World Turning

Let’s get ready to celebrate the tenth anniversary of one of the most darkly humorous events in Massachusetts history: the Boston Globe’s “Summer from Hell.”

The scandals that led to the departures of Globe columnists Patricia Smith and Mike Barnicle supplanted the New Republic/Stephen Glass debacle as America’s biggest mainstream-media controversy in 1998. For those of us who regarded the Globe as a fountain of left-wing misinformation, the Smith-Barnicle scandal was a joyous event, a moment where an arrogant member of the Fourth Estate received its long overdue comeuppance. Although the scandal didn’t destroy the Globe, the heat the paper felt between June and August 1998 was comforting warmth to those with a red-state mentality.

Smith was forced out in mid-June after new inquiries as to whether subjects and quotes in her columns were real. In 1995-1996, Smith was suspected of multiple fabrications; unfortunately, then-Globe editor Matthew Storin was reluctant to confront Smith about these allegations because, in his view, similar allegations against Barnicle had not been fully addressed (despite previous controversies concerning Barnicle’s commitment to facts). In early-1996, the Globe instituted a fact-checking policy for Metro/Region columnists Barnicle, Smith, and Eileen McNamara: since no questions were raised about the accuracy of the columnists’ work in the months following the institution of the policy, it was unofficially relaxed over time.

However, in spring 1998, Globe management learned of new allegations that Smith was fabricating characters and quotes in her columns. Smith—who once ran afoul of management at the Chicago Sun-Times for factual inaccuracies in a review of an Elton John concert—raised eyebrows with her use of odd, almost movie-dialogue-style quotations in her columns, and for her occasional use of single names instead of full names.  A few weeks before she was confronted about these allegations, then-Boston Phoenix writer Dan Kennedy noted that Smith, “…much in demand for speaking engagements and poetry readings…sometimes seems to leave herself barely any time to report, so she must try to write her way out of a deadline jam. That was never more apparent than last week, when she banged out a quickie on the Seinfeld finale before the episode ran, but which was published the day after.”

This time, Globe management wanted to know exactly how Smith wrote her way out of deadline jams. After efforts to verify the subjects of her recent columns turned up empty, then-Managing Editor Gregory Moore confronted Smith about her questionable work. Smith confessed her journalistic crimes and resigned from the paper; before her departure, she wrote a farewell column in which she claimed that “…to create the desired impact or slam home a salient point, I attributed quotes to people who didn't exist. I could give them names, even occupations, but I couldn't give them what they needed most -- a heartbeat. As anyone who's ever touched a newspaper knows, that's one of the cardinal sins of journalism: Thou shall not fabricate.”

Smith also wrote, “To those colleagues and readers who salivated daily at the thought of my head on a platter, congrats.” There were quite a few readers who wished for Smith’s departure: while she had the writing skill of Ralph Ellison, she also had the politics of Jeremiah Wright. For every brilliant column analyzing Boston’s human condition, there were at least three columns that came across as blind screeds against Caucasian conservatives. Reading Smith’s work was delightful and frustrating at the same time: how could one not appreciate her vast talent, and how could one not recoil at her far-left politics?

Cleansing the Globe of Smith only seemed to make problems worse. Almost immediately, Alan Dershowitz lashed out at the Globe, accusing the paper of embracing a race- and gender-based double standard by dumping Smith, a black woman, while retaining an equally flawed Barnicle, a white male. Barnicle then lashed out against Dershowitz, proclaiming in a late-June column that “Inspector Dershowitz, champion of the underdog…thinks O. J. Simpson is innocent, Louise Woodward is a terrific baby sitter, and that I am a bad guy. I can live with his contempt.”

