge and pleads no

contest to marijuana charge. He is fined $250 and his driver’s license is

restricted.

  * Early 1980: Swainson’s application to be reinstated  to Michigan bar

delayed by conviction in 1977 drunk driving and marijuana case.

  * May 1980: Arrested on drunk-driving charge in Lenawee County.

  * May 1980: Enters six-week alcohol treatment program  at Ann Arbor

Veterans Administration Hospital.

  * 1981: Swainson’s license to practice law is reinstated.

  * 1983: Begins working as Wayne County Circuit Court mediator and as

arbitrator for Michigan  Employment Relations Commission.

  * August 1983: Suffers weakness in aortic artery. Surgery repairs defect.

  * October 1983: Swainson is elected president of Manchester Historical

Society.

  * Nov. 14, 1984: One day before 40th anniversary of the land mine explosion

that cost him both legs, Swainson delivers speech at unveiling of his portrait

in Michigan Supreme Court.

  * December 1984:  Swainson’s name appears in newspaper articles again, now

in interviews as president of Manchester Historical Society trying to preserve

a 300-year-old bur oak tree.

Caption:

Illustration:  PHOTO COLOR AL KAMUDA; PHOTO FREE PRESS

Edition: METRO FINAL

Section:  NWS

Page: 1A

Keywords: CHRONOLOGY; BIOGRAPHY; BIRTHDAY;  JOHN SWAINSON

Disclaimer: 

Posted in Adventures in history, Bad government, From My Files, Politics | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A masterpiece of deceit

Posted on October 21, 2024 by admin

BY LUKE WARM

PROFESSOR OF MENDACITY

UNIVERSITY OF MUNCHAUSEN

Students — I apologize for interrupting the flow of my lecture series on “Merging the Big Lie with the Little Truth.” But just today I was shown a masterpiece of underhanded deceit masquerading as righteous indignation so courageously, diabolically misleading that I feel compelled to doff my hat to the geniuses at the University of Michigan who invented this marvel of treachery aimed at discrediting a legitimate work of journalism.

I am very tempted to include this case study in my forthcoming textbook, Dissembling in the Academy: Handbook for Skullduggery and Backstabbing at the Modern University.

The case I’m about to describe involved a difficult situation for the institution in question. The facts at first blush seem to be against them. A reporter showed up on campus and requested an interview about a subject that was highly sensitive.

We should keep in mind that ALL subjects in the academy are highly sensitive. That is Rule Numero Uno.

Next, any press report that goes to print outside the academic institution’s control is, ipso facto, to be judged “highly critical,” “completely negative,” and “irresponsible.”  Other adjectives may be applied where necessary. I repeat, any story that cannot be and has not been censored by the university is by its very nature biased, jaundiced, preternaturally hyperbolic, and contemptible.

That is Rule Numero Uno.

Did I say that already? Every rule I cite is Numero Uno!

In this case, the University of Michigan was dealt a bad hand. They were faced with a reporter who gave them ample time to grant interviews and guide his reporting. They had a clear opportunity to steer their story in a desired direction. Instead, however, they chose the path of stonewalling.

Rule Numero Uno: When public officials make bad decisions, mendacity consultants make big bucks!

For the public official, there are two co-equal evils. One is sitting for a media interview. The other is not sitting for an interview. Not taking the interview is always advisable. Unfortunately, it is a stance that cedes moral authority to the journalist. Certainly, the official who dodges a reporter can offer the excuse of “tied up in a meeting.” Such ploys have a shelf life. Meetings seldom last a full day, let alone a week. Thus, when a reporter approaches his quarry several days ahead of his deadline, the target will need a more persuasive pretext. But in the U of M case, while the reporter spent several days trying for an interview, no excuse was given. Credibility is supremely important, especially where an institution is sowing mendacity left and right. Some semblance of an excuse for why officials were not forthcoming is necessary, but in the U of M case it was not supplied. Not good for the institution, but fertile ground for the professor of mendacity.

While this university was digging a hole for itself in the public relations sense, one good can come out of the stonewall: a refusal to provide information does not foreclose officials from loudly criticizing defects in the published report.

Would that be two-faced? Mendacity, thy middle name is Hypocrisy!

In the present case, sad to say, the officials elected to play dead for six days. This was an ambitious tactic, because it is impossible to justify repetitive reticence. But I will say this — it takes outrageous nerve to pull off a six-day stone face.

Speaking of chutzpah, one of the UM officials actually was seen by the reporter in her office sitting at her desk accomplishing no work other than telling her secretary that she didn’t want to talk to the reporter, no reason given.

Special skills of misdirection are needed to put a shine on such egregious misbehavior by an official on the public payroll.

