Malcolm v. milquetoast

Share
Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

You’d think that publicly funded UNC-TV would stand as a bastion of free-thinking, responsible television run by smart people; a little bandwidth immune from the lowest-common-denominator mentality that pervades much of the rest of television.
Malcolm, I feel ya

You’d think that, but you’d be wrong.

Tonight, I was all set to watch “American Experience” featuring the Emmy and Peabody award winning Malcolm X: Make it Plain.


But behold – at 9 p.m. sharp, UNC-TV is not showing the fiery brother few people really understood during his lifetime, or understand now. Nope. Instead, you’d find the whitest of white men, John Denver, crooning between the TV station’s spots begging you to give them money.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to hate on Denver. But on the 45th anniversary of Brother Malcolm’s death, you’d think the least the public TV programmers could do to honor the civil rights activist would be to air the documentary. C’mon people!


I guess the black man’s not good enough to help y’all raise money – is that it? Afraid the white folk are gonna turn off if they’re not soothed by the Rocky Mountain High melodies of Mr. Milquetoast?

It’s what radio host Tom Joyner calls not-so-hidden hidden racism.
X knows hypocrisy when he sees it

Usually I turn a deaf ear to the right-wing rants against PBS, especially when they start picking on ’em for stupid stuff like that recent Buster dust-up. Next thing you know, PBS prez Pat Mitchell is quitting. Hell, I even gave ’em a pass on the whole flap over NPR and PBS sharing donor lists with political groups (mostly Dems.)

But this really ticks me off. Malcolm my brother, The Man done sold you down the river. Again.

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

  • 1

2 Comments

  1. Dave February 22, 2005

    Can we print this as a guest commentary?

    Dave

    Reply
  2. Barb February 22, 2005

    We should make UNC-TV air the documentary by any means necessary.

    Reply

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.