Saturday, January 19, 2013
Are guns a public health epidemic?
Most debates about gun control are lost before they begin. Gun advocates claim that any restriction or regulation of any type violates their individual rights under the Constitution. One Texas columnist, Ken Herman, compared banning guns to banning alcohol – we tried that in the Prohibition era and it didn’t work – people still got alcohol.
What’s wrong with this reasoning is that the entire logic is flawed. No one is clamoring for the prohibition of all guns. Leading gun control groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence are not calling for a ban on guns, even military-assault weapons that are specifically designed for mass killing (that group is only asking “to limit the availability of military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines”).
If one wants to make a valid comparison between guns and alcohol, then start treating gun violence in at least the same way we do alcohol or tobacco: as a public health epidemic. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently came out with that recommendation, since about 32,000 Americans die every year from gun violence (three times as many deaths than are caused by drunk driving accidents).
National policies as well as grassroots programs have reduced alcohol and tobacco-related deaths over the years. For example, the number of drunk-driving deaths has been cut in half since 1980. Since Hollywood glamorizes the use of guns, why not de-glamorize their use in the mass media? It used to be considered sexy to smoke, but a sustained education program about the dangers of tobacco use reversed that attitude. We could also start taxing gun makers –most make a profit from combat weapons – and put the money back into public education programs about guns.
Why do we have airbags and seat belts in cars? Because studies of infant deaths and car accidents led to those safety regulations. Car manufacturers didn't voluntarily make those life-saving features -- they were forced to by government regulations.
Gun enthusiasts often compare guns to cars, saying more people die from car accidents than from guns (actually the number is almost the same now). A similar argument was used in the 1950s by car manufacturers, who said “Cars don’t kill people; people do.” As one of the Harvard researchers of that study (David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center) pointed out, it wasn’t until physicians and other public health advocates came together that the government adopted more stringent safety standards such as mandating seat belts and air bags. In order to drive a car, you have to pass a test before you can operate a vehicle, but in most states you don’t have to pass a test or take a gun safety class in order to use a gun. You have to register your vehicle every year to continue to use it, but you don’t have to register your gun in many states. And of course we have strong laws against drinking and driving, but no comparable laws concerning a far more dangerous product: guns.
The simple fact is that guns are one of the least-regulated products in the United States. For example, manufacturers of aspirin are required to have child-proof safety bottles, but manufacturers of guns don’t have to make child-proof guns, despite the fact that one child dies every three days from accidental firearm deaths in this country, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The federal government has more regulations on the construction of ladders than it does on gun safety (just Google the term “ladder safety and OSHA”). Why? Because guns are the only consumer product exempt from federal product safety regulations (and the National Rifle Association, which has successfully prevented funding for gun research, wants to keep it that way). Negligent gun companies are also the only businesses shielded from state civil justice laws, so corrupt gun sellers are not held accountable.
Yes, “messing with constitutional rights is a serious business,” but if one bothers to read the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision one will find that this constitutional right is not absolute and is subject to restriction. The Supreme Court ruled that the D.C. ban on all handguns was unconstitutional, but found that the right to keep and bear arms is subject to regulation and limits. Even the very conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the majority opinion that “the Second Amendment is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”
The issue is not outlawing guns, but instituting reasonable regulations on what is inarguably a dangerous product. Common sense gun restrictions that the vast majority of Americans support, such as universal background checks, tougher safety standards for manufacturers (such as gun locks), and restricting their access to criminals, the mentally ill, domestic abusers and other dangerous people would not violate the right to own a gun under the Second Amendment, but would go far to help reduce the body count and save some of those 87 people who die every day from gun violence in the U.S.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
E-readers: a boon to reading or a destroyer of books?
Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I loved to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once, before we let them go." --Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The strange cell-phone-like metal tablet sat in its leather case on my dresser for a week. My 8-year-old son was curious about it, since it looked a lot like his GameBoy or Nintendo DS. He wanted to use it more than I did.
Although only 7 percent of Americans read e-books, I felt like one of the few holdouts of the digital reading revolution sweeping the country. E-book sales have more than doubled in each of the last three years, and Amazon.com is selling more Kindle books than paperbacks now. The price alone is enticing enough, with e-books roughly half the price of hardback books. Access, availability and portability are all benefits, and users can also read their Kindle books on other electronic devices.
E-reading is supposed to be the wave of the future, and some say the shift to e-books is inevitable. Pundits cite the rise of e-books as a major contributor to the demise of traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores like Borders. Even libraries are changing their circulations by offering more e-books and audiovisual items and fewer print books. Digital publishing is altering both readers and writers’ habits, and traditional print book sales are on the decline. But as an author and longtime book-lover, I’ve been holding out on this future by refusing to read complete books on anything but hard and soft-cover bindings stitched together from dead trees. I like the feel of a book – the ability to manually flip ahead or back to any page I wish. I even like the smell of books. If it’s new I imagine the printing process that went into the careful selection of typography and the binding and stitching; if it’s old I like to imagine the owner who had it last. The pages connect me both to the author and past readers in a surreal, vicarious way that makes the printed book a special and valued possession. I view books not as convenient reading vehicles or as collectible pieces, but as John Milton did, as the “precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on a purpose to a life beyond life.”
I could not think of this electronic device on loan from the local library as a book or even a reading device to books. So when I had time to read, I would pick up a “real” book from my bookshelf and take it with me, leaving the Kindle in its purse-like holder. But with just a few days to go before the Kindle was due to be returned, I took the plunge. I slowly unzipped the case and looked at this thin, black tablet with a screen the size of an average printed photograph (which may also be doomed for extinction). An image of Agatha Christie stared at me from the screen, imploring me to explore.
“Slide and release the power switch to view” the laminated page of instructions read. As I did Agatha disappeared and a list of titles instantly popped up on screen – 72 titles to be exact – that the local library had already uploaded for me. Sarah Palin’s America by Heart; The Autobiography of Mark Twain; John Grisham’s new novel, The Confession; Tom Clancy’s Dead or Alive; Ken Follett’s Fall of Giants; even Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein was on the list. I scrolled down the list and highlighted one called Less Is More, a book about graphics and presentations. After discovering that I could ‘turn’ pages by clicking on the forward arrow key, I started reading. Scanning through the screen pages, I was surprised to see some blank pages with a note that said “These page notes require the use of PowerPoint.” Evidently this software wasn’t installed on this particular Kindle, so I couldn’t view all pages in this book.
Scanning the list of books again, I chose a Stephen Hawking book to peruse next. Reading a book on a small screen was not as uncomfortable as I imagined – the screen was bright and the words clear and legible. It took just a few minutes to get used to the page “blink” that happens each time you press the ‘Next Page’ button. While the words were easy to read, the graphics were not; cartoons and other images reproduced from the book did not appear as clear as the text. What did prove uncomfortable was not the process of reading, but the physical feel of the device. Holding the Kindle proved to be problematic for me, at least at first. Do I hold it up on my knees? Prop it up in front of my face? Straddle it on my chest? Hold it with both palms? When I placed my fingers on the device, I sometimes accidentally hit the wrong button and lost my place in the book. Once it slid off my lap while reading.