Some may be moved to criticize the officials for their noncompliant approach to media relations. However, it should be recognized that officials have advantages that few are willing to admit. In the United States, many people are taken in by the myth of a free, independent press beholden to no interest and devoted to upholding the rights of the downtrodden and poor. This delusion works to the advantage of the public official whose purpose is to suppress knowledge and truth. While there will be the occasional aggressive, troublesome reporter, editors typically are cowards. They will predictably cave when pushed. So the stonewall can be successful if the news hierarchy follows its well-worn highway of talking big and buckling under the lightest resistance from an intended target. See my textbook, Art of the Bluster (Phineas T Books, Wartbegone, Michigan, 2018).

In the Michigan case, the reporter was not calling in response to a university press release.  That is a sign of trouble. The press release will emphasize certain facts the institution wants known while ignoring facts injurious to the institution’s reputation. Press releases can control the reporter’s mental discourse. In this case, the reporter was calling out of the blue. No university official wanted the Detroit Free Press to run an article about the environment for black students at the University of Michigan. Even a positive article could be negative if it spurred rivals to produce copycat articles that sought to distinguish their reporting by finding something unpleasant from the institutional point of view. Thus, the officials were correct in principle in hoping to derail the reporter.

Officials may also have counted on journalists to hold or even kill the reporter’s story if official comment was lacking. News media put great stock in appearing “balanced.” But it is a mistake for officials to bank on the balance credo as a self-imposed restraint by journalists on their own work. Unfortunately, it is possible to achieve balance outside control of the target institution. Indeed, the U of M burned itself by publishing in-house reports on racist behavior on campus. A journalist may utilize such self-inflicted damage in place of official comment, which happened in this case.

Nonetheless, a news outlet that runs a piece that lacks official comment runs the risk of being called “unbalanced.” That outcome occurred in the case of “Being Black at UM,’ published by the Detroit Free Press on March 31, 1985. The article was immediately excoriated by regents and top administrators at the university in phone calls to Free Press editors. The article appeared on a Sunday. On that day, a regent called a high-level editor to complain that the university was blindsided. There was “no warning” that a story was coming, the official told the editor.

On Monday, a Free Press editor accused the reporter of failing to request an interview. Unfortunately for the administrators, one of their secretaries had coached the reporter in composing a list of questions that revealed the outline in detail of his planned article. The administrators had copies of the reporter’s questions on Wednesday, the day when one of them was seen and heard by the reporter to refuse an interview. I will not pull my punches. This was a very bad situation for the university and for the officials. The reporter had documentary proof that he had not committed a sneak attack, and his proof made liars of the university officials.

The April 8, 1985 Frye rebuts ‘biased’ Free Press article complete 4-8-1985 2-20-2019 quoted Provost B.E. Frye indirectly stating that “the article appeared with no warning to U-M officials of its highly critical nature, Frye said, nor time for them to comment.” Here would have been a good place for Provost Frye to stop commenting, although in this short statement he already has committed a contradiction that will be difficult for a mendacity specialist to explain away. But he unfortunately continued to comment, apparently, unable to prevent himself from spewing facts that further undermined his veracity.

In plain English, once he started lying, he couldn’t stop.

Here is a paragraph from the University Record quoting Provost Frye on his failure to speak to the reporter:

Frye said he also had strong objections to the article’s implication that he and (Vice President Nyara) Sudarkasa had refused to talk to the Free Press reporter or to provide him with minority enrollment financial data. “This simply is not true,” he declared. “This man, after being told no time was available on one day, gave up on an interview, left written questions, and then went ahead with the article before the reply could be mailed back to him. There was no input from us.”

No professional manager of mendacity could have devised a more exquisite set of interrelated prevarications. The University Record proposes that:

— 1. “The article appeared with no warning” and adds that the reporter allowed “no time for them to comment.” How could officials comment if they didn’t know about the story? How could officials comment if they didn’t know about the story? How could they comment if they had “no warning”? When two ends of a statement clobber each other in this manner, a lie is revealed.

— 2. The reporter gave up trying to get an interview. Again, Frye acknowledges contacts with the reporter belying the claim of “no warning.” The lie is repeated.

— 3. The reporter wrote his story without waiting for the officials to mail their responses to his written questions. For the third time, Frye acknowledges that he was warned after claiming “no warning.” The lie layers upon itself.

Here is a real challenge for the practitioner of mendacity. Of all untruths, the self-defeating, or self-contradicting lie is the hardest to erase. Which end of the whopper does one tackle? If left alone, “no warning” would be defensible. But requests for interviews and written questions? The most dimwitted of observers will notice the recurrent admission of warnings given but denied by officials.

And yet! And yet, what a compact little network of opposable lies!

What artistry!

Let us for a moment relax and savor deceit woven at the high level one would expect of such an august university as Michigan. Not only has the university portrayed itself as the victim of a sneak attack, but it has pictured the reporter as an impatient fellow who gave up when told officials would not speak to him and then submitted written questions but “went ahead with the article before the reply could be mailed back to him.” One wonders what barn he grew up in!

