A Shaky Start for Trib’s New TV Critic
“I appreciate the fact that in today’s Tribune the new TV critic, Ken Parish Perkins, writing in Tempo, likes me. And I do appreciate that. But Ken, I’d rather have you dislike me than misquote me.”
And he laughed. A Tribune editor might call the laugh chilling.
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When Olson got to the office it was clear to her what had to be done. If Sirott was wrong, the Tribune would ask for an apology. If he was right, the paper would run a correction. Perkins checked his notes and tape.
So–a rough start for the most interesting new face of the Howard Tyner era. Perkins, who’s 35, grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes and is now one of two black TV critics at daily papers in the country. Entertainment editor Gary Dretzka hired him away from the Dallas Morning News. One of the clips that impressed Dretzka most was Perkins’s critique of I’ll Fly Away, the civil rights series set in the south. Most critics loved it. “I’ve always thought that one thing television’s been able to do is deal with racism back in the 50s,” Perkins told us. “It’s always been very difficult for it to deal with racism as you see it in the 90s. I didn’t want a weekly visit to this place where you had to cross the street when a white was walking toward you, where you kept your eyes down. For me, as an African American, I didn’t want to see it every week.”
New York Times: “The American College of Surgeons today endorsed a health care system in which the role of private insurance companies would be eliminated and the Government would pay for health care. The group, which presented its views in a Congressional hearing today, is the first large organization of doctors to support such a single-payer system, the kind of system used in Canada.”