Since I had already started reading The Autobiography of Mark Twain: Vol. I, a 737-page, 2-inch thick hardback book given to me as a Christmas present, I decided to try and pick it up on the Kindle, to compare reading experiences. I had dog-eared page 144 on Twain’s book, the place where he had recalled meeting American newspaper publisher Horace Greeley. How would I find this place on the Kindle version?
The directions read: ‘Press Menu while inside the book to activate search functions.” I typed in “Greeley” and pressed location number 4136 – success! Now I could curl up in bed with a cozy machine to read my favorite American author.
The experiment surprised me. Unlike the large printed book, the Kindle version of Twain’s autobiography was obviously lighter to hold and actually easier to read. Although the printer of Twain’s autobiography used a readable font (Adobe Garamond) for the text, the typeface was too small for my taste. The Kindle version, on the other hand, had a font size that could be changed to suit your taste. If you wanted the text bigger, you could easily make it bigger. You could even change your preferred words per line. One minor difference in the Kindle version of Twain’s work irritated me: the Kindle did not italicize the editor’s notes, often used as a preface to Twain’s entries, which left me momentarily confused as to who was writing – Twain or one of the editors.
One strong advantage of the Kindle or the other e-readers like the Nook is the ability to make annotations – bookmarks, highlights, and notes. You can take notes on the mini-keyboard at the bottom of the e-reader, or you can highlight text by pressing the Menu button and selecting “My Notes and Marks,” then electronically highlight the text (which appears with a gray underline). You can also import your notes and highlights into a Microsoft Word document. Privacy advocates have criticized Amazon for collecting this information, however, and a new Kindle feature now lets users choose to make their notes and highlights available for others to see.
After becoming accustomed to holding the Kindle, I read Twain’s work swiftly: Indeed, it seemed more swiftly than I would have read in the hardback book, although this was probably due to the smaller font in the printed autobiography. I never had to adjust the screen brightness, which was crystal clear in daylight or in artificial light. I trained myself to read differently with the Kindle, which eschews the tactile sensation one has reading a printed book in favor of the visual sensation. After reading for awhile, my fingers wanted to “leaf through” pages that weren’t there. I have a habit of leafing back in a book’s prior pages to review; but with a Kindle, I would have to do a computer-like search. Sure, I could search like I do on Google for specific references, but I couldn’t manually review or preview pages like I do through a book or newspaper. But after about one hour of reading, I became accustomed to reading on the screen, and could easily press a button called “Bookmark” to leave the e-book for a lunch break. When I returned, I began where I left off, and read easily and speedily. I began to like reading this way.
When I had to return the Kindle, I did not want to part with it. I actually preferred reading Twain’s book on the Kindle, because the hardback was too bulky and heavy to read comfortably. My experiment with Kindle left me ambivalent towards the device. I wanted to buy one now, but I also felt I have too many older books in my library waiting to be read. I also felt guilty that I liked reading a book on a Kindle.
My reasons for not liking the Kindle were more philosophical than practical. The news of the Borders bankruptcy made me feel like anyone who buys a Kindle or a Nook e-reader is contributing to the disappearance of bookstores. The printed word maintains an enduring value that e-books don’t possess. When my own nonfiction book was published, I felt as sense of accomplishment and permanence that could never be replaced by online publishing. Printed books are part of history that online books can never be. Are book signings also doomed for extinction? (For one author’s hilarious take on this, see this You Tube video at http://youtu.be/v24BqTv8v5U .
I also object to Amazon’s push to “connect” the Kindle to the Internet. An Internet-connected Kindle would destroy the book reading experience, which is designed to be a deliberative, reflective process of quiet solitude. Connecting a book to the sporadic whims of Google searches and the bombardment of online games and social media plug-ins would not be book-reading, but would be a kind of Web-reading that encourages scanning and online distractions that a real book takes us away from. It also left me wondering whether I actually read faster on the Kindle, or did I read like I do on the Web, non-linearly and less focused, favoring browsing and scanning over sustained deep reading? I wonder how much information e-readers comprehend versus book readers. Do book readers process more or less than e-readers?
Amazon’s push to make reading a social occasion is also disturbing because the company collects data on every reader’s habits. Not only does Amazon know what books you download, they know what passages of the books most interest you. Readers can “rate” the book and share messages with their online social networks. Amazon also lets you see how many others have highlighted specific passages in a book. What’s next? Stop what you’re reading to have instant chats about a passage you’ve just marked? Ben Vershbow of the Institute for the Future of the Book thinks so. “Soon, books will literally have discussions inside of them, both live chats and asynchronous exchanges through comments and social annotation. You will be able to see who else out there is reading the book and open up a dialog with them." See http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6332156.html
As writers, we are told we have to adapt to this new erratic, interrupted form of reading, that we have to tailor our works to new websites and social media networks to be relevant, but I hope that’s not the future of books. Books remain books because of the solitary enjoyment they provide us; not because of the shared experience by the distracted consumer culture on the World Wide Web – a culture that values impatience, disruptions, and ever-more fast information retrieval over the focused, contemplative literary culture. The process of solitary reading requires sustained, focused attention where individuals read for the sake of personal fulfillment and enlightenment, and I fear the e-readers are changing that process.
Perhaps my refusal to buy an e-reader has more to do with principles than convenience and simplicity. If I bought an e-reader, am I buying another nail in the coffin for the brick-and-mortar bookstore? Is it a coincidence that Amazon.com named its e-reader the “kindle," a word that means ignite or set ablaze? Is the Kindle starting a fire to burn the printed word of books, like the firefighters of the future did in Fahrenheit 451? Or is the Kindle a boon to reading, enncouraging people to read more, not less? That’s the question book lovers are grappling with today, and the debate is just beginning.
###
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Does Sarah Palin have blood on her hands?
By Michael Burton
The reaction of ultra-conservative pundits to the terrible tragedy in Arizona is sadly predictable. Since they already control talk radio and the bulk of the broadcast news market (with Fox News, conservatives are now attempting to re-frame the debate over the causes to the tragedy, portraying themselves as the victims of this bloody massacre, instead of the innocents who got shot with a semiautomatic weapon.
Already, Sarah Palin has invoked a little known anti-Semitic phrase (“blood libel”), to position herself as a victim of the “liberal media.” In her carefully crafted Internet message more than four days after the shooting, she said: “Within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.” Uhh? So incendiary language espousing violence against the government didn’t incite the hatred, but criticism of ultra-conservatives did? There’s a nonsequitur. Rush Limbaugh even jokingly suggested the Democrats had arranged a mass murder for their own political benefit, and seriously opined that liberal Democrats are “doing everything in their power to aid and help" Loughner (see http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/11/limbaugh_sigh ).
To be fair, the mainstream media is partly to blame for allowing commentators like Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck to control the debate. Progressives have been concerned about the toxic political atmosphere that has led to an increase in both threats and gun violence against government officials during the last two years. So when they pleaded for some restoration of sanity and civil discourse in our political debate, the media rushed to frame the story with headlines such as “Is politics to blame for Arizona shootings?”