Really, we must enjoy the beauty of what I term a “verity reversal.” Conversion of a reporter into a villain. There are reasonable people who might judge that the reporter traveled to Ann Arbor from Detroit and expended several days of his time trying to interview the officials. A reasonable person might wonder why officials refused to speak to a reporter, especially after they received a list of questions that outlined the main points of his story. Why, a reasonable man or woman might wonder, did the officials not at least offer the reporter a credible reason why they refused to meet with him? Would they not want to influence his reporting? Why, a reasonable person might inquire, would an educated man, a university provost, think it expedient to mail his answers to a reporter’s questions when the provost knew there was urgency in the matter — a so-called deadline — that would dictate using the telephone rather than the postal service or perhaps even having a face-to-face conversation with the reporter who was available and actually present in his office several times over several days?

The challenge for the professor of mendacity is to persuade the reasonable person that the reporter was somehow at fault, possibly for being born in the first place.

The University of Michigan went to print without responding to any of those hypothetical questions, and yet, the institution prevailed. After publishing one “highly critical” article that officials found offensive, the newspaper groveled back to Ann Arbor and produced a follow-up article that reflected only their views. Rumors of mistreatment of the secretary who dared to help the reporter remain rumors following a Free Press editor’s judgement that she “wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole!” and an executive editor’s declaration that he didn’t want to “be treated like a nigger,” possibly referring to his abuse by higher-ups in both the newspaper and university bureaucracies. Final insult to journalistic integrity: the newspaper’s refusal to acknowledge a commendation from the Michigan NAACP for the article’s candor in discussing racial issues.

Kudos to the University of Michigan! What might have been a productive public discussion of racial conditions on its Ann Arbor campus received the best journalistic award of all — the Order of the Big Spike.

A toast to the Victors Valiant:

Champions of the West,

Mendacity at its best!

If you wish to contact me, I may be reached via my agent at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

 

Posted in Adventures in history, Bad government, censorship, Joel's J School, LUKE WARM | Leave a comment

Memory hole and rattlesnakes

Posted on October 21, 2024 by admin

A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened. The concept was first popularized by George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eight-Four, where the Party’s Ministry of Truth systematically re-created all potential historical documents, in effect, re-writing all of history to match the often-changing state propaganda. These changes were complete and undetectable.

–Wikipedia

By Joel Thurtell

“Complete and undetectable.”
That is probably what Detroit Free Press scribes thought they had accomplished when they changed the paper’s website to more accurately distort the facts contained in their October 1, 2015 article about massasauga rattlesnakes.
On October 2, 2015, I emailed a proposed letter that I hoped the Free Press would publish to correct important mistakes published in their article. I never heard from anyone at the Free Press.
But today, November 13, 2015, I called up the problem article and discovered that without notice, it had been corrected. Sort of.
The statement by a naturalist who claimed that no human had died of a massasauga bite in the last century has been scrubbed from the post. The article now reports that a child was injured by a massasauga bite in 2013. There is still no mention of deaths, although my letter informed the paper of four deaths due to massasauga bite since the 1930s. Furthermore, I showed the Free Press letters editors a letter published by the Free Press in 1989 reporting the death of a girl from massasauga bite. The letter, from a Grosse Pointe Woods woman, was sent to the Free Press in response to an article researched and written by me and published in the Detroit Free Press magazine on July 29, 1989.
Had the present-day Free Press reporter done a little research in his own newspaper archive, he would have discovered my article. He might also have seen a September 5 2013 USA Today article, originated at the Free Press, reporting the serious injury of a child bitten by a massasauga rattlesnake and now alluded to in the “corrected” website version of the Free Press October 1, 2015 article.
I don’t understand why a newspaper feels it has to act as a flak for a snake. Why not tell people that massasauga venom  is second only to the Mojave rattler in toxicity? Why not admit that drop for drop, massasauga venom is more toxic that that of the Western Diamondback?
I’m talking public safety and public health.
The Free Press is doing spin control for a rattlesnake.
Here is the letter I emailed to the Free Press on October 2:

An October 1 Free Press article on eastern massasauga rattlesnakes gives the erroneous impression that a bite by one of these reptiles poses minimal risk to humans. A naturalist quoted in the article claims incorrectly that no human has died of a massasauga bite in the last 100 years.

On July 29, 1989, the Detroit Free Press Magazine published a cover story, “Snakebit!,” written by me. I reported that a retired professor of microbiology and immunology at the Indiana University Medical School in Indianapolis and an authority on snake venom, Sherman Minton, had compiled a list of four human deaths attributed to massasauga bites in the mid-twentieth century.

Massasauga venom is the second most toxic of 21 rattlesnake species. Massasauga venom is more potent than that of the Western Diamondback rattlesnake. That more people have not died or been seriously injured by massasaugas can be attributed to their reclusive personalities and the fact that these small snakes don’t pack as much venom as larger rattlers.

