All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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Happy Holidays. Yes, All of Them.

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Happy Christmas, painted by Johansen Viggo
Happy Christmas, painted by Johansen Viggo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s “War on Christmas” time again. In a November 30 speech in St. Charles, Missouri, US president Donald Trump mounted a stage festooned with Christmas trees to kick off the annual Airing of the Fake Grievance:

“[Y]ou go to the department stores and you see ‘Happy New Years,’ and you see red, and you see snow, and you see all these things. You don’t see ‘Merry Christmas’ anymore. With Trump as your President, we are going to be celebrating Merry Christmas again …”

When I was younger, the Annual Grievance was that Christmas had become too commercialized and that stores were starting to “celebrate” it far too early in their sales campaigns. These days, it’s that Americans don’t focus exclusively on one, and only one, December holiday.

I haven’t personally noticed any dearth of Christmas cheer this year or in recent years. I’m seeing Christmas observances all over the place, in both Christian (Nativity scenes, “Reason for the Season” church signs, etc.) and secular or semi-secular (Santa Claus, silver bells, what have you) form. Perhaps Trump doesn’t get out into fly-over country often enough.

That said, it’s worth noting that December is indeed a month of holidays, not all of them Christian. According to HolidaysCalendar.com:

Sunni Muslims celebrated Maulidur Rasul, the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, on December 1. Shia Muslims celebrate it on December 6.

Buddhists celebrate the enlightenment of Siddhartha Gautama — Bodhi Day — on December 8.

From December 13-20, Jews celebrate Hanukkah, commemorating the liberation of Jerusalem from foreign occupation in 165 BC.

December 21 marks the Winter Solstice and the beginning of the ancient pagan festival of Yule.

Kwanzaa, a celebration of African culture, commences on December 26 and runs through New Year’s Day.

On December 23, Seinfeld fans will celebrate their 21st Festivus. Others may put up feasts and ceremonies for National Mutt Day (December 2), Wear Brown Shoes Day (December 4), Ugly Sweater Day (December 19) or perhaps something a little more serious like World AIDS Day (December 1) or Bill of Rights Day (December 15).

And yes, of course there are all kinds of Christian holidays — Advent Sundays, the feast days of Saints, etc. — leading up to Christmas (December 25 for some Christians, January 7 for others).

Like it or not (personally, I like it a lot), America IS a multi-religious and multi-cultural country with holidays galore. So what if you don’t celebrate them all? Why not just congratulate those who do?

Shut yer griping, Trump. Merry Christmas AND Happy Holidays!

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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And Now, A Prairie Home Sexual Harassment Complaint

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Garrison Keillor
Garrison Keillor (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

America is in the middle of an agonizing reappraisal of sexual conduct. What constitutes sexual harassment or assault? Where is the line that separates acceptable, or merely rude, actions from unacceptable, and possibly criminal or civilly actionable, behavior?

If you feel like this process has been dragging on for a year, you’re not alone. But as I write this, it’s actually been less than two months since the New York Times brought movie magnate Harvey Weinstein low with its story on his decades of sexual misbehavior and cover-ups.

Weinstein was the first domino to fall, but far from the last. Numerous entertainers, journalists and politicians now find themselves beleaguered by, or even  at career’s end based on, allegations that might, even if true, once have brought a wink, a nudge, and maybe an insincere verbal reprimand.

It’s impossible to know in advance how far any social sea change will go, or how far it should go. But this one may have just seen its first bit of backlash — literally.

Garrison Keillor is an unparalleled icon of state media as entertainment. Foremost among his accomplishments is creating Minnesota Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion and hosting it (with breaks) for 40 years.

On November 29, MPR announced that it had fired Keillor and severed all contractual relationships with him over allegations of “inappropriate behavior” with a co-worker.

Keillor might, like so many others, have donned a hair shirt and beat his chest while screaming public apologies for a few days before conspicuously entering rehab. As a liberal of his age (75), he’d probably have been quickly forgiven by his admiring public, who would award him a  moral golf handicap for being from way back when.

Instead, he shrugged off the firing (“I’m just fine. I had a good long run and am grateful for it and for everything else.”) and politely explained himself without pillorying himself:

“I put my hand on a woman’s bare back. I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.”

The explanation has the ring of truth to it. As he himself points out, he’s well-known for being physically stand-offish and describes himself as being on the autism spectrum (of which aversion to physical touch is often a feature). Groping a colleague isn’t just out of radio character for Keillor. It’s out of character, period. If he’s not lying, there’s no sexual harassment here.

If Keillor’s travail, and how he’s handling it, marks the point in time where we pause to reconsider the content of our suddenly evolving set of standards instead of plunging headlong into a new Salem witch hunt, he will indeed have brought us good news from Lake Wobegon.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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James O’Keefe versus the Cardinal Rule of “Gotcha” Journalism

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Stock Photo — MaxPixel

James O’Keefe is famous — or at least notorious — for running sting operations in which he uses actors to trick organizations he opposes into behaving badly on (hidden) camera. The Washington Post didn’t fall for his latest ringer, a woman falsely claiming that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore got her pregnant, then procured an abortion for her, when she was a teenager.

Writing at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf takes O’Keefe and his Project Veritas conservative media operation to task for “bad faith” in the dust-up. Instead of admitting that the Post‘s reporters exercised great care in investigating Jaime T. Phillips’s claims, and declined to publish allegations their research couldn’t substantiate, O’Keefe went on the offensive, posturing as the victim of an “ambush” by the Post and raising funds to “finish this investigation.”

“O’Keefe’s team seems less interested in what’s true than in making the media look bad,” writes Friedersdorf. The indictment is harsh but it seems to be true. And that’s a problem.

Investigative journalism, including the “sting” variety of which O’Keefe has made himself one of the 21st century’s acknowledged masters, plays an important role in informing the public. Real stories are broken. Real corruption is revealed. Real institutional flaws are outed.

But “gotcha” journalism of the Project Veritas type must, if its practitioners want to remain trusted and relevant, hold itself to even higher standards of truth and disclosure than might be expected in “straight news” coverage.

If a regular reporter gets someone’s birth date wrong, a one-sentence correction on page B-38 is reasonable.

If an investigative sting results in the discovery that the target didn’t fail in the expected way, page B-38 isn’t going to work. The truth of the matter needs to be put right out front. Not just to give the targets their due, but to protect the reputations of the investigators. The claims of an investigator who won’t admit error and exonerate the innocent in the present can’t be trusted in the future.

The mission of Project Veritas (“Veritas” is Latin for “Truth”) is to “[i]nvestigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud, and other misconduct in both public and private institutions in order to achieve a more ethical and transparent society.”

Ethics and transparency require a clear admission from O’Keefe that his Washington Post sting didn’t reveal the misconduct he expected to find. His reputation, such as it is, requires that as well.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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