In the revelations that followed the killings, it’s pretty clear that Jared Loughner didn’t follow any clear political ideology. Still, his assassination attempt of a Democratic congresswoman is, by very definition, a political assassination attempt, and the gunman himself defined his act as such. He didn’t target a musician or actor, he targeted a United States representative who had already been threatened for her healthcare reform vote and opposition to Arizona’s immigration law. She wasn’t just a supporter of then healthcare bill, she favored a public option in health insurance reform (http://giffords.house.gov/2010/03/us-rep-gabrielle-giffords-statement-on-health-insurance-reform.shtml ).
While journalists and the FBI are still trying to make sense of Loughner’s extreme views, it’s clear the 22-year-old loner had much more in common with right-wing hate groups than he did with the radical left ( see http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2011/01/09/who-is-jared-lee-loughner/ ). Loughner, like many elements in the Tea Party, were extremely angry against the federal government. Like the Tea Party Patriot Movement and the anti-New World Order movements, Loughner saw the federal government as the enemy. He also reportedly espoused extreme anti-abortion sentiments. And, according to Fox News, the Department of Homeland Security suspects Loughner had ties to a pro-Tea Party white supremacist, anti-immigrant organization called American Renaissance.
Loughner’s obsession with currency not being backed by gold and silver is a core idea of the militia, or Patriot, movement. Also, his rambling Internet missives come from well known online sources of the radical right. His theory on grammar, especially, comes from the writings of the Milwaukee-based, far right activist David Wynn Miller (http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/10/jared-lee-loughner-s-mental-state.html). These insights into Loughner’s views are not assigning blame to any political party; they are reasonable and justifiable investigations into his motives and state of mind. He may indeed be mentally insane (which I’m sure his defense will argue, although no doctor has made that evaluation), but to think that his actions stand in a vacuum from the current political climate is naïve. “He was all about less government and less America,” one of Loughner's senior high school classmates said to the New York Times, adding, “He thought it was full of conspiracies."
Loughner’s anti-government views and far right-wing conspiracy theories have witnessed a big resurgence since President Obama was inaugurated.
If anyone thinks these conspiracy theories are just the ramblings of one man or a few nutcases, think again. Many of the far-right conspiracy theories found mainstream acceptance after Barack Obama was elected, thanks to talk commentators like G. Gordon Liddy and even Lou Dobbs. Last year, more than 60 percent of registered Republicans said they were either unsure or disbelieved the president was born in this country (see January 2009 post in this blog that details the mainstream media’s failure to expose or discredit these conspiracy groups). While radical left conspiracy groups also exist, they pale in comparison to the rise and level of violence associated with extremist right-wing organizations (from 2009 to 2010 the number of anti-government ‘Patriot’ and militia groups has jumped 244 percent, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center).
Since the last presidential election, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in gun violence from right-wing groups, including the neo-Nazi assailant who killed the security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. to the Knoxville, Tennessee man who killed two people at a progressive church (he said he really “wanted to kill every Democrat in the Senate and House”). For an eye-opening account of violent threats and acts against the government, read http://www.csgv.org/issues-and-campaigns/guns-democracy-and-freedom/insurrection-timeline. Much of this violence from neo-Nazi and white supremacy groups has gone under-reported by the mainstream media. And, as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence reports, some of the calls to take up arms against government officials have come from talk show hosts.
Underlying all of this is the violent rhetoric of popular conservative commentators and Tea Party politicians. Fox commentator Glenn Beck has fantasized about “citizen militias in the South and West taking up arms against the U.S. government" and advocated violent actions against a "tryannical" government. Left-leaning commentators didn’t incite violence against the government when Bush was president.
When Fox viewers hear Glen Beck say things like “There is a coup going on...grab a torch...the war is just beginning,” and Tea Party leader Sharron Angle talking about using “second amendment remedies” to “take back our country,” this rhetoric doesn’t fall on deaf ears. Palin’s infamous map using crosshairs from a gun scope to target Democrats in Congress should be troubling to most people. Yes, some Democratic members have used targets in other maps, but they didn’t use gun crosshairs or gun metaphors that directly aim at individual congressional representatives and senators. Palin's fellow Republican colleague who ran against Giffords posted a message about a campaign event that read: "Get on target for victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly." Will Palin apologize for using language like “Don’t retreat – instead, reload!” on her map targeting Giffords? Will she take a pledge to renounce the use of violent shooting images against her political opponents? (http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/palin_violence/index2.html). Of course she won’t, and she never will, because people like Palin and Beck see no correlation between words that incite violence and violent acts, and they see no problem with language that feed the lunatic fringe that is partly their base. Palin and Beck take their playbook right out of Joe McCarthy’s, who, when challenged, attacked his critics personally by questioning their patriotism. It’s the stock and trade of fear-mongers.
In light of the assassination attempt, Rep. Gifford’s own words in an MSNBC interview about Palin’s inflammatory language proves to be eerily prophetic:
“Community leaders, figures in our community, need to say: ‘Look, we can’t stand for this. This is a situation where – people don’t – they really need to realize that the rhetoric, and the firing people up and you know, even things for example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, the way she has it depicted, we’re in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there are consequences to that action.”
No apologies will come from the Palins, Becks, Limbaughs and Liddys of this world who stoke the fears and angers of the far right. Their only recourse is to pretend to be victims and falsely claim their opponents want to take away their First Amendment rights. President Obama’s call for more civility in our political discourse will not be heeded by those who only to stand to gain from inciting fear and hate.
At the end of the day, we are again left with the flaming political diatribes between the two reigning parties, instead of an open, honest, and sensitive dialogue about the roots and causes of violence that will only claim more victims.
###
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Is Fox News a legitimate news organization?
MAINSTREAM MEDIA RUSHES TO FOX ‘NEWS’ DEFENSE
DEFINITION OF NEWS IS NEVER DEBATED
By Michael C. Burton
The inability of the mainstream media to discuss whether Fox News is a legitimate news organization points to the decline of traditional journalism in cable television and the rise of the partisan press as a new model for cable news networks.
In mid-October, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that Fox News is “opinion journalism masquerading as news” and that the organization operates “as a research arm or communications arm of the Republican Party.” She did not say that Obama administration officials would never appear on Fox programs, only that they would do so with the knowledge they were debating the opposition – the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
The news coverage since that announcement was predictable, with most news outlets covering the story as “the White House war on Fox” (The Baltimore Sun) and “The White House bullying of Fox” (The Washington Post), and “Obama delegitimizing any significant dissent” (Chicago Tribune). One TV news correspondent, Jake Tapper of ABC News, publicly came to Fox News’ defense, questioning how the White House could define what is news and what is not. On CBS News, Katie Couric teased the story at the top of the October 23 newscast: “They report and the White House decides it’s not fair: the President’s feud with Fox News Channel.” Even Mark Shields and David Brooks on the PBS News Hour defended Fox News, saying they had “real journalists” who report the news with minimum bias.
The mainstream media’s defense of Fox News is like an angst-ridden teenager who defends his crazy aunt in the basement – she may be loony, but by God she’s still a member of the family and he will defend her honor (especially since she runs a very profitable business in that basement and he wants a cut).