A Grosse Pointe Woods woman responded to my article, reporting that her cousin died of massasauga bites in Georgian Bay on July 17, 1962. “For years,” she wrote,”park rangers have given the snake great PR without mentioning that a bite can be lethal to humans.”

My article described how physicians’ ignorance about massasaugas nearly caused the death of a man who was bitten accidentally. Another man thought a rattler was harmless, picked it up and was bitten. He was hospitalized with a serious injury.

Naturalists and the media need to recognize that the bite of a massasauga rattlesnake can lead to serious illness and even death.

Joel Thurtell

The writer is a retired Detroit Free Press reporter

Posted in BAD JOURNALISM, Wildlife | Leave a comment

Henry Ford and the Germans

Posted on October 21, 2024 by admin

BY JOEL THURTELL

I was seventeen years old when I delivered the Youth Sunday February 10, 1963 sermon on intolerance at the First Congregational Church in my hometown, Lowell, Michigan.

My theme was the evil of racial prejudice, especially racism directed by whites against blacks.

But I also was concerned about Christian prejudice against Jews, Muslims, and other religions.

I was surprised to read my notes for that sermon and see that I was aware of Henry Ford’s newspaper attacks on Jews.

“It is not generally known,” I said, “that one of the pillars of American industry was an anti-Semite. Henry Ford, who introduced mass production, the reasonably priced automobile and the $5 day also financed an anti-Jewish newspaper called the Dearborn Independent. This paper continuously attacked what it called ‘the international Jewish conspiracy.’ The Jewish Anti-Defamation League won a public apology from Ford, but only after great harm had been done.”

How at seventeen, in 1963, did I know about Henry Ford’s scurrilous attacks on Jews?

Certainly not from my US history textbook.

My teacher was the father of the family who were my hosts the summer of 1962 when I was an exchange student living on a dairy and hog farm in northern Germany. My German father thought Henry Ford’s bigotry was something an American like me should be proud of. I was given this lesson one evening as the family and several neighbors sat around the  living room with bottles of wine and beer emptying into glasses. Gemütlichkeit was flowing all over. Urged on by his pals, the father took a 78-rpm record from a drawer and placed it on a phonograph turntable. Not music, but a voice, high-pitched, came through the loudspeaker. I didn’t understand the German, but I knew I was listening to Hitler.

After a few minutes, the father switched off the record player. Attention now focused on me. A neighbor man lectured me:

“America has a Jewish problem. Just like Germany had. Germany had a solution, thanks to Adolf Hitler. Hitler was a good man with wonderful ideas about bettering mankind. One of the most important goals was the eradication of inferior races. The worst of these people are the Jews. They are subhumans who managed to get control of all walks of life. In the United States, you have Jews running your industries, your banks, even your newspapers. America made a big mistake by coming into the war on Britain’s side. With the help of America, Germany could have finished the work of exterminating the Jews.”

Not all of this garbage came from Hitler. They told me that a fellow American, Henry Ford, knew about the Jews and supported Hitler, a great admirer of Henry Ford. There was no internet back then, but these farmers knew about Ford and his newspaper and his arguments about the international influence of Jews.

They taught me that second to Hitler, Henry Ford was the most influential anti-Semite.

They forgot about Martin Luther.

Stay tuned for more thoughts on Nazis, great American fascists, and the great leader of the Protestant Reformation.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

 

 

 

Posted in Adventures in history, Henry Ford, Nazis | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Diggs Standard for Supremes

Posted on May 1, 2023 by admin

By Joel Thurtell
Staff Writer

A former congressman named Charles Diggs spent seven months in prison in 1978 for what reportedly is routine behavior by three justices on the U. S. Supreme Court.

According to the April 30, 2023 New York Times, Supreme Court justices
Neil M. Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, and Brett M. Kavanaugh “regularly used employees in their chambers to coordinate their outside academic duties despite a judicial advisory opinion — which the justices say they voluntarily follow — that staff members should not help ‘in performing activities for which extra compensation is to be received.’ ”

Is the U.S. Justice Department concerned that federal employees are being paid to do private work for the justices? This is the same Department of Justice that in 1978 cracked down on civil rights activist then Detroit’s congressman.

Diggs was convicted of assigning congressional aides to work in his family’s funeral parlor and then submitting false federal pay claims for them.

“Despite the prohibition against enlisting court staff members to help with paid outside work,” the Times reported, “records show that much of the labor of keeping up with the justices’ teaching and other activities at Scalia Law fell to the chambers’ administrative staff — organizing class materials and student papers, managing student visits and coordinating guest lectures.”

“Justice Gorsuch’s staff used the justice’s login to create an online “forum/discussion” space for students and post readings, and submitted his grades to the school,” according to the Times. “The staff of Justice Thomas requested his class roster and collected his syllabus, helping tack down missing reading materials. Justice Kavanaugh’s chambers inquired about when he would get his paychecks, and whether he would get a raise.”

