Roundtable: Nagin; Teams of Color; Times Film Projects

ED GORDON, host:

This is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Ed Gordon. On today's Roundtable: Nagin does it again, and television's hit show Survivor starts the season with teams divided by race.

Joining us to talk about these issue and more from our NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., Yvonne Bynoe, author of the book, Stand and Deliver: Political Activism, Leadership and the Hip-Hop Culture. Also there, Joe Davidson. He's an editor with The Washington Post. And joining us from member station WFDD in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Nat Irvin, professor of future studies at Wake Forest University.

All right, folks, welcome. Let's get right into it. Ray Nagin does it again. He is readying himself for the one-year anniversary of Katrina, and, of course, doing much media. We'll have him, in fact, on this program sometime next week. But what he's making noise about - or at least what has been talked about over the course of this day is a comment he made to Byron Pitts, CBS correspondent, that will air on 60 Minutes this Sunday.

When they were touring the city, Byron noticed that there were still flood ravaged streets, abandoned cars and the like, and he was questioning the mayor in terms of the cleanup. The mayor turned to Byron and suggested this:

Quote, that's all right. You guys in New York can't get a hole in the ground fixed and it's five years later, so let's be fair, end quote.

Joe Davidson, obviously talking about the area Ground Zero after the September 11th attacks. Again, is this Ray Nagin shooting off at the hip and making a mistake, or as we have seen some people interviewed on the news today in New York City said that they understand his frustration.

Mr. JOE DAVIDSON (Editor, The Washington Post): Well, I'm sure there are plenty of people in New York City who are also very frustrated. But I'm also just as certain that if Nagin ran for office in New York City, he'd have a pretty tough time. I think that it would be understandable if folks in New York City feel that his comments perhaps were not necessarily mean spirited but certainly couldn't be classified as generous.

I think what happened is is that Ray Nagin is probably getting tired of the criticism that's heading his way because of the slow recovery period in New Orleans. And so he wants to reach out and say, well, let's see what's happening elsewhere.

You know, the situation in New Orleans clearly remains dire. I mean there's a clear difference between New Orleans and New York in many ways, and one of the big ways is that the New Orleans situation affected such a much greater area. It's still so much more difficult for many, many people in that city to get their lives back together. In a physical sense, the damage was much more widespread.

GORDON: Nat, one has to believe, whether you like him a politician or not, anyone placed in this position is really in an untenable position. It's very difficult for, as Joe already suggested, on a day-to-day basis to be hit with these kinds of questions and to keep your cool to some degree.

Professor NAT IRVIN (Professor of Future Studies, Wake Forest University): Well, Ed, I watched the clip, the CBS interview that you referred to with Nagin, and actually his remarks in print sound rather intemperate, but the way he delivers them on television they don't come across that way at all.

I think what the mayor is trying to do - and I certainly hope that he will spend this time, this anniversary to do - is to talk about the fact that when you have something that happened, like the major disaster as that which hit Katrina and then something similar to New York, our regulatory system is not -the regulatory system that we have in place is not really suited for these kind of major calamities.

What scholars, what people are starting to notice that if you were to think about taking the city like Port-au-Prince in Haiti, if you could imagine something like that to happen where you have the complete infrastructure taken away, then how would you - what are the regulatory systems that you need in place to be able to recover quickly?

Unfortunately, what we have - in the best of times, we have the private versus the public sectors working together around the issues of private property, who owns it. But when you're in a situation where you have the system that we have that, in the best of times, works - but when all of the infrastructure is gone, what do you do?

And so when the mayor is talking about red tape, he's really talking about something that's fundamental to the way that we would deal with crises both now and in the future. And I hope that his remarks, intemperate as they may come across in print, may not - I hope that they will be viewed a little differently.

It is tough to deal with circumstances when everything that you've known normally is gone. And we've got a lot of lessons to learn.

GORDON: Yvonne, here's what interesting, because a lot of people came to the defense of Ray Nagin when he went off initially on the radio, demanding that the federal government get down there and help in what was a profanity laced tirade in some people's mind. And then, of course, there was the chocolate city comment and this one and a couple of others.

Some people like the fact that he's not a careful politician as we know today and that he speaks what he believes from either his heart or off the cuff. Others say that this is an inexperienced politician who allows these words to get in the way of the real movement, because people focus on the words rather than, as Nat just said, the need to move forward and get rid of some of this red tape. Where do you fall on that side of things?

Ms. YVONNE BYNOE (Author, Stand and Deliver: Political Activism, Leadership and the Hip-Hop Culture): Well, I think that people can decide for themselves based on their own opinions. But I think at the end of the day, we need less politicians who are just going for spin and are going for, you know, what the current poll says.

Ray Nagin is - I think Nat's word intemperate, I think that is appropriate, but I don't think that he's wrong. Certainly he could've glossed over it, he could've used some more elegant language. But at the end of the day, I don't know that his comments were not truthful.

New York City - I am an native New Yorker. I was just there about a week and a half ago. And, yeah, you can look at Ground Zero five years later, there has been political in-fighting. We've had conversations even about architecture. What should this mean? This is a national symbol. What should this look like? We've had conversations with the survivors over memorials. Conversations about whether the - how much retail space should be, how much green space should be, and more importantly, you know, what is the symbolism of Ground Zero.

So with all that being said, a lot has not been done. Ray Nagin has a larger ground to work with, he has more problems to deal with, and I think it is unfair to assume that in a year he should've been able to turn this whole city around when even before Katrina there were decades of problems, decades of corruption, decades of poverty.

So I think that, to be frank, he probably needs to be strong. Perhaps - I wouldn't necessarily advise him to start glossing over the facts and, you know, making his remarks more intemperate. These are desperate times; they're in crisis and people need to be clear about that. The people who like him will stand by him and the people who won't will find something to criticize even if he were more temperate in his speech.

GORDON: All right. Let's turn our attention to - as if they needed more publicity - CBS is having a good PR week, folks. Everybody's talking about this as well as the latest Survivor coming up, which we will find this season, at least in the beginning, the teams divided into ethnic groups: African-American, Asian, Hispanic and white.

Nat, when you hear about this - and we should note that CBS has suggested that they were aware that this was going to cause some controversy, but they have full confidence in the producers and their ability to produce the program in a responsible manner. That is the language that they used.

How much of this is just getting them some free publicity, and how much of this really is the idea that America still plays into race, and that, you know, we sit behind closed doors and rally even when we see game shows for those who look like us?

Prof. IRVIN: Yeah, this is a new show called Desperate Executives Seek New Ways to Raise Their Ratings, right? How do you get Nat Irvin to finally watch Survivor, since he has not watched since the final episode of the first season when Richard Hatch won and then subsequently lost all of his money being sued?

And, you know, I haven't really paid attention to this show, and I think this is certainly one way to try to increase their ratings. But here's what comes to my mind: I don't know whether it's a comedy or whether it's a dramatic show or whatever.

But you mentioned, Ed, I noticed you said ethnic, but they've said race, which raises the issue of, you know, the Hispanics. I thought that they could both black and white of any race. So now we're going to have the dispute about of who's actually black, who's Latino. And what about the Arabs? I mean, you know, the census classifies them as white. And are they going to suggest that they're ought to be included. And what happened to the Native Americans and the multi-racials?

I think that what they're trying to tap into is this sort of Jeopardy kind of thing that we have where, you know, black folks always want the young black person or the whoever black person on Jeopardy to win. We're moving away from having to think that they have to - they don't have to win but at least finish. You know, we still have that kind of competition that still exists.

The idea of dividing ourselves along race and the competition does tap into our nation's anxiety about race, but I think ultimately, this will be a show that will be here today and gone tomorrow.

GORDON: Yvonne, that may in fact be the case, but there are going to be some that suggest that this is yet another way to needle all of us about race and that continuing underlying taboo about not being able to talk about it. This is a way to at least vicariously deal with it.

Mr. DAVIDSON: Well, I think we will be able to talk about it, at least in the context of Survivor, and perhaps that will allow us to broaden that conversation.

It does raise a number of interesting questions, though. Just in this discussion, for example, Nat was talking about people of Arab descent who, he said, are classified as white by the census. That doesn't work when they get on airplanes, however.

GORDON: Uh oh!

Mr. DAVIDSON: Then they're not classified as white. The, and so, you know, just the, you know - while it's clearly a total publicity thing, you know, no question about that - once you start talking about it, you do see how we do fit into these racial categories. Not just physically, but in terms of the way we conduct our everyday life. Clearly that means, in terms of cheering for people on television.

And so, this country does have, you know, a reluctance, I think, to really talk about the real nitty-gritty of race. And while there is nothing particularly sociological or political, I suppose, about this show, maybe we will - maybe it will perhaps in only some small way encourage a broader and deeper discussion. You know, that's really, basically, a wild hope. I'm not actually expecting it.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Ms. BYNOE: Well, I'm definitely more pessimistic. First of all, this show on race is still not going to get me to watch Survivor. I'm kind of with Nat. I watched it a little bit the first season but I'm not a big fan of reality TV. And Survivor seems like it thrives on the worst characteristics of humans - how far you can lie and backstab to get over.

I think that in terms of race, I want to flip the question a little bit. How many black people, or labeled Hispanics or Asians, have bowed out of this show? They're not going to do it. At this point, we, the pundits and the opinion people have these dialogues about race, but the people who get on these shows could care less. So at the end of the day, I'm always wondering, you know, are they as concerned as we are about how they're depicted, if they win. I think the cries and the victim hood comes when they lose.

You know, and I think that's something that we need to be concerned about. I mean, I remember the old, you know, I'd rather play a maid then be one. So I think that a lot of these people get on these shows, they're not, they're in it for themselves. And that's the beginning and the ending of it.

Whether or not they're looking, they're depicted as bad people, thugs, or, you know, whatever, I think they worry about that whether or not they get a check. And I think that, for me, I'm not going to root for these shows because somebody's on there of a particular race. I'm not even necessarily going to watch the show.

I think everybody has to make their own decisions, but I think in terms of television and the media in general, I think we need to start talking more about the actors and the performers then these TV executives. They can put on Stepin Fetchit tomorrow, but can you get actors to jump for these roles. And if you can, then that to me is a broader discussion then what the TV execs are going to do.

GORDON: All right. Well, I probably won't watch it, but if I do I'm cheering for the black team. I'm just putting that on the record.

(Soundbite of laughter)

GORDON: All right.

Prof. IRVIN: Yeah, but make sure they're black, Ed.

Ms. BYNOE: Yeah, exactly!

(Soundbite of laughter)

GORDON: We'll see what kind of garb they wear, right?

(Soundbite of laughter)

Prof. IRVIN: (Unintelligible).

GORDON: All right. Let's turn our attention to, as that line further blurs between reality and the - well heck, the sublime and the ridiculous, as some might say - as we look at the New York Times now hiring a literary agent to take care of their properties as they move to make some of these into film and television. Joe, there are some journalists, I would suspect, who are turning in their graves right now at the thought of this.

Mr. DAVIDSON: Well, some of us who are still alive might be doing some little bit of turning as well.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DAVIDSON: I think that, you know, for print journalists, you know, there is a certain snobbery, I will confess to among print journalists when it comes to, say the broadcasters. And so…

GORDON: Yeah, a certain snobbery. You're being very kind, Joe Davidson. But go ahead.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Prof. IRVIN: Where, at The Washington Post?

Mr. DAVIDSON: This is kind of going even a bit further, it seems to me, where you're talking about dealing with a, you know, a Hollywood agent. I mean, I think that many of us - and speaking now of print journalists - would at least worry that this might lead to a situation where what we write, what we edit, what we print could somehow, in some small way, be influenced by a desire to see - or by the thought…

GORDON: Yeah.

Mr. DAVIDSON: …that it might make it to the big screen, or to the bestseller list, or something like that. Now, it probably won't, and there are probably all kind of assurances that this would not happen. But I think many of us would still have that concern, and for me it would be a very real concern.

GORDON: Yeah, I think it's a very real concern, Yvonne. And one of the things that is interesting is - and I can see this down the line - is the real debate on whose property it is, in the sense that often these stories that are interesting enough to make it to the big or small screen usually involve the human element. And that means someone else's story that you are just writing about.

Ms. BYNOE: Yeah, that's, that's definitely true. That you, as a lot of times as a journalist, you're just merely telling someone else's story. You're not supposed to be inserting your own opinions. You're supposed to be as objective as possible. So at the end of the day what product is the New York Times selling? Are they actually selling the story that the columnist or the reporter wrote…

GORDON: Yeah.

Ms. BYNOE: …or are they selling the underlying story of what was reported? So, I'm not sure how that's going to be fleshed out. But I think Joe makes an excellent point, that who wants to be in a position where you're being edited, or stories are being assigned, or there's that thing hovering over you about whether or not this is possibly going to be something that will be shopped…

GORDON: Yeah.

Ms. BYNOE: …or that will be, you know, for some other further purpose. I think that the journalists…

GORDON: Yeah.

Ms. BYNOE: …ought to be dealing with the here and the now and not worrying about whether that happens down the road for some film.

GORDON: All right. Nat, you've got the last minute on this. Despite the venerable intentions of those who write for print, many of them, most of them I know, still want to be on TV. So…

(Soundbite of laughter)

GORDON: …that being said, take it up for us poor little broadcast journalists…

Mr. DAVIDSON: Thank you. Thank you very much, Ed. Thank you very much, Ed.

GORDON: …I suspect that we have to watch the egos here as well.

Prof. IRVIN: Well, this is actually a smart business decision by the New York Time. What I think, well, people…

GORDON: Yeah, it is.

Prof. IRVIN: …don't quite understand is that the New York Times is faced with the land of the new media. You know, last year there were ten million Podcasts downloaded, there were 50 billion text messages sent through cell phones in the last half of last year. There are 60 million blogs online right now. And, you have companies…

GORDON: Yeah, just getting involved in the new millennium.

Prof. IRVIN: …just, I mean, really. Absolutely.

GORDON: Yeah.

Prof. IRVIN: The distribution of media is very different.

GORDON: All right.

Prof. IRVIN: And what the Times has…

GORDON: Quick for me, Nat.

Prof. IRVIN: …their great value is content.

GORDON: Yeah.

Prof. IRVIN: And that's going to distinguish them in the future.

GORDON: And the name. And the name.

Prof. IRVIN: And the name, yeah.

GORDON: And they suggested that this would be the New York Times Presents, etcetera, etcetera.

Prof. IRVIN: Yeah. Just like Star Wars.

GORDON: All right. Guys, thank you so much. Especially you, Joe. Thank you.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. DAVIDSON: Appreciate it.

GORDON: Next up on NEWS AND NOTES, two of the talented Wayans Brothers move beyond funny movies to kid-friendly cartoons that do more than just entertain. And, voices of survival. We'll hear from some New Orleans residents about their lives nearly one year after the hurricane.

(Soundbite of music)

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