between the lines
pointed perspectives and penetrating punditry
Why The Star is
Trying To K.O. Kay O’?
by Jack Cashill
On the face of things, state Sen. Kay O’Connor from Olathe would
seem to be the biggest bozo to come out of Kansas since School Board Chairman
Linda Holloway two years back.
But that is the problem with living in a one-newspaper town. All you get
is the face of things.
Here is the real story. A few weeks back, Kay O’Connor attended a
forum on juvenile justice sponsored by the League of Women Voters. As
she was leaving, she was stopped and asked if she planned to attend its
upcoming celebration of the woman’s right to vote. Wary of the League’s
genteel liberalism, O’Connor replied, “Ah, you probably don’t
want me there to talk about these issues,” referring to the whole
range of feminist issues.
The League’s Dolores Furtado then asked Kay if she didn’t think
the woman’s right to vote was the “most important” issue
in society. And Kay responded, “not necessarily so.” Tired and
eager to get home, Kay left it at that. At least two other women overheard
the entire conversation, state Rep. Mary Cook and Pam Conaghan. Both have
testified publicly that O’Connor said nothing newsworthy. Wrote Conaghan
to The Star, “What I did not hear was any mention from O’Connor
of any desire to repeal the 19th Amendment or any suggestion by O’Connor
that tending a home and family is the only worthy choice for a woman.”
Lurking at the edge of this conversation was Star reporter, Finn
Bullers. O’Connor may have said nothing in that public conversation
to give Bullers a story, but she had said enough to plant a seed.
A Woman’s
Place
Despite the fact that she has won every one of her general elections in
a landslide, The Star sees O’Connor as being somehow “out
of step.” As its editors have made repeatedly clear, a woman’s
place is in “the mainstream.”
To remind O’Connor of her place, The Star chose to gin up
a hit piece. It took a fair amount of work. Bullers had to call O’Connor
three more times to finesse his story. It appeared on Sept. 28th and led
as follows:
A prominent female state senator has said that she does not support
the 19th amendment, which guarantees women the right to vote, and said
that if were being considered today she would vote against it.
As The Star knows, such a lead can kill a career. But there is
a problem here. A large one. Bullers does not quote O’Connor. He
paraphrases. Why did Bullers avoid direct quotes on crucial points? Only
one reason comes to mind. Kay O’Connor never said what Bullers claims
she did.
According to O’Connor, she explicitly told Bullers that “in
today’s society women need the right to vote.” When questioned
as to whether she would have voted for the amendment in 1920, O’Connor
argued that she did not know enough of the history or the details of the
legislation to answer with confidence..
Just
Who Is Out Of Step?
For some time, The Star has been practicing what might be called
“rainbow” journalism. Key editors see America not as e pluribus
unum, but simply as “many”—a multihued, multicultural spectrum
of different races,
ethnicities, genders and now orientations.
What participants in the rainbow share, what holds their disparate interests
together, is a sense of victimization. Regardless of their stripe, they
have all been denied, discriminated against, “disadvantaged.”
Although Star editors will deny it, the paper shies from any story
line that does not respect this paradigm.
On Sept. 11, the rainbow worldview collapsed as surely as the Twin Towers.
Americans of almost every inclination ceased to see the divide between
black and white, rich and poor, and saw instead a seamless stretch of
red, white and blue.
For some folks at The Star, this “near jingoistic” sentiment,
as columnist Louis Diuguid put it, was all too much. Lee Judge responded
immediately with a tasteless and pointless cartoon suggesting that what
was really destroyed on Sept. 11 was Bush’s missile defense plans.
One week after the attack, the inimitable Diuguid chimed in, “I’m
bothered by Bush and other officials demonizing the perpetrators as ‘evil’
and the United States as righteous and good.”
Two days after the Diuguid column, The Star gave us a hint as to
who the real great Satan might be. An enthusiastic full-page article in
the Preview section features an artist painting devil horns on an image
not of Osama bin Laden but of—hang on—a Boy Scout. This artist,
we are told, shows how attitudes that seemed “normal and wholesome
in the 1950s” now seem “racist, sexist, & homophobic.”
Writes Star reporter Alice Thorson admiringly, “The point
becomes more pointed in the ‘loyal’ illustration in which a
boy salutes a rainbow flag.”
There you have it. Ten days after the attack, The Star editors
let this stunningly divisive article fly. Yes, a truly loyal American
salutes the rainbow flag.
The Star had to remind its readers who the real oppressor was,
those who would pass off their racism, homophobia or, in O’Connor’s
case, sexism as normal and wholesome. In influential corners of this once-proud
newspaper, the rainbow flag had all but replaced the American one, and
God help the citizens, like Kay O’Connor, who failed to salute it.
Especially now.
Normal, Wholesome
& Unabashed
On the 28th of September, the Bullers’ article appeared. One Star
columnist piled on after another. CNN picked up the story. So apparently
did Leno and/or Letterman. As it succeeded in doing with Kansas School
Board president Linda Holloway two years earlier, The Star turned
a proud, outspoken local woman into a national laughingstock—and
the state of Kansas along with her.
Scarier still, in O’Connor’s case the offense was fully manufactured.
O’Connor made no speech, introduced no legislation, said nothing
of consequence to anyone.
If no rebuttal article appeared from O’Connor, it was only because
The Star would not run O’Connor’s response. Its editors
insisted on removing three key paragraphs as being “non-factual.”
The three paragraphs, O’Connor says, deal with how Bullers “totally
misrepresented” her.
It is sad, that after all these years in the public eye, The Star
has never told the epic real story of Kay O’Connor, who, speaking
of disadvantaged, grew up on a rough-hewn homestead 10 miles north of
Fairbanks, Alaska, without telephone, electricity, running water or indoor
plumbing.
Forty-some years ago, at age 17, she married husband Art. Together, they
raised six children in their modest Olathe home and now have 13 grandchildren
and four great grandchildren to boot. For all that, she and Art still
hold hands when they think no one is looking.
At age 52, with little formal education beyond high school, O’Connor
plunged into politics, winning a seat in the Kansas State House and later
one in the Senate. If her colleagues were expecting a shy, backward housefrau,
they were in for a rude shock. From the beginning, Kay proved smart and
outspoken—a fact even The Star concedes.
O’Connor has lived a woman’s life about as fully and as boldly
as an American woman could live it. She has earned the right to say any
dang thing she wants to about a woman’s role in the world, even that
women should not have the right to vote.
It’s just that she never did.
The views expressed in this column are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ingram’s Magazine.