Robert Stacy McCain’s Angry Departure From the Washington Times
The page isn’t live any more, but Google still has a cached copy of a revealing story about racist blogger Robert Stacy McCain, and his angry departure from the staff of the Washington Times: GEORGE ARCHIBALD: BREAKUP AT THE WASHINGTON TIMES?
FishbowlDC, an Internet Web site of MediaBistro, reported on August 22, 2007, a huge blow-up in the newsroom at The Washington Times involving bad-tempered white supremacist assistant national editor Robert Stacy McCain and fellow editor Victor Morton, an orthodox Catholic – with McCain angrily resigning and slamming his way out of the building through side-doors where he always went every 20 minutes to smoke a cigarette.
I have confirmed the details of FishbowlDC’s account through several Washington Times newsroom sources who I trust and with whom I worked for many years. These sources witnessed the ugly blow-up.
I know Stacy McCain, an ill-tempered racist who sat on the other side of my desk for many years and carried on loud telephone conversations almost every day full of racist and ultra-right comments, and often got into loud verbal fights with both reporters and editors in the newsroom.
I also knew Victor Morton for many years, hard-working night editor whose editorial skills in juggling copy and myriad incoming stories at once on deadline were marvelous and unquestioned.
In more than 21 years as a national news and investigative reporter at The Washington Times, Victor Morton was among the best and most capable editors I ever worked with on deadline –- which is crunch-time as stories are finally coming together and the paper is being made up decisions on page-placement, photos, graphics, and headlines.
Stacy McCain, on the other hand, who has run the Page A2 Culture page for The Washington Times for many years under national editor Kenneth Hanner and Managing Editor Francis B. Coombs Jr., is a friend of neo-Nazis such as William A. White of Roanoke, Virginia, and had the favor of Coombs and his wife Marian Kester Coombs, who in her own right has a long-reported history of white-supremacist writings.
Fran Coombs and Stacy McCain for many years have ridden roughshod over newsroom colleagues of all ethnic and other backgrounds at The Washington Times with their explosive and vitrioloic racist white-supremacist tirades on a frequent basis.
Coombs, the newspaper’s managing editor and presumptive heir-apparent to Wesley Pruden Jr. as editor-in-chief of The Washington Times has always supported McCain –- even when he wrote blog messages on the Internet that were patently racist, anti-black and anti-Jew.
The neo-Nazi mentioned above, William White, is the person who emailed me threats, tried to find my home address and the addresses of my family to post them on the web, and is currently charged with threatening several other people in the same way.
Here’s more on McCain’s connection to neo-Nazi Bill White: EXCLUSIVE: PITTS HARASSER LINKED TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES.
June 21, 2007, 9:30 a.m. - A white supremacist, responsible for the ongoing harassment of Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts, claims to be good friends with top level staffers at The Washington Times, and has been published numerous times by the publication.
The nationally syndicated Miami Herald columnist has received hostile emails and phone calls at his home in Maryland, as a result of Bill White’s white supremacist-focused Web site Overthrow.com publishing his private information.
“[Robert] Stacy McCain is a pretty good friend of mine, Francis Coombs is a big fan of our website,” White wrote on his Web site in 2005.
Coombs is the managing editor of The Times and thought to be the hand-picked successor for the top job, should his boss Editor-in-Chief Wesley Pruden resign. McCain is an assistant national editor at The Times.
Coombs’ secretary told Redding News Review that he does not know White.
McCain, who has been linked to a pro-slavery group in the past, admits to knowing White.
“I first encountered Bill White who was, at that time, head of something called the Utopian Anarchist Party. He later, I believe, changed the name of his group to the Libertarian Socialist Party,” McCain wrote in an emailed response. “In the past few years, Bill has associated himself with neo-Nazism. I have no explanation for this bizarre turn, except as a continuation of his tendency toward radicalism.
”The ‘link’ you assert is non-existent, and is irrelevant to anything happening in 2007“ to Pitts, McCain wrote in an another emailed response. ”That kind of thing is completely wrong. Opinion journalism should be provocative, and provocative opinions will necessarily generate strong disagreement, but disagreeing with someone’s opinion should not lead to death threats, slurs, etc.“
What’s more, White has also claimed to know Coombs’ wife, Marian Kester, who has also been tagged a racist in the past.
”I once suggested to Mrs[.] Coombs that the Washington Times should more virulently criticize the Zionist Entity,“ he wrote in 2005, ”and she told me that several Jewish columnists — Charles Krauthammer, Norman Podhoretz and AM Rosenthal, among others — had threatened the Moonie organization if they ever took an anti-Zionist stance.“
A Redding News Review investigation confirms that White has written numerous letters published in The Times.
According to his own blog, his writings have appeared in The Times on ”Page A2“, a section McCain is responsible for, at least four times:
1. ”Insanity Factories“, Washington Times, Page A2 March 9, 2000
2. ”Southern Pride“, Washington Times, Page A2 June 13, 2000
3. ”Hate, hate, hate“, Washington Times, Page A2 June 26, 2000
4. ”Musical Nihilism“, Washington Times, Page A2 June 27, 2000
Here’s more about Robert Stacy McCain’s racist writings.
UPDATE at 9/13/09 10:24:42 pm:
More on Robert Stacy McCain’s connections to Bill White, who he met at a conference of the white supremacist group American Renaissance: The Misanthrope.
After about six months, White left the Pravda job. He was growing closer and closer to the leaders of the radical right, as shown by his attendance at the 2002 conference of American Renaissance, a white supremacist journal. While there, he met a reporter for the far-right Washington Times, Robert Stacy McCain. Before long, White was being quoted in the Times, including in a story on an “alternative currency” issued by extremists. Described as “a Web development consultant for political and corporate clients,” White gushed on about the dubious notes.
Frank says: