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This Just In: Media

Don Feder's maladroit maliciousness

By Dan Kennedy

If nothing else, the Puerto Rican community's protest outside the Boston Herald on Monday is proof that at least a few people managed to drag themselves through one of op-ed columnist Don Feder's dreary right-wing screeds.

The protesters ("some 100," according to the Herald; "more than 100," according to New England Cable News; "an estimated 500," according to the Globe) were angered by a recent piece in which Feder argued against statehood for Puerto Rico. Among other things, Feder referred to the island as "this Caribbean Dogpatch" and said statehood would bring "more welfare recipients, higher crime rates, and an alien culture." Herald publisher Pat Purcell responded to the protest by apologizing on the editorial page but declined to cage his pit bull.

To be sure, the Puerto Rican community's complaints were right on the mark. But Feder's poorly written tracts have been so outrageous for so long that it is the rare victim of his clumsily wielded poison pen who actually takes him seriously. The gay community reacts in anger whenever the Herald's Howie Carr or Joe Fitzgerald, or the Globe's Jeff Jacoby, writes something homophobic. Yet Feder's far more vicious pieces barely register in the public consciousness. To most, Feder's twice-a-week column has become the journalistic equivalent of an obnoxious panhandler: unpleasant, but best ignored.

A graduate of Boston University and its law school, Feder at one time was active in Young Americans for Freedom along with fellow fledgling conservatives David Brudnoy, now with WBZ Radio, and Dan Rea, of WBZ-TV. Brudnoy, of course, is one of the most successful radio-talk-show hosts in the country, and Rea is a respected reporter. Feder, by contrast, has never broken out of right-wing circles. He writes occasionally for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, and last October he received an award from the government of Taiwan, whose praises Feder was singing long before it stopped torturing dissidents.

Perhaps Feder's most outrageous moment came in 1988, when he wrote a column suggesting that Kitty Dukakis would set a poor example as the first Jewish first lady because she had married outside the faith and appeared not to regard religion with sufficient seriousness. Four years later, writing in the Jewish Advocate, Feder blasted New England Anti-Defamation League head Lenny Zakim, who'd had the temerity to criticize that column as well as Feder's anti-gay pieces, for advocating "the profanation of the Divine name." Feder added: "Mosaic law condemns homosexual conduct in the strongest possible language, calling it 'an abomination,' a term of censure reserved for the most depraved acts, including idol worship, human sacrifice, and ritual prostitution."

The lesson, apparently, is that if you call a hatemonger a hatemonger, you'll be accused of drinking human blood on a pagan altar in between visits to the friendly neighborhood brothel. The Puerto Rican protesters might keep that in mind as they await Feder's response.