The press - ack!

I did a newspaper interview earlier this week about the events that I've been involved in organizing. The journalist was the same one who wrote the horrifically racist article to which some friends and I objected, which led to an insane brouhaha. I did not have high hopes about what would emerge from the interview...but I thought it would all be fairly innocuous.

Not so. I have just seen the article, which focuses on a community event being held downtown. The tone of the article manages to completely misconstrue my remarks and it can be read as me actually taking a position I find absolutely deplorable - the position, in fact, that I explicitly want to AVOID with this whole event. Holy shit - how awful. It makes me want to hide - and it certainly makes me feel like I have to do damage control.

Next I have to do a TV interview - great. I can only hope that the camera will be kinder to my position than this journalist was. It's not that he was trying to be UNkind, it's just that clearly he has NO idea how to see the issue outside of a particular, very negative light that is the bane of my existence.

My one consolation about the article is that my name is spelled wrong. Now, this is in theory just terrible - the man had a press release with my name on it, for goodness sake, and it is all just further proof of the horrible calibre of journalism in this city - but I am actually rejoicing about it because it means that this article won't come up in future if people happen to google me. Phew.

PS - What's even worse? There's plenty o' space on the merit forms to detail every single media interview I give. So this god-awful representation will count for something, when all the real work I've done will not. Love you, universe.