Despite the spin by the mainstream media that this was a war the White House instigated, the facts show that Fox has consistently viewed itself as the voice of the opposition to the current administration. Back in March, Fox News Vice-President of Programming Bill Shine described his network as “the voice of opposition [to Obama] on some issues.” Conspiracy-theorist Glenn Beck, who called the president “a racist,” claims Fox News President Roger Ailes wooed him over to the conservative network from CNN headline News in part by stressing the network’s opposition to Obama, saying, “I see this as the Alamo.”
Seems pretty clear who started the “war.”
Still, Anita Dunn’s central premise – that Fox News does not operate like other mainstream news organizations but is driven by partisan ideology—went largely unaddressed in news coverage. That’s because of the mainstream media’s inability to examine its own journalism practices and also because there is a trend in television news towards ending manifest objectivity as the journalism standard in favor of partisan political advocacy.
This is not to say that Fox News is disingenuous in defending its news programs as “separate” from its opinion commentators. In a statement, Fox Senior Vice-President for News Michael Clemente claimed that its news hours – 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays – are objective. “The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page,” Clemente said. Yet as Media Matters cogently points out, not only does Fox News network’s purportedly “straight news” programs echo its editorial programs, but they also contain a disproportionate share of smears, falsehoods, doctored & deceptive editing, and GOP talking points (see http://mediamatters.org/research/200910130047).
Media Matters also makes a good case how Fox News violates every ethical canon outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists in “30 Reasons Why Fox News is not legit” (http://mediamatters.org/columns/200910270002). On the other side of the political spectrum, the conservative media watchdog group NewsBusters claims that MSNBC is also biased because they have left-leaning commentators Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. However, the organization funded by Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center is unable to show overt political bias on MSNBC’s straight news programs. That is because there is no comparison (for short video examples of how Fox constantly disparages Obama in its supposedly “straight news” reporting, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/20/the-ten-most-egregious-fo_n_327140.html).
This is the main flaw in the conservative’s argument that other cable news networks such as MSNBC, CNN, ABC and CBS are also biased and have ideological agendas. True, the other cable news networks are biased towards a corporate profit agenda and sensational infotainment on a wide range of issues – but manifest political objectivity in news programming is still the order of the day -- using the journalistic canons of the straight news story, attempting to select facts based on sound news judgment and the traditions of fair play and objectivity. When a journalist does make departures into opinions, he or she gives clear signals that he or she is doing so. Some may claim that objectivity is a myth, but fairness and nonpartisan focus is still the standard objective in reporting the news. Fox News has abrogated that standard, and deliberately skews its “straight news” coverage from a right-wing perspective. The problem lies in Fox News’ dishonesty and failure to admit that they are an ideologically-driven partisan news outlet (see “Why the White House is 100 % right to Challenge Fox News, at http://www.theyoungturks.com/story/2009/10/19/13738/762/Diary/Why-the-White-House-is-100-Right-to-Challenge-Fox-News).
The danger in presenting news as “fair and balanced” when it is not is that those predisposed to this ideological viewpoint will believe it is straight news. Indeed, many devoted Fox News viewers believe what they are watching is hard factual information that cannot be disputed. And, as Michael Massing points in the Columbia Journalism Review, “it is true that Fox can break legitimate news stories, as it did with ACORN. Yet for every such story, it seems to push many that are not legitimate – that in fact seem lunatic…in contrast, MSNBC just doesn’t seem to feature the conspiratorial looniness or corrosive fear-mongering that pervades Fox.” (See http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/howard_kurtz_missing_in_action.php).
In fact, Fox News even makes up its own facts in their news programs to suit its political agenda, something no other television news network does (i.e., falsely claiming that the Obama budget was “4 times bigger than Bush’s,” falsely claiming that “house Dems vote to protect pedophiles, but not veterans,” and falsely asserting that the hate crimes bill would gag ministers). Spreading misinformation under the guise of “fair and balanced” journalism is not only disingenuous, but threatens a robust and informed democracy because it stokes the fears of the uninformed and cheapens political dialogue (in most cases, it renders political discourse impossible). As Hendrik Hertzberg writes in the September 21 issue of The New Yorker, the disaffected right-wingers “do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful – they all routinely liken the President and the ‘Democrat Party’ to murderous totalitarians – but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, leading them a considerable measure of institutional prestige.”
U.S. News columnist Bonnie Erbe says that even Fox News viewers understand that it is “nothing more than a Republican/conservative cheat sheet,” ( see http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2009/10/19/), but there is scant evidence to support this viewpoint. Indeed, the opposite it true: most Fox viewers cannot distinguish between objective news and political opinion, and most regular viewers are least knowledgeable about national and international affairs than viewers of other news outlets. A 2007 Pew Research Study showed that those who receive most of their news from Fox are more likely than average to have misperceptions about national and international affairs. It also showed that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have the highest knowledge of national and international affairs, while Fox News viewers ranked nearly dead last (see http://people-press.org/report/319/public-knowledge-of-current-affairs-little-changed-by-news-and-information-revolutions).
In a chain email sent out by Fox minions in early October, this confusion over what is news and what is opinion became very evident. The email touted an upcoming “important documentary about Barack Obama…a report that will go back to Obama's earlier days, showing even then his close ties to radical Marxist professors, friends, spiritual advisers, etc…. Democrat or Republican, this report will open your eyes to how YOUR country is being sold down the road to Totalitarian Socialism….these are the FACTS.”
The “facts” that the Fox cheerleader is talking about was a re-run of a Sean Hannity special (not a news documentary) called “Obama & Friends: History of Radicalism,” that offered a series of unproven allegations, half-truths, and innuendos about Obama’s supposed ties to Louis Farrakan, Muslim fundamentalism, black-power advocates, and Bill Ayers. The McCarthy-like programming was already discredited by reputable news organizations such as the Los Angeles Times, but don’t tell that to the fanatical Fox fans who confuse hearsay with fact.
Regrettably, because Roger Ailes and his boss Rupert Murdoch have proven that a scurrilous partisan press is profitable, other news networks may follow suit with more biased news “commentators” on either side of the political spectrum (except the far left, which has never had real air time in the mainstream media). Surveys show that more and more news audiences are gravitating towards news that matches their ideological viewpoint of the world.
The rise of these political pundits may be the beginning of the new partisan press era in American TV journalism. A new poll showed that the major metropolitan newspapers had lost as much as a quarter of their circulation over the past six months. New TV ratings showed that CNN, the cable news network that prides itself as being in the middle of the political spectrum, finished dead last in prime time against Fox News and MSNBC (see http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28822.html ). While newspapers are losing readers, partisan ideologues are gaining attention on television news, which is the main source of information for 70 percent of Americans. The evening network news executives who try to present the news fairly and objectivity may scrap the model of carefully scripted storytelling and make their shows more unscripted and opinionated, like cable interview programs, to recapture ratings.
Eric Alterman, a media columnist for the Nation, believes that cable news is moving away from nonpartisan news because it doesn’t sell. “Politics without a slant, without a point of view, is interesting to very few people,” he said at a New York University conference on the subject “Good Riddance to the Mainstream Media.”