How is working in a private funeral parlor different in principle from Supreme Court employees acting as support staff for the justices’ outside jobs?

Federal prosecutors called Diggs’ offense fraud. And so it was — forcing federal employees to work for his personal business and submitting pay claims asserting they were doing congressional work pretty well defines fraud.

Will Attorney General Merrick Garland assign a special counsel to investigate payroll fraud at the Supreme Court?

Equal treatment before the law. Call it the Diggs Standard: what applies to a black civil rights activist also applies to Supreme Court justices.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

Posted in Bad government, JC & Me, Joel's J School | Leave a comment

A Jewish airman in a Nazi POW Camp

Posted on March 6, 2023 by admin

BY JOEL THURTELL

The Detroit Free Press scrapped this story when I wrote it 21 years ago.

What do you think? Would you have published this story?

First, some background: He was retired in 2002, but Detroit TV weather caster Sonny Eliot’s folksy, chatty act left fond memories among many Detroit area people. I was then a Free Press reporter. I heard that the Holocaust Memorial Center in West Bloomfield planned to interview Eliot for an oral history project. Sonny Eliot was a US Army Air Forces airman shot down over Germany in World War II. He was a Jew. It seemed important for the Holocaust museum to record his story. I wanted to write a story pegged to the center’s interview. Sonny Eliot agreed to let me interview him. I wrote a story. It was not published.

Here is the story that didn’t make the Free Press:

gfbyBy JOEL THURTELLFREE PRESS STAFF WRITER    Before he was a wisecracking Detroit radio and TV weatherman, Sonny Eliot was a B-24 pilot who was shot down and imprisoned by the Germans in World War II.

Eliot, the son of immigrant Jews, well knew that he could be killed if the Nazis found out his religion. So he covered up his Judaism. Because of that subterfuge, Eliot says, he learned something very disturbing about his fellow American prisoners.

By 1944, it was well known that Hitler’s people were killing millions of Jews, yet Eliot discovered that like the Germans, many of his imprisoned countrymen were prejudiced against Jews and were not upset when American Jewish fliers were rounded up, apparently to be killed.

In front of a video camera Sunday at the Holocaust Memorial Center, Eliot, 78, recounted his experiences in the nearly 15 months he spent in Stalag Luft I, the German prisoner-of-war camp where he was placed after his B-24 bomber was shot down over central Germany by German fighters on Feb. 24, 1944.

The taping session was part of an oral history project which records the experiences of people who were victims of German persecution. To date, the library has 275 Holocaust-related videotapes.

In an interview with the Free Press a few days before the videotaping, Eliot was asked what it was like to be a Jew in a German prison camp.

“Not much of a story,” said Eliot. “The only time this came up was after D-Day. They rounded up all the Jewish flyers in the camp. There must have been two, maybe 300.”

The Germans placed the Jews in a separate barracks, Eliot said, and “the rumor just ripped through the entire camp that these people would all be put on a train and taken to some place like Auschwitz.”

Eliot was not among them. The Germans believed – or at least Eliot thought they believed – his lie that the downed pilot known as Marvin Eliot Schlossberg was a Christian.

That fiction was possible because when Eliot bailed out of his burning Liberator, the sudden opening of his parachute popped his shoes off his feet and blew off his dog tags, the metal cards giving his identity, including religion.

“Even if I’d had them, I think I would have thrown the dog tags away,” Eliot said.

“I landed right in the town where we had bombed,” Eliot said. “They thanked me in their own way – they kicked my ass.”

When a German officer demanded to know his religion, Eliot answered, “Martin Luther.”

He was moved to a prison camp for aviators at Barth, a small town on the Baltic Sea. The Germans signed him in as a Protestant.

But when the Jews were moved to a separate barracks, Eliot said, “I felt, my God, my people – I’m a part of them. I’ll be brave, I’ll go, and so I talked to a Father Carlton, who was a Catholic priest captured at Dunkirk.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” Eliot said. “Should I go tell them they forgot me? Hey, I’m with those guys?”

Original text: “He looked me in the eye and said, ‘get the fuck back in the barracks and shut up. I said ‘okay,’ and that’s exactly what I did.” End original.

Re-written text per editor: The priest told Eliot to go back to his barracks and say nothing.

    “That’s exactly what I did.” End re-written text.

Now all the Jews were gone but Eliot, and except for a few Americans in his room who knew the truth, he was seen as a Christian by his fellow prisoners.

With their Jewish compatriots gone, the Americans’ behavior loosened up.

“The anti-semitism which is so strange to me began to surface in small little ways, not very important, but I was aware of them in that you would hear jokes like, `They’ve got three balls up there – they’re turning the barracks into the pawn shop place.’ ”

“Not a great deal of sympathy for putting all the Jews into one barracks,” Eliot said.

