Hearne: Carol Coe Reality Check

If it’s fair to cancel people for what they said years ago…

Why not have a little reality/accountability for our new racially in tune pals at KC’s newspaper of record?

Take the recent passing of fiery former KC City Councilperson and attorney Carol Coe.

Coe and I had a special bond that transcended her difficult relationship with most of the  reporters and editors at the Kansas City Star.

It’s hard to say which came first – the chicken or the egg – in terms of who disliked who the most.  This much I can assure you though:  prior to her stroke, Coe took as many shots from and suffered as much disrespect as the Star could dish out. Which in all likelihood resulted in her being a one term  City Council person

Return with me now to my early days running the KC Pitch when Coe was representing embattled KC fire chief Gilbert Dowdy  – soon to be convicted of heading up an allegedly $50 million a year drug ring with crack cocaine.

You won’t find this story on the Pitch website as it went down in 1990, years prior to the alt weekly’s foray into the Internet.

How huge was the story in KC at the time?

So much that not only did Dowdy get a life sentence with no parole, along with a lengthy lecture by the judge at his sentencing, but 15 years later the Star described Dowdy as, “arguably Kansas City’s most infamous purveyor of illegal substances since the era of Prohibition.”

Despite that, Dowdy was released on essentially a technicality in 2016.

My initial time with Coe came during Dowdy’s trial and involved Star reporter Tom Jackman – now hanging on for dear life at the Washington Post – who was almost fired for kissing up to Dowdy during his prosecution in an effort to try and snag a book deal (while reporting on Dowdy for the newspaper. Huge no-no at a time when journalistic standards actually existed.

Jackman had given= Coe a note for Dowdy in which Jackman described the Star as a racist publication.

Coe fed me Jackman’s poorly worded note to Dowdy who had been punished by the judge for leaking stories to the media. In this case  one that ran under Jackman’s byline (unbeknownst to Jackman) after fellow Star reporter Joe Stephens. had tricked Dowdy into making a comment he’d been forbidden by the judge to do.

Dowdy had been trashing the court almost daily  to radio bad boy Randy Miller and had been silenced by the judge.

Naturally we did a huge front page Pitch cover story and surrounded the Star offices during the lunch hour  the day the issue came out, passing out copies there at 18th and Grand.

The Star tried to dilute our showmanship by sending a woman reporter to try and get me to say something dumb (a specialty of mine), but I dodged the bullet by staying off-the-record.

Jackman was lucky to get out of it with a huge wrist slap and probably was put on probation – remember, this is when the newspaper took journalism seriously and Jackman’s playing tennis with Dowdy and other transgressions, like trashing the Star for racism did not go over well.

The newspaper was far from being thrilled with Carol Coe either, to whom Jackman had given his note, making it fairly obvious who my source was.

Later the volatile, unpredictable Coe became a councilwoman and the newspaper continued to bag on her. Probably the best way to describe her relationship with the Star is to liken it to that of the controversial Clay Chastain. who to this day, the newspaper pretty much hates.

Of course now that the powers that be at the Star have decided that black lives do indeed matter, it bends over backwards to try and turn mole hills into mountains. Thus,  out of the clear blue sky – Coe’s recent  death culminated in her being exalted as a civil rights “activist” and pioneer that “rocked the boat in Kansas City but her heart was in it.”

Coe would be in shock and disbelief to read such glowing words.

Based on how Coe was treated by the Star, that’s one heck of an after-the-fact puff piece.

Go figure.

I wonder if they’ll be as charitable when Chastain (and I) check out?

Fat chance.