Barnicle apologizes for racial remark
In response to protests by the NAACP and other groups, Mike Barnicle read a 17-minute apology on his radio show yesterday for using a racially and sexually charged word to describe Janet Langhart, a former Channel 5 news personality.
Barnicle used the word "Mandingo" on Tuesday to describe Langhart -- who is African-American and married to former secretary of defense William S. Cohen, who is white -- on WTKK-FM (96.9). Mandingos, or Mandes, are members of a group of West African people. "Mandingo" is also the title of a 1975 movie in which a black male slave is paired intimately with a white female slave master.
WTKK declined to provide tapes of the apology or the original comment. But in an interview yesterday Barnicle talked about what happened on Tuesday. He said someone in the studio asked casually during the broadcast if the pair were married. "I said, `Yeah. I know them both. Bill Cohen. Janet Langhart. Kind of like `Mandingo,' " Barnicle said. (Cohen was in the news because he testified before the commission investigating the 9/11 attacks.) Barnicle said he had no recollection of the slavery aspect of the film. "All I remember is a terrible movie," he said. "Any deeper psychological issues were not there."
Barnicle, who resigned his post as a Globe columnist in 1998 amid questions about his sources, said he decided to apologize on the air because he understands "how someone might think it was offensive." He added: "I've known Janet Langhart for almost 30 years. I have a friendship with her. . . . The idea of me saying anything to diminish someone I regard as a friend is absurd."
Barnicle isn't the first talk show host to refer to interracial couples as Mandingos. According to the media watchdog website tompaine.com, Don Imus used the same term on the air in 2000.
City Councilman Chuck Turner, who went to WTKK this week to hear a tape of Barnicle's remarks after receiving a telephone call about it, said it was "insulting" for Barnicle to take a modern "relationship between a white man and a black woman and equate it to a slave relationship. . . . That kind of thinking leads to racist behavior."
Leonard Alkins, president of the Boston branch of the NAACP, also heard the tape at the station. He said that during the broadcast "there was no discussion about movies. The reference to Bill Cohen was in the context of the 9/11 testimonies. . . . Once again, Mike Barnicle is making excuses. He crossed the line."
WTKK's general manager, Matt Mills, could not be reached yesterday because of a death in his family. Station spokeswoman Leslie Cipolla said she did not know if Barnicle would receive a warning or reprimand for his actions when Mills returns.
The off-color remark was made less than a month after Barnicle referred to Oscar nominees Shohreh Aghdashloo and Djimon Hounsou as "terrorists." Aghdashloo, who is Iranian, was nominated for best supporting actress for "House of Sand and Fog," and Hounsou, who was born in Africa and raised in France, was nominated for best supporting actor for "In America."
Although Cipolla confirmed at the time that Barnicle had made the remark, Barnicle denied it yesterday. "I never called anyone a terrorist," he said. "I said [Aghdashloo] sounds like a terrorist's name. I didn't even know she was Iranian."
Barnicle, who three weeks ago began writing a column twice a week for the Boston Herald, said he doesn't like the current talk show climate in which, he says, the "word police" rule.
"What are we going to do here? Apologize for getting up in the morning?" he said. "I think the roots of our cultural sensitivity are at an all-time high. This nation's cultural nerve endings are so exposed. Yes, we all have a responsibility to be civil. . . . I'm not in the business to offend anyone."
Howard Manly, president of the Boston Association of Black Journalists and a former Globe reporter who is now a columnist at the Boston Herald, said he suggested to Mills this week that the station examine its record of minority hires as a means to combat "this kind of ignorance."
In an e-mail message forwarded to the Globe by Manly, Mills wrote: "I too, am disturbed by what happened. . . . I would welcome a meeting with you to see how we could get future applicants for openings that may arise. . . . One of my disappointments
. . . is the total lack of respondents from the black community that
we receive when we have openings." Manly said he plans to meet with Mills next week, with resumes from African-Americans in hand. "For them to suggest that they can't find anybody is insulting, ludicrous, and more of a problem than the actual words Barnicle said on the air," Manly said.
