On The Beach Blog

First off, I'm glad it wasn't me that did it!

Not that I haven't been capable of gross errors in Editorial Judgement over the decades, but what Rick Murphy, the irreverent Editor of The East End Independent, did last month, was something I don't think I would have done even in my most undisciplined early Journalist experience... my mind just doesn't work that way.

(I will however disclose that in that wild and weird first year (circa 1971) of put­ting out The Monie­bogue Press, in printing a straight-forward press release from some gay activist group detailing a quiet demonstration they had staged at a meeting of the Suffolk County Leg­isla­ture, we were stuck for a head­line. It suddenly occurred to me that "Fags Run Amok" struck precisely the right tone. The fact that the decision was rendered at 0400 hours, with the Roll­ing Stones' "Beggars Ban­quet" blast­ing on the stereo in the back­ground, was but one of the lame excuses tendered in the aftermath. The truth of the matter was, like the punch line of the anecdote Steve McQueen related to Eli Wallach in The Magnificent Seven about why the man took off all his clothes and jumped into a thicket of cactus, "It seemed to be a good idea at the time.")

I'm not going to defend Murphy's wretched attempts at satire in his two broad-stroke columns written, respectively but far from respectfully, in the "voices" of Democratic Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama... it's tough to write good satire, and Murphy failed spectacularly. But few of those marching on The Indy's offices with pitchforks and burning fagots calling for Murphy's head on a pike on the Sag Harbor Causeway recall that the late Michael O'Don­ohue, by Saturday Night Live out of The National Lampoon, was routinely responsible for similar offenses against just about every identifiable group, and there wasn't near the outrage expressed then as there has been of recent against Murphy! Cries of "Racism!," "Homophobia!," "Puerile!" and "Sexist!" were some of the milder ones used in Letters to the Editor (of The Southampton Press as well as The Independent!) or Darren Johnson's 631Politics Internet Forum.

The worst indictment of them all, "Unfunny!," has also been leveled, and that is something that Editor Murphy and his Publisher, Jerry Della Femina, have had to acknowledge while issuing abject apologies for the weekly's poor decisions in publishing the two columns, and Mr. Della Femina's pledge to adopt greater Editorial oversight on his wayward Editor.

I don't know Murphy, and my sole interaction with him came some years ago when I had to drop a passel of summonses and subpoenas on him... the verbal exchange was short and impersonal.

And I am not particularly impressed with the man, either... his tendency to dismiss any sort of criticism, no matter how legitimate or articulate, of his attempts at humor or Editorial comments, with a fatuous "Who cares?! You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny!" type of response, is annoying in the extreme. So much so that I've simply stopped reading The Independent for periods of time, and only pick it up again if my wife informs me that Publisher Della Femina has written a funny column of his own in that week's edition.

All that said, I decline to join in the merrie little mob who've wrapped themselves in their cardigans of Political Correctitude and de­manded that ample chunks of Murphy's arse be served as hors d'oeuvres at the next Della Femina Happy Hour!

In the middle of this current maelström surrounding Murphy, Earl Butz, a Secretary of Agriculture under both Presidents Nixon and Ford, died this past weekend at age 98, 32 years after his admirable public service career was sacrificed on the altar of Political Correctitude... he'd told a joke with mildly racial and "locker room" overtones, and the media-flogged outcry (prominently featuring the voice of the Reverend Jesse Jackson) was so intense that Secretary Butz had to resign from the Cabinet.

(Compare that to the generally "ho-hum" response several years later when it was revealed that that very same Jesse Jack­son had viciously referred to New York City as "Hymie-Town" because of what Reverend Jackson felt was Gotham's large Jewish population.)

I've seen too large a Thought Police Body Count over the past several decades, and there's something seriously wrong when people, from Butz to Jim Zumbo, from Al Campanis to Jimmy "the Greek" Snyder, through their ignorance or because of a momentary brain fart, can have their careers, or in some cases lives, ruined by the self-righteous and politically correct.

C'mon, already! This isn't Chappaquiddick... no one died here! Murphy may be a jerk, but what is anyone hoping to exact anyway?

Della Femina's not going to fire his Editor. But Murphy's been humiliated (on a national scale), taken down several pegs, and lost a certain amount of editorial autonomy.

Wanna be activists in a meaningful way? There are still malnourished kids in Flanders and on the Sag Harbor Turnpike. See what you can do about that!