The dismal ratings also come at a time where the public holds a less favorable opinion of the news media. According to Pew Research Center poll, only 29 percent believe that most news stories are accurate, and 60 percent believe most news coverage is biased, a dramatic increase from 24 years ago before the rise of cable news and Internet news operations. Ryan Blethen, the Seattle Times editorial page editor, wrote that “the new partisan journalism that has found a home on cable news and the Internet are here to stay. The trick for objective media is twofold. Figure out how its hallmarks such as investigative journalism and local reporting will be funded and then find a way to not get lost in the screaming vortex that is the 24-hour news cycle.”
###
MICHAEL BURTON, a former print and broadcast journalist, is author of the book “John Henry Faulk: The Making of a Liberated Mind,” a biography of a blacklisted entertainer who was falsely labeled a Communist sympathizer during the McCarthy era.
DEFINITION OF NEWS IS NEVER DEBATED
By Michael C. Burton
The inability of the mainstream media to discuss whether Fox News is a legitimate news organization points to the decline of traditional journalism in cable television and the rise of the partisan press as a new model for cable news networks.
In mid-October, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that Fox News is “opinion journalism masquerading as news” and that the organization operates “as a research arm or communications arm of the Republican Party.” She did not say that Obama administration officials would never appear on Fox programs, only that they would do so with the knowledge they were debating the opposition – the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
The news coverage since that announcement was predictable, with most news outlets covering the story as “the White House war on Fox” (The Baltimore Sun) and “The White House bullying of Fox” (The Washington Post), and “Obama delegitimizing any significant dissent” (Chicago Tribune). One TV news correspondent, Jake Tapper of ABC News, publicly came to Fox News’ defense, questioning how the White House could define what is news and what is not. On CBS News, Katie Couric teased the story at the top of the October 23 newscast: “They report and the White House decides it’s not fair: the President’s feud with Fox News Channel.” Even Mark Shields and David Brooks on the PBS News Hour defended Fox News, saying they had “real journalists” who report the news with minimum bias.
The mainstream media’s defense of Fox News is like an angst-ridden teenager who defends his crazy aunt in the basement – she may be loony, but by God she’s still a member of the family and he will defend her honor (especially since she runs a very profitable business in that basement and he wants a cut).
Despite the spin by the mainstream media that this was a war the White House instigated, the facts show that Fox has consistently viewed itself as the voice of the opposition to the current administration. Back in March, Fox News Vice-President of Programming Bill Shine described his network as “the voice of opposition [to Obama] on some issues.” Conspiracy-theorist Glenn Beck, who called the president “a racist,” claims Fox News President Roger Ailes wooed him over to the conservative network from CNN headline News in part by stressing the network’s opposition to Obama, saying, “I see this as the Alamo.”
Seems pretty clear who started the “war.”
Still, Anita Dunn’s central premise – that Fox News does not operate like other mainstream news organizations but is driven by partisan ideology—went largely unaddressed in news coverage. That’s because of the mainstream media’s inability to examine its own journalism practices and also because there is a trend in television news towards ending manifest objectivity as the journalism standard in favor of partisan political advocacy.
This is not to say that Fox News is disingenuous in defending its news programs as “separate” from its opinion commentators. In a statement, Fox Senior Vice-President for News Michael Clemente claimed that its news hours – 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays – are objective. “The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page,” Clemente said. Yet as Media Matters cogently points out, not only does Fox News network’s purportedly “straight news” programs echo its editorial programs, but they also contain a disproportionate share of smears, falsehoods, doctored & deceptive editing, and GOP talking points (see http://mediamatters.org/research/200910130047).
Media Matters also makes a good case how Fox News violates every ethical canon outlined by the Society of Professional Journalists in “30 Reasons Why Fox News is not legit” (http://mediamatters.org/columns/200910270002). On the other side of the political spectrum, the conservative media watchdog group NewsBusters claims that MSNBC is also biased because they have left-leaning commentators Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. However, the organization funded by Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center is unable to show overt political bias on MSNBC’s straight news programs. That is because there is no comparison (for short video examples of how Fox constantly disparages Obama in its supposedly “straight news” reporting, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/20/the-ten-most-egregious-fo_n_327140.html).
This is the main flaw in the conservative’s argument that other cable news networks such as MSNBC, CNN, ABC and CBS are also biased and have ideological agendas. True, the other cable news networks are biased towards a corporate profit agenda and sensational infotainment on a wide range of issues – but manifest political objectivity in news programming is still the order of the day -- using the journalistic canons of the straight news story, attempting to select facts based on sound news judgment and the traditions of fair play and objectivity. When a journalist does make departures into opinions, he or she gives clear signals that he or she is doing so. Some may claim that objectivity is a myth, but fairness and nonpartisan focus is still the standard objective in reporting the news. Fox News has abrogated that standard, and deliberately skews its “straight news” coverage from a right-wing perspective. The problem lies in Fox News’ dishonesty and failure to admit that they are an ideologically-driven partisan news outlet (see “Why the White House is 100 % right to Challenge Fox News, at http://www.theyoungturks.com/story/2009/10/19/13738/762/Diary/Why-the-White-House-is-100-Right-to-Challenge-Fox-News).
The danger in presenting news as “fair and balanced” when it is not is that those predisposed to this ideological viewpoint will believe it is straight news. Indeed, many devoted Fox News viewers believe what they are watching is hard factual information that cannot be disputed. And, as Michael Massing points in the Columbia Journalism Review, “it is true that Fox can break legitimate news stories, as it did with ACORN. Yet for every such story, it seems to push many that are not legitimate – that in fact seem lunatic…in contrast, MSNBC just doesn’t seem to feature the conspiratorial looniness or corrosive fear-mongering that pervades Fox.” (See http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/howard_kurtz_missing_in_action.php).
In fact, Fox News even makes up its own facts in their news programs to suit its political agenda, something no other television news network does (i.e., falsely claiming that the Obama budget was “4 times bigger than Bush’s,” falsely claiming that “house Dems vote to protect pedophiles, but not veterans,” and falsely asserting that the hate crimes bill would gag ministers). Spreading misinformation under the guise of “fair and balanced” journalism is not only disingenuous, but threatens a robust and informed democracy because it stokes the fears of the uninformed and cheapens political dialogue (in most cases, it renders political discourse impossible). As Hendrik Hertzberg writes in the September 21 issue of The New Yorker, the disaffected right-wingers “do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful – they all routinely liken the President and the ‘Democrat Party’ to murderous totalitarians – but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, leading them a considerable measure of institutional prestige.”
U.S. News columnist Bonnie Erbe says that even Fox News viewers understand that it is “nothing more than a Republican/conservative cheat sheet,” ( see http://www.usnews.com/blogs/erbe/2009/10/19/), but there is scant evidence to support this viewpoint. Indeed, the opposite it true: most Fox viewers cannot distinguish between objective news and political opinion, and most regular viewers are least knowledgeable about national and international affairs than viewers of other news outlets. A 2007 Pew Research Study showed that those who receive most of their news from Fox are more likely than average to have misperceptions about national and international affairs. It also showed that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have the highest knowledge of national and international affairs, while Fox News viewers ranked nearly dead last (see http://people-press.org/report/319/public-knowledge-of-current-affairs-little-changed-by-news-and-information-revolutions).
In a chain email sent out by Fox minions in early October, this confusion over what is news and what is opinion became very evident. The email touted an upcoming “important documentary about Barack Obama…a report that will go back to Obama's earlier days, showing even then his close ties to radical Marxist professors, friends, spiritual advisers, etc…. Democrat or Republican, this report will open your eyes to how YOUR country is being sold down the road to Totalitarian Socialism….these are the FACTS.”
The “facts” that the Fox cheerleader is talking about was a re-run of a Sean Hannity special (not a news documentary) called “Obama & Friends: History of Radicalism,” that offered a series of unproven allegations, half-truths, and innuendos about Obama’s supposed ties to Louis Farrakan, Muslim fundamentalism, black-power advocates, and Bill Ayers. The McCarthy-like programming was already discredited by reputable news organizations such as the Los Angeles Times, but don’t tell that to the fanatical Fox fans who confuse hearsay with fact.
Regrettably, because Roger Ailes and his boss Rupert Murdoch have proven that a scurrilous partisan press is profitable, other news networks may follow suit with more biased news “commentators” on either side of the political spectrum (except the far left, which has never had real air time in the mainstream media). Surveys show that more and more news audiences are gravitating towards news that matches their ideological viewpoint of the world.
The rise of these political pundits may be the beginning of the new partisan press era in American TV journalism. A new poll showed that the major metropolitan newspapers had lost as much as a quarter of their circulation over the past six months. New TV ratings showed that CNN, the cable news network that prides itself as being in the middle of the political spectrum, finished dead last in prime time against Fox News and MSNBC (see http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28822.html ). While newspapers are losing readers, partisan ideologues are gaining attention on television news, which is the main source of information for 70 percent of Americans. The evening network news executives who try to present the news fairly and objectivity may scrap the model of carefully scripted storytelling and make their shows more unscripted and opinionated, like cable interview programs, to recapture ratings.
Eric Alterman, a media columnist for the Nation, believes that cable news is moving away from nonpartisan news because it doesn’t sell. “Politics without a slant, without a point of view, is interesting to very few people,” he said at a New York University conference on the subject “Good Riddance to the Mainstream Media.”
The dismal ratings also come at a time where the public holds a less favorable opinion of the news media. According to Pew Research Center poll, only 29 percent believe that most news stories are accurate, and 60 percent believe most news coverage is biased, a dramatic increase from 24 years ago before the rise of cable news and Internet news operations. Ryan Blethen, the Seattle Times editorial page editor, wrote that “the new partisan journalism that has found a home on cable news and the Internet are here to stay. The trick for objective media is twofold. Figure out how its hallmarks such as investigative journalism and local reporting will be funded and then find a way to not get lost in the screaming vortex that is the 24-hour news cycle.”
###
MICHAEL BURTON, a former print and broadcast journalist, is author of the book “John Henry Faulk: The Making of a Liberated Mind,” a biography of a blacklisted entertainer who was falsely labeled a Communist sympathizer during the McCarthy era.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
If George W was an idiot?
A widely-spread email entitled "If George W. was an idiot?" is full of inaccuracies, half-truths, and innuendo. The anonymous email is being distributed as fact to thousands of websites, blogs, and individual emails despite having no byline, attribution, or source citations. Here is a detailed response to most of the allegations in the email, with help from Media Matters Action Network.
"If George W. Bush had reduced your retirement plan’s holdings of GM stock by 90% and given the unions a majority stake in GM, would you have approved?"
It's untrue that President Obama "gave the unions a majority stake in GM." According to the May 27, 2009 Wall Street Journal, "General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers agreed to a new restructuring plan that would give the union a significantly smaller stake in the company than previously envisioned..." This agreement was worked out between GM and the UAW, not by the president, who made the decision earlier in the year to rescue the company from bankruptcy. It's also not true that the Obama "reduced {your?} retirement plan's holdings of GM stock by 90 percent." GM stock declined in value because the company was going bankrupt, not because of anything the president did. The stock went from more than $40 a share in October 2007 to under $4 on the last day of trading BEFORE Obama took office. So the 90 % decline happened under Bush, not Obama. The stock (it's now called Motors Liquidation Company) is now trading for 75 cents a share now, but could be zero if the government had let it go under. (Source: http://www.factcheck.org/).
If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?
Yes, the gift of 25 classic American movies the president gave Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown were on DVDs formatted on the American video standard, but did you know that George W. Bush had done EXACTLY THE SAME THING in 2004 when he gave the Queen of England an incorrectly-formatted DVD movie in 2004? (See http://intotheunknown.co.uk/2009/04/ukgov-announces-wholly-british.html).
If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky?
It's untrue that the president gave the Queen of England an iPod "containing videos of his speeches." Instead, the iPod was loaded with video footage and photos of THE QUEEN on her 2007 official trip to the U.S.
It's untrue that the president gave the Queen of England an iPod "containing videos of his speeches." Instead, the iPod was loaded with video footage and photos of THE QUEEN on her 2007 official trip to the U.S.
If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, would you have approved?
Conservatives have derided the President for allegedly bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia. The White House says that it was not a bow, but whether it was or was not, how did you react when George Bush actually KISSED the Saudi King? Check these images out here.
Were you upset? Did you protest? (For more information on the cozy personal and financial relationship between the oil-rich Bush family and the Saudi family, read investigative reporter Craig Unger's book, "House of Bush: House of Saud" (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9780743253390
Were you upset? Did you protest? (For more information on the cozy personal and financial relationship between the oil-rich Bush family and the Saudi family, read investigative reporter Craig Unger's book, "House of Bush: House of Saud" (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ean=9780743253390
If George W. Bush had been so Spanish illiterate as to refer to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when it was the fourth of May (Cuatro de Mayo), and continued to flub it when he tried again, would you have winced in embarrassment?
You claim that President Obama made a mistake when speaking Spanish. It appears that he was making a joke about the holiday being observed on the fourth of May at the White House, and immediately pronounced "Cinco de Mayo" correctly afterwards.
If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?
In visiting Austria, President Obama said "I don't know what the term is in Austrian." This may have been a slip-up, but it may have been, as one Austrian writer said, Obama’s attempt not to offend Austrians as referring to their language as German. Nonetheless, how did you react when President Bush addressed Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Spanish? You will note that Italians do not speak Spanish. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/science/earth/10notebook.html?ref=world )
In visiting Austria, President Obama said "I don't know what the term is in Austrian." This may have been a slip-up, but it may have been, as one Austrian writer said, Obama’s attempt not to offend Austrians as referring to their language as German. Nonetheless, how did you react when President Bush addressed Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Spanish? You will note that Italians do not speak Spanish. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/science/earth/10notebook.html?ref=world )
If George W. Bush had mis-spelled the word advice would you have hammered him for it for years like Dan Quayle and potatoe as proof of what a dunce he is?
You state that President Obama did not spell the word "advice" correctly. This is debatable. I found it very unlikely that a graduate of Harvard Law School and author of two best-selling books would make this mistake, so I did some research on this and found the copy of the letter the president wrote a concerned citizen. The "c" in advice looks somewhat like an "s," but in enlarging the word it looks like a "c" to me (see image of letter).