A few days later, McNamara came under fire for a caustic column in which she branded Smith a dishonest affirmative-action baby: “[Dershowitz] would have us believe that Patricia Smith was the victim of a double standard. To the contrary, she was the beneficiary of one. Her fall had nothing to do with her race; her rise had everything to do with it…It was the worst sort of racism that kept us from confronting the fraud we long suspected. If we did ask, and she did tell, we might lose her, and where would we be then? Where would we find an honest black woman columnist who wrote with such power and grace? A white institution is paying now, just as much as a black columnist, for its decision to trim, to cut corners, to roll the dice.” In early-July, Kennedy wrote that “McNamara made some valuable observations about the role of race in Smith's rise from obscure music critic to Pulitzer-finalist columnist, but her strident tone offended many African-Americans both inside and outside 135 Morrissey Boulevard.”  It didn’t offend me in the least; the column was, in fact, the best one McNamara ever wrote in her twelve-year tenure as a Globe columnist, although it was quite humorous to see McNamara attacked by black critics as an implicit racist for finding fault with affirmative action when her earliest Globe columns attacked as implicit racists those who found fault with affirmative action.

The controversy died down somewhat in July, but it became an inferno in August, as Barnicle was forced out of Morrissey Boulevard after the revelation of triple transgressions: his apparent theft of jokes from a 1997 George Carlin book for an early-August column, his heavily fictionalized 1995 column about two cancer-stricken children who became friends, and his clear replication of quotes from A. J. Liebling’s 1961 biography of former Louisiana Gov. Earl Long for a 1986 column. Barnicle’s collapse, and his former paper’s national humiliation, was a thrill for Massachusetts conservatives, many of whom resented the paper’s attempt to promote Barnicle as the authentic voice of the region’s working- and middle-class. (Barnicle’s longtime rival, Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr, became the voice of anti-Globe Massachusetts during the summer of ’98; one wishes his Herald columns and WRKO-AM broadcasts from this period were freely available online, since his work during this controversy was deeply funny and quite inspired.)

The Smith-Barnicle scandal was certainly entertaining for Globe opponents—yet, from a certain perspective, it left no real lasting damage. Many newcomers to Massachusetts don’t even remember the scandal, even though it received coast-to-coast coverage at the time. Barnicle got by with a little help from his media friends, securing a columnist gig at the New York Daily News and hosting a sports-and-politics show on WTKK-FM for several years. In early-2004, he left the Daily News to take a position at, of all places, the Boston Herald, which had ripped him to shreds during the “Summer from Hell” for his journalistic felonies. His Herald columns lacked the flair of his best Globe work; a year after his arrival, he abandoned the full-time position, though he still occasionally writes for the paper. While the Globe has suffered in recent years, it will never go out of business, despite the fervent wishes of Bay State Republicans.

In a way, the only person truly harmed by the scandal was Smith, who has made great strides in the arts but who has been permanently exiled from journalism. Why was Smith—a factual felon, yes, but a brilliant writer—forced out of the business, while her fellow “convict” had his record more or less expunged? It’s not right that Smith is considered an outcast while Barnicle is still considered a member of the club. Is she a victim of racism? I can’t say that for sure, since Armstrong Williams, an African-American syndicated columnist who was the focus of a journalism scandal three years ago, is still going strong today. Smith is, if anything, a victim of her failure to make the critical media/business/political connections Barnicle made.

I don’t mean to sound bitter towards Barnicle. He is a true talent; no Boston-based writer of the past thirty years can honestly say they haven’t been influenced by him. He is every bit as gifted as Smith, perhaps even more so. Yet he was able to survive because of the allegiances he formed years ago; Smith, having never formed those allegiances, is now considered persona non grata.

One can’t say there weren’t any heroes in the Smith-Barnicle affair. Say what you will about his politics, but Dan Kennedy’s work covering the scandal was, and remains, brilliant. At times, Kennedy appeared to be the only local reporter who knew how to put this story in its proper perspective. He showed no fear or favor, and delivered thought-provoking, rhetorically sharp, ethically solid work. What he did in the summer of ’98 was a credit to journalism; one can argue that he did the job Barnicle and Smith wouldn’t do.

The “Summer from Hell” was a tragedy for the Globe, but a comedy for those of us who dislike and distrust the mainstream press. Barnicle and Smith are seen as having left a legacy of lies. For the anti-Globe crowd, they left a legacy of laughter.