There was no resistance to removal of the Jewish flyers, no expression of repugnance. “It was like a gentleman’s agreement,” said Eliot.

Meanwhile, thinking there were no Jews to hear them, Americans made caustic remarks about the Jews. “They called them `little flicks.’ ”

“Blacks are the same way. They would hear it, too. It’s not as hidden with blacks because they are immediately identified.”

“I don’t think they did it out of meanness. It’s that way still today, everywhere.”

Before the Germans could move the Jewish airmen out, Russian soldiers liberated Stalag Luft I.

Eliot went to the office and found his file.

On it, a German official had scrawled, “Jew.”

So the Germans knew.

“Somebody had turned me in.”

 

Here is a trail of internal newspaper staff messages about my story, starting with my photo assignment. David Crumm was the Free Press religion writer. Dennis Niemiec was a Free Press reporter. Lisa Manns was my assigning editor. Leesa Bainbridge was editor of the Free Press Oakland County newsroom and boss over both me and Lisa Manns.

At the Free Press, reporters did not make photo assignments without getting their assigning editor’s okay first to write the story. The existence of a photo request means that my story idea was approved by Lisa Manns. She placed the story on the budget, or schedule, and gave it a file name, known as a “slug”: 1SONNY19. The “1” before “SONNY” means the story was scheduled to start in the first, or state, edition, and “19” means it was to run March 19, 2002.

Messages appear most recent first, meaning that replies precede questions. We are reading backward through time and will finally arrive at the story text. Unlike other stories I’ve presented, this one has no indication of publication date, edition, or key words, all of which would mean it had made the paper.
, which this story did not.
 

<UB>FREE PRESS PHOTO REQUEST<RO>

<BO>Day/Date: <RO>2-9-01

<BO>Time: <RO>9:30 a.m.

<BO>Flexible? <RO>little

<BO>Will reporter be there? <RO>yes

<BO>Discussed w/ which photo editor? <RO>

<BO>Subject/phone: <RO>Sonny Elliott, (w) 248-455-7200; (h) 248-661-0046

<BO>Contact (if not subject): <RO>

<BO>Location: <RO>37412 Halstead

<BO>Directions: <RO>Lodge to Northwestern to 14 Mile to Halstead; South on Halstead; The Legends condos are on west side of Halstead, second driveway on west side 100 yards south of 14 Mile.

<BO>What is story about? <RO>Sonny Elliott, the perennial Detroit weathercaster, was an airman in World War II. Shot down over Europe, he was captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner of war. What was it like to be a Jew in a Nazi POW camp? Elliott’s story is to be videotaped Feb. 18 for the Holocaust Memorial Center’s oral history program. We are trying for an advance interview with Elliott.

<BO>Reporter/phone: <RO>Thurtell, 248-586-2609

<BO>Story editor/phone: <RO> Bainbridge, 248-586-2615

<BO>Slug: <RO> 1SONNYXX

<BO>Day/time needed: <RO>Next week

<BO>Run date: <RO>

<BO>Section/position: <RO>

 

Joel:

 

Very sorry to see such a lack of vision and understanding of these issues.

 

We’re talking: brain dead on this score.

 

— David

 

CRUMM  19-MAR-01,11:56

 

incredible!!!! I think you need to ask if you can freelance it for some other publication.

 

NIEMIE 19-MAR-01,11:47

 

The word at this point is the same — we don’t plan to run it. I take the

 

fall for this one. I thought he was part of a national holocaust museum

 

exhibit. Just telling his story that is years old doesn’t seem much of a

 

story or timely.

 

BAINBR 19-MAR-01,10:56

 

Leesa – Any word on my Sonny Eliot story? There are possible hooks: for

 

instance, I understand the Legislature may set a Holocaust Remembrance Week

 

to start April 19.

 

Joel

THURTE 19-MAR-01,10:27

 

Joel,

 

I’ll run your suggestion by Jim Finkelstein. But I don’t expect he’ll get back to us before Monday.

 

Leesa

 

<BO>BAINBR<RO> 23-FEB-01,15:04 <FO>

 

 

Joel:

 

They’re idiots!

 

If I were editing, I might suggest a couple of small tinkers with the

 

story. For instance, given how little of most stories we actually get “out

 

front” these days before a jump, I might have moved up the ‘graf in which

 

you picture Sonny sitting in front of the microphone — the “news peg” as

 

it were.

 

But that’s very very minor stuff.

 

It’s a great little story — and definitely should have been promoted

 

and run.

 

Dolts!

 

David

 

CRUMM  16-MAR-01,17:18

 

My note on 2-19-1:

 

Photo shot 1SONNY19, but per Lisa Manns, “Leesa read it and we aren’t going to run it. She’s going to talk to you about it.”

