HUFFINGTON
12.09.12
OUT AT THE TIMES
said, ‘We know you’ve
been screwed, but don’t
do anything rash. You
have a long career ahead
of you, and Rosenthal
will be leaving soon.’”
Peter Millones, an
assistant professor at
Columbia University
School of Journalism,
was at that time an assistant managing editor
at The Times. He recalls hiring Meislin. “It
didn’t occur to me to tell
Rosenthal or anyone else
that [Meislin] was gay,”
he says. “I don’t recall
why the decision was
made to bring him back,
but it would make sense
[that it was because he
was gay]. Abe was a tyrannical executive.”
Rosenthal says the entire incident “never happened,” claiming that
“this is the first time I’ve
ever heard of that.” He
also comments that “people who are used to being
discriminated against will
sometimes take certain
acts as being discriminatory when they’re not.’’
NO MATTER
HOW MUCH
ACTIVISTS
PROTESTED,
ROSENTHAL
REFUSED TO
LET THE WORD
GAY BE USED
IN THE PAPER
— even after 15 years
of pressure — except in
names of organizations
or in quotes.
Dudley Clendinen, who
recently stepped down
from a position as a managing editor at the Baltimore Sun, was a reporter
at The Times in the early
’80s. “Abe had a dinner party at his home on
Central Park West for me
and [theater critic] Frank
Rich when we joined
The Times in 1980,” he
recalls. “Part of the conversation that night was
about The Times policy
with regard to the use of
the word homosexual instead of gay. I argued that
homosexual was a clinical
word that robbed people
of their humanity. Abe
didn’t agree. His attitude
was that the general culture only saw the subject
scientifically. The conversation went nowhere.”
Rosenthal now says
that he banned the word
gay in the early ’70s because he “felt at that
time that The Times
should not use a word
for political purposes
until that word has become accepted as part of
the language,” as if The
Times is merely a barometer of public opinion and not also a powerful catalyst for change.
How could the word be
“accepted as part of the
language” if The Times
refused to acknowledge
it? And wasn’t it equally “political” to not use
the word? By not using gay, The Times held
back a social movement,
refusing to give it legitimacy. Rosenthal admits,