Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 7, 1990 TAG: 9005070204
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
In the outburst Friday outside Ji-Yeon Mary Yuh's presence, the 61-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist called the reporter "slant-eyed." He also said, "She's a yellow cur. Let's make it racial."
Breslin apologized to Newsday staffers Friday in an internal computer message that read in part: "I am no good and once again I can prove it. . . . I am sorry. I said things I shouldn't have said. The racial and sexual insults I spewed are never appropriate."
Helen Zia, president of the New York chapter of the Asian-American Journalists Association, said the apology was "very flip." On Sunday, Zia's group joined the Coalition Against Anti-Asian Violence and the Organization of Asian Women in demanding Breslin resign or be fired, and that he publicly apologize to Yuh.
In his column today, Breslin wrote that "it is absolutely nuts to say that I am bigoted against a young woman from anywhere, including a young woman who is Asian."
"Rage is the only quality that has kept me, or anybody I ever studied, writing newspaper columns," he added. "I can control the rage in my writing, which is what I get paid for. I do not control it when I'm shouting off the written record."
Newsday spokeswoman Chiara Coletti said the paper plans no further action against Breslin, who writes about New York City in hard-bitten, streetwise fashion and covered the Son of Sam case in 1977 for the Daily News. He won a Pulitzer for commentary in 1986.
His remarks were reported by the Daily News and in a letter of complaint to Newsday managers signed by 46 members of the paper's staff. The columnist's apology to the staff came after a computer reprimand from editor Don Forst calling his comments "offensive and inexcusable."
"It proves that racism comes in all kinds of packaging," said Yuh, a 25-year-old native of Chicago. "You can encounter it anywhere, from your colleagues, in the boardroom, from your neighbors - not necessarily people in a white sheet with baseball bats."
Yuh said she never met Breslin or communicated with him before she sent him an internal message complaining his Thursday column was "spewing sexism."
Breslin had written that he hated "official women," including his wife, City Councilwoman Ronnie Eldridge, who he said devoted too much of her time to government duties and not enough to the home.
by CNB