Who was claiming a "media cover-up of Obama's spelling error"? (It's not surprising that these chain emails attacking Obama rarely cite sources or reveal their source material, because to do so would expose that the charges come from a biased viewpoint.) I found that the source of this charge came from the Media Research Center, a right-wing conservative organization founded by Brent Bozell III. Media Matters describes L. Brent Bozell III as "a zealot of impeccable right-wing pedigree (see http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/outthere/otmeltdown.html). Regardless of whether you believe that the word was not spelled correctly, one thing is not debatable -- you can't spell "misspell" correctly!
Who was claiming a "media cover-up of Obama's spelling error"? (It's not surprising that these chain emails attacking Obama rarely cite sources or reveal their source material, because to do so would expose that the charges come from a biased viewpoint.) I found that the source of this charge came from the Media Research Center, a right-wing conservative organization founded by Brent Bozell III. Media Matters describes L. Brent Bozell III as "a zealot of impeccable right-wing pedigree (see http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/outthere/otmeltdown.html). Regardless of whether you believe that the word was not spelled correctly, one thing is not debatable -- you can't spell "misspell" correctly!
If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?
When referencing the Special Olympics, Barack Obama made a joke about himself on a late-night comedy show. His joke hadn't even aired when he called the chairman of the Special Olympics board to apologize for comparing his bad bowling skills to Special Olympics (ABC News). Did George W. apologize for offending more than 90 percent of the world's population when he said this: "Perhaps freedom is not universal. Maybe it's only Western people that can self-govern. Maybe it's only, you know, white-guy Methodists who are capable of self-government." (George W. Bush, London, June 16, 2008). Come to think of it, did George W. apologize for any of his numerous offensive remarks?
When referencing the Special Olympics, Barack Obama made a joke about himself on a late-night comedy show. His joke hadn't even aired when he called the chairman of the Special Olympics board to apologize for comparing his bad bowling skills to Special Olympics (ABC News). Did George W. apologize for offending more than 90 percent of the world's population when he said this: "Perhaps freedom is not universal. Maybe it's only Western people that can self-govern. Maybe it's only, you know, white-guy Methodists who are capable of self-government." (George W. Bush, London, June 16, 2008). Come to think of it, did George W. apologize for any of his numerous offensive remarks?
President Obama has made a few gaffes so far, but President Bush during his eight years in office misspoke hundreds of time. Here is a compilation: http://www.slate.com/id/76886/In one of his misstatements, he called Africa "a nation that suffers from incredible disease." (My six year-old knows that Africa is not a country, but a continent!) Did you send out emails to your friends every time Bush said something truly idiotic?
If George W. Bush had been the first President to need a teleprompter installed to be able to get through a press conference, would you have laughed and said this is more proof of how he inept he is on his own and is really controlled by smarter men behind the scenes?
Again, you are incorrect in stating President Obama was the first president to install and use a teleprompter at a press conference. George Bush used a teleprompter. Oh yeah, Ronald Reagan also used a teleprompter. Check out these images here. Unlike these two presidents, however, Barack Obama has written and edited many of his own speeches.
Again, you are incorrect in stating President Obama was the first president to install and use a teleprompter at a press conference. George Bush used a teleprompter. Oh yeah, Ronald Reagan also used a teleprompter. Check out these images here. Unlike these two presidents, however, Barack Obama has written and edited many of his own speeches.
If George W. Bush had failed to send relief aid to flood victims throughout the Midwest with more people killed or made homeless than in New Orleans , would you want it made into a major ongoing political issue with claims of racism and incompetence?
Your email notes that more people were killed by floods in the Midwest than died as a result of Hurricane Katrina. I looked it up and it just is not true. Of the many storms in the Midwest in 2009, the highest death toll thus far is 36 confirmed deaths. http://prod.newsday.com/flash-flood-warning-issued-for-louisville-area-1.1347443In comparison, there were 1,836 confirmed deaths caused by Hurricane Katrina. http://www.dhh.louisiana.gov/offices/page.asp?ID%3D192%26Detail%3D5248. Again, you just can't seem to get your facts straight in your vendetta against Barack Obama, but hey, maybe if you get enough like-minded people to pass on these untruths without checking into anything, maybe they'll believe them!
If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?
False again. President Obama inherited an economy in disarray and since taking office, has aimed to drastically revamp our nation's failing health care system and our crumbling infrastructure. I was curious to see how the national debt changed during the Bush years and according to the unaffiliated website PolitiFact.com, "When Bush took office; the national debt was $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion." http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jan/22/rahm-emanuel/5-trillion-added-national-debt-under-bush/. When he took office, Obama not only faced the fallout from the worst economic downturn in 30 years, but also inherited this massive debt. One Republican, David M. Walker -- who served under George W. Bush -- said this: "There's no question in my view that Bush was the most fiscally irresponsible president in the history of the Republic...Obama was handed a bad deck."
False again. President Obama inherited an economy in disarray and since taking office, has aimed to drastically revamp our nation's failing health care system and our crumbling infrastructure. I was curious to see how the national debt changed during the Bush years and according to the unaffiliated website PolitiFact.com, "When Bush took office; the national debt was $5.73 trillion. When he left, it was $10.7 trillion." http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jan/22/rahm-emanuel/5-trillion-added-national-debt-under-bush/. When he took office, Obama not only faced the fallout from the worst economic downturn in 30 years, but also inherited this massive debt. One Republican, David M. Walker -- who served under George W. Bush -- said this: "There's no question in my view that Bush was the most fiscally irresponsible president in the history of the Republic...Obama was handed a bad deck."
Since you seemed concerned over wasteful spending did you know that billions of dollars were wasted during the Bush administration, particularly in massive contracts given out to private contractors that operate in Iraq and Afghanistan: According to one commission set up to investigate the use of private contractors, "billions of dollars of that amount ended up wasted due to poorly defined work orders, inadequate oversight and contractor inefficiencies. In one example, defense auditors challenged KBR after it billed the government for $100 million in costs for private security even though the contract prohibited the use of for-hire guards." http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2009-06-08-report-dod-spending_N.htm
I hope that we are always critical of those we elect, but I see that you are not being consistent or fair in your criticism. Your complaints about President Obama are ironic, given the fact that President Bush did in fact make so many similar and even more egregious mistakes and made them much more often. Have you heard that expression? People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
###
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Birther conspiracies and the media
OBAMA BIRTHER MOVEMENT OUT OF FRINGE AND INTO MAINSTREAM MEDIA
One of the most fascinating and disturbing conspiracy theories circulated by opponents of President Barack Obama is the “birther” movement. One would think that the Internet rumors alleging that our president was born outside the United States would have died off after the White House produced proof in June that Obama was born in Hawaii to an American citizen, but instead they are kept very alive by popular media pundits.
If you think that only far right-wing nut cases believe these wild conspiracy theories, think again. Recent polls reveal some surprising results:
· A September Public Policy poll indicated that 64 percent of Republicans were either not sure or disbelieved the president was born in this country. An earlier poll in August on www.politico.com showed similar findings. In fact, when you took out minorities from that poll, 83 percent of southern whites said they doubted or were unsure about whether Obama was born in the U.S.
· In mid-September, a Daily Kos poll in Arkansas asked the state’s residents if they believed Barack Obama was born in the U.S. Thirty-seven percent said “no” or were “unsure.”
· On August 6, a Public Policy poll revealed that only 53 percent of Virginians were sure that President Obama was born in the U.S. Twenty-four percent polled in that state did not believe that Obama was born in this country, and 24 percent “were not sure.”
Also in August, at least 10 Republicans Congressmen, led by Rep. John Campbell of California and Rep. Bob Goodlaite of Virginia, sponsored a bill that would require possible candidates for president to release their birth certificates before running, but most didn’t want to talk about the current president’s birthplace when approached (see a funny video posted on http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0709/Danger_of_the_birthers.html)
Of course talk radio fueled the crazy paranoia that just won’t go away (do a Google search for Obama and ‘birth certificate’ will be one of the top three searches). G. Gordon Liddy asserted on his nationally syndicated radio show that “our president was born in a slum in Kenya” (June 8) and claimed that Obama’s released birth certificate was “a forged fake” (August 26). Rush Limbaugh, the most popular talk show host in America with 13.5 million minimum weekly listeners, said the president “has yet to prove he is a citizen” and implied Obama visited his ailing grandmother late last year not to see her, but to tamper with his birth records. Limbaugh’s comments, like most of his most incendiary political remarks, received widespread coverage in the mainstream press.
These alarmist theories are spread not only by the far right wing, but by fundamentalist Christian organizations. LivePrayer.com has produced a half-hour infomercial questioning where the president was born. It has run on several networks, including one CBS affiliate in Lubbock, Texas. Hal Lindsey, an evangelical commentator on cable television (TBN, Daystar, CPM Network, Inspiration; various local stations) also pushed the birther conspiracy theory (in addition to implying that President Obama is the “anti-Christ” in the prelude to Armageddon). Another birther movement evolved from the recently formed “Anabaptist Church of Africa” in Pennsylvania, which lists as one of its articles of faith to set right the “unbearable injustice, and trampling of the Constitution of the United States, in thinking to force the people to accept a foreigner as the President of this Republic, ignoring the single most important qualification for the highest office in our land, that such a one, not just gain such ‘power by the consent of the governed’, but that he be naturally born amongst us as one of us.” (I guess no one told this group that John McCain was not born in any of the United States or its terrorities, but in Panama.)
The mainstream media coverage’s of these paranoid political conspiracy theorists has carelessly given credence to an issue that has been debunked time and again (see http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html and http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth-certificate-part-ii/ for the evidence). For example, when a caller to Lou Dobbs’ radio show asserted Obama would soon be “exposed as having been born in Kenya,” Dobbs replied that “Certainly your view cannot be discounted.” On CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, Dobbs questioned the authenticity of the birth certificate provided by the State of Hawaii and at one point jokingly suggested that President Obama may be “undocumented.” CNN continually hounded the Hawaii Department of Health about the issue even after the birth certificate was released again.
By interviewing the birthers on cable and broadcast television, journalists give them some semblance of credibility. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews disparaged G Gordon Liddy on his “Hardball” in July, showing Liddy the birth certificate and the birth announcement from the Honolulu Advertiser in August 1961. Yet Liddy caught Matthews by surprise when he brought up claims of a “sworn deposition from [Obama’s] grandmother who says she was ‘present and saw him born in Mombassa, Kenya.”
What Liddy was referring to is actually an affidavit filed by a far right-wing evangelical preacher named Ron McRae, who interviewed Sarah Obama, wife of Barack Obama’s grandfather, through a translator. Sarah Obama’s words were misinterpreted in the translation, and she corrected him over and over again, but the itinerant preacher never accepted that (see http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/07/23/liddy/).
The danger in legitimizing the ‘birthers’ claims is that it subtlety encourages racism and violence, according to Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich. She points out that the political atmosphere before the Oklahoma City bombing eerily resembled today’s environment, with an up tick in paranoid political rumors and fear-mongering. We’ve already seen one murder from neo-Nazi assailant who killed the security guard at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. (it was discovered that James von Brunn, the accused murderer, helped spread the birthers’ claims on the Internet).
There are several theories about the birthers’ motives: wishing for a “magic bullet” that would invalidate Obama’s presidency; fear of foreign influence; fear of change. Yet the chief reason is rarely talked about in the mainstream media: racism. If one doubts that, then ask yourself the question: If our president’s father were born in Ireland, Scotland, or another European country, would anyone raise these questions? Or, if their true motive is to enforce the constitutionality of the “born in the USA” presidential requirement, then why didn’t they bring up that John McCain was born on a military installation in the Panama Canal?
The Internet has certainly made it easier for conspiracy theorists to espouse and share their views anonymously and without accountability. Some bloggers who have thoroughly researched the issue, like Alex Koppelman on Salon.com, correctly point out that “almost all of the people who’ve been most prominent in pushing the story have a history of conspiracist thought.” Yet the mainstream media, rather than conduct investigative reporting, generally report on the crazy lawsuits challenging the president’s birth and the reactionary groups who buy infomercials and downtown billboards without bothering to expose or discredit these fringe groups.
Of course, debunking the birthers with facts won’t change their minds, because facts can’t counter paranoia, but they can help the other conservative-minded folks who only listen to Fox News and talk radio for their news of the day. Instead of giving credence to wacky lawsuits and right-wing commentators who try to stoke the flames of fear and hostility against a black president, the mainstream media could steer a different path of responsible journalism and open dialogue about issues and policies instead of spreading propaganda and distortion.
One of the most fascinating and disturbing conspiracy theories circulated by opponents of President Barack Obama is the “birther” movement. One would think that the Internet rumors alleging that our president was born outside the United States would have died off after the White House produced proof in June that Obama was born in Hawaii to an American citizen, but instead they are kept very alive by popular media pundits.
If you think that only far right-wing nut cases believe these wild conspiracy theories, think again. Recent polls reveal some surprising results:
· A September Public Policy poll indicated that 64 percent of Republicans were either not sure or disbelieved the president was born in this country. An earlier poll in August on www.politico.com showed similar findings. In fact, when you took out minorities from that poll, 83 percent of southern whites said they doubted or were unsure about whether Obama was born in the U.S.
· In mid-September, a Daily Kos poll in Arkansas asked the state’s residents if they believed Barack Obama was born in the U.S. Thirty-seven percent said “no” or were “unsure.”
· On August 6, a Public Policy poll revealed that only 53 percent of Virginians were sure that President Obama was born in the U.S. Twenty-four percent polled in that state did not believe that Obama was born in this country, and 24 percent “were not sure.”
Also in August, at least 10 Republicans Congressmen, led by Rep. John Campbell of California and Rep. Bob Goodlaite of Virginia, sponsored a bill that would require possible candidates for president to release their birth certificates before running, but most didn’t want to talk about the current president’s birthplace when approached (see a funny video posted on http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0709/Danger_of_the_birthers.html)
Of course talk radio fueled the