Bookfest Loses a Friend
Dan McComb has been Northwest Bookfest's webmaster for four years. Months ago, when Bookfest owed McComb more than $500 (they have since paid him), he let them carry the debt interest-free, explaining, "I love the festival and want it to survive." It would be fair to say that McComb no longer loves the festival. More precisely, he doesn't love festival organizers' decision to invite former LAPD detective turned crime writer Mark Fuhrman. McComb said on Sunday, "I will give them 30 days to find another web host."
McComb only realized Fuhrman's involvement in the festival last week, while preparing to distribute Bookfest's latest e-newsletter. During last-minute text revisions, McComb was asked by Bookfest's Eleanor Mason to correct the spelling of Fuhrman's name on the author list. "I was shocked," McComb said. "I said, 'Not the Mark Fuhrman who is a convicted liar and is widely regarded as a racist. You're inviting him here?'"
Yup, that Mark Fuhrman, the Fuhrman who committed perjury on the stand during the O. J. Simpson trial. His name was buried in last week's newsletter between descriptions of a panel on women's writing and a reading by the affable librarian Nancy Pearl. The newsletter referred to Fuhrman as "the author of Death and Justice." Elsewhere, Fuhrman has been referred to as a "convicted perjurer" (New Yorker), a "rabid racist" (Guardian), a "bigot and a braggart" (New York Post), and a "creep" (Baltimore Sun). He achieved notoriety in the Simpson trial by claiming he never used the n-word; a tape later surfaced on which he said it 41 times. Fuhrman also made headlines in 1995 when a newspaper photographer in Spokane accused Fuhrman of assaulting him with a briefcase. That photographer, bizarrely enough, was Dan McComb. (Back then, McComb was a photographer for the Spokesman-Review. The newspaper asked him not to press charges. He didn't.)
McComb simply doesn't want to associate himself with a festival that associates itself with Fuhrman, and he says it's less about the assault ("That was seven years ago and I'm over it") than what Fuhrman's invitation must say about Bookfest's literary values. McComb said, "Bookfest is mistaking Seattle's literary audience with the talk-show radio audience of Spokane and North Idaho," where Fuhrman lives and is an on-air personality.
Reached for comment, Bookfest's Eleanor Mason said, "Part of Bookfest's mission is to promote the exchange of ideas. And also to get people to think."
"What's he going to talk about?" a friend asked. "Being a racist pig?" (Fuhrman has repeatedly said, "I am not a racist.") Our attempts to contact Fuhrman through e-mail and at radio station KXLY were unsuccessful.
"I've been a longtime friend of Northwest Bookfest," McComb said. "But when Mark Fuhrman gets on is when I get off."