 

On Feb. 19, the day it was to have run, I made this note: Per Leesa Bainbridge, it’s a one source story and we normally don’t do one-source stories. She misunderstood when I pitched it and thought it was part of some national thing. It’s just this one guy’s memories, not that important, not that many people would be interested in Sonny Eliot’s experiences in World War II, even though he is famous. Doesn’t work as a news story. She will pitch it to entertainment. But I need to remove “fuck.”

 

<RO>

 

Leesa _ I can just never say die. Here goes on the Sonny Eliot story:

 

There is a hook for it on April 20. That is Yom HaShoah, an international day for remembering the Holocaust.

 

I could talk to Holocaust Center people in West Bloomfield and Washington to get more background about what happened to the Jewish prisoners; get some reaction about the experience Eliot had with Americans’ expressions of anti-Semitism and lack of sympathy for the Jews. And maybe interview Eliot again to probe more for his feelings about what happened.

 

What do you think? Is it a dead horse, or can I revive it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joel <BO>THURTE<RO> 23-FEB-01,14:51 <FO>

 

 

 

Posted in Adventures in history, Nazis, People | Leave a comment

FDA approval of Alzheimer’s ‘cure’ a huge gift to drug maker

Posted on June 8, 2021 by admin

BY JOEL THURTELL

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single disease that afflicts a vast portion of the world’s population must be in want of a cure.

According to the FDA, that single disease is Alzheimer’s, and the cure is a new drug called aducanabab, trade-named “Aduhelm” by its manufacturer.

It is equally axiomatic that the first drug manufacturer to market an FDA-approved cure for Alzheimer’s disease will be the winner of profits beyond imagining. The FDA has approved other drugs such as Arisept, Namenda and Exelon that treat symptoms of Alzheimer’s, but do not stop the disease. No drug has been approved that actually stops the disease.

Aduhelm’s manufacturer, Biogen, has set a stunning cost of $56,000 a year per patient.

Biogen’s FDA coup will be a huge moneymaker both for the company and for other profit-oriented parts of the medical establishment.

There are two hitches. Normally, the FDA demands that a new drug be proven safe and effective. The rationale for creating a Pure Food and Drugs Act in the early twentieth century was that the government needed to protect the public from mendacious claims of miracle-working, money-grasping drug makers. But Biogen has not proven Aduhelm to be  safe or effective for treatment of Alzheimer’s. Moreover, clinical trials have shown that any minimal gains from the drug have been nullified by evidence of “swelling or bleeding in the brain the drug caused in the trials,” according to The New York Times.

The FDA’s own advisory committee along with Alzheimer’s experts warned the agency that Aduhelm is not effective.

Apparently, the FDA anticipated blowback. It required Biogen to complete an additional clinical trial of Aduhelm’s effectiveness, and declared it might withdraw its approval. However, there is no requirement that the FDA reverse its decision, according to the Times.

It is not clear from the Times article why the FDA approved this non-cure. The newspaper reported that “patient advocacy groups lobbied vigorously for approval because there are so few treatments available for the debilitating condition.” Several drugs that show more promise than Aduhelm are years from approval, according to the Times.

I suspect many readers, like me, are puzzled about why the FDA selected one manufacturer as the beneficiary of an approval that will give Biogen a huge lead in marketing a product it can claim “cures” Alzheimer’s. It seems like a throwback to the 1800’s, when drug makers were free to make the most audacious and fallacious claims about products without oversight from a government empowered to force testing of the drugs’ contents, safety, and effectiveness.

It may seem too soon to express suspicion about the FDA approval process. The federal government could not be anything other than fair and decent in its oversight of the clinical trials of a drug with such obvious consequences both for patients suffering with Alzheimer’s.

Right?

Do we know of any past FDA history where the agency was less than honest in its dealings with rival manufacturers and the public?

As a matter of fact, yes.

In my next column, I will discuss my own and other reported findings in a 1980’s case involving improper relations between a drug manufacturer and the FDA. In subsequent columns, I will discuss additional FDA scandals and outline procedures I think reporters should follow as they — hopefully — investigate FDA’s odd approval of a drug that doesn’t get its job done.

Stay tuned.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

 

Posted in Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's and dementia, Bad government, Karen Fonde | Leave a comment

Times n-word hypocrisy

Posted on May 9, 2021 by admin

I sent the following letter to letters@nytimes on May 2, 2021. So far, it has not appeared in The Times.

To the Editor:

Regarding The Times’ May 2 op-ed, “How the N-Word Became Unsayable,” by John McWhorter: Times editors thought it was okay for the newspaper to print “nigger” in a newspaper essay about the word’s implications. But it definitely was not okay for former Times reporter Donald McNeil to utter the same word over dinner in a discussion of the word’s implications. You gave Mr. McWhorter prime space in the “Sunday Review.” You fired Mr. McNeil. How do you reconcile your contradictory behaviors?

Yours truly,

Joel Thurtell

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SPIKING THE SUPER BOWL POOL

Posted on February 1, 2021 by admin

First posted on February 5, 2012 JT

Revised version posted February 1, 2021 

By Joel Thurtell

I’m no sports writer, so it was neat to think my byline would appear over a Super Bowl story.

What a drag that my first-ever Super Bowl piece failed to meet the exacting publication standards of the Detroit Free Press.

Yes, my Super Bowl story was spiked.

It was a story that might have given readers a chance to ask what is and what is not tolerable behavior by a law enforcement official.

Is it okay for a prosecutor, say, to break the law if he does it at home, with his pals?

I was working on the Ed McNamara story late in 2002, right after the FBI — with lots of media fanfare — raided his government offices. McNamara was Wayne County executive. Now he is the late Ed McNamara.

Any story about Mac was also a story about his right-hand man, the onetime deputy Wayne County executive, Mike Duggan.

Today (2021), Mike Duggan is Mayor of Detroit. Back in 2002, Mike Duggan was Wayne County prosecutor. Duggan was thoroughly entwined in the McNamara Band’s political ops, so if the feds’ spotlight was on Mac, it was also on Mike Duggan.

Remember that FBI probe? Didn’t think so. They prosecuted a couple of lackeys, but never got close to Mac or Mike.

Never fear. I was on the case.

For a couple years, I was the Detroit Free Press reporter assigned to cover Wayne County government. By the time of the FBI raid, I’d been off that job for, well, about eight years. Why tap me for the McNamara story?

Well, they needed SOMEBODY to do it. The Detroit News had two reporters kicking the Free Press’ butt left and right. One reporter focused on county government, while the other mined the federal court. They coordinated their reporting on the FBI’s investigation of the county. They were embarrassing the Free Press, one reporter covered a slew of out-county towns and schools along with Wayne County government. He was thirty miles from the Detroit action, working in a strip mall office in Livonia.

An editor thought of me. I had covered Wayne County eight years before. Presumably, I could do it again from a desk in Oakland County. A third reporter was assigned to our little team. She backed out. Nobody wanted the job. The lone reporter on this godforsaken beat was Dennis Niemiec, and one look at this tired and frustrated man was warning enough. My assignment was to help Dennis turn this thing around.

Dennis offered solace. He told me his “pizza” theory. He said editors aren’t looking for real substance in stories. What they want is a talker, a story they can hype to fellow editors in the various meetings that consume much of their working days. A story they can chuckle about, joke about, make other editors envious about. A story, in short, that was like a pizza. Full of short-term flavor, high on fat, tasty, but not necessarily of lasting value except maybe to the waistline.

By the time Super Bowl 2003 rolled around, I was delivering pizzas, or trying to, by myself. The day after New Year’s, I was roaming around the bowels of the City-County Building in Detroit looking for some records having to do with county officials’ conflict of interest disclosures. I emerged from the darkness of Wayne County government into a cold, blustery morning and saw Bob Ficano, the newly-elected Wayne County executive, giving his maiden speech on the steps of the old county courthouse. Standing in the crowd taking notes was a Free Press reporter none too happy about being there. “Where’s Niemiec? He’s supposed to be covering this.”

Niemiec, it turned out, at that very moment was retiring from the pizza delivery business. He quit. Now I was delivering my pizza on my own. I thought I had a juicy one. I’d gotten a tip that Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Duggan had a little pizza party of his own on Super Bowl Sunday. Well, I don’t know if he served pizza. Duggan and his assistant prosecutors , I was told, had wagered on the outcome of the game. You know, a Super Bowl pool. They’re pretty common. But they are illegal. So says the Michigan Penal Code.

Mike didn’t deny holding the pool. He told me, “I’m learning that I can’t relax and make a mistake for a single minute when you’re the prosecutor. But I’ve learned. I sent a twenty dollar check over to Focus Hope as a donation to charity and I’ve learned a lesson from it.”

I wrote my Super Bowl story. I quoted Mike Duggan admitting he had the pool. I quoted a University of Michigan law prof that pools are illegal. I quoted the Michigan Penal Code. My story said that a prosecutor who puts other people in jail for breaking the law himself broke the law by sponsoring an illegal gambling activity. My story might go down in history as “pool-gate” or “Bowlgate”! Colleagues were reading my story in the computer. People were stopping by my desk for a laugh. Great story, Joel!

But there was a problem. It’s called the double-standard. Hypocrisy. You know, people who live in glass houses and all that.

A managing editor broke the news: “Joel, if we print your story, the Free Press will never be able to hold another Super Bowl pool.”

There would be no “Pool-gate.” No “Bowlgate.”

The only pool for my story was the toilet.

Journalists wring their hands about the dismal Future of Newspapers.

At the Free Press, the only concern was The Future of the Super Bowl Pool.

Contact me at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

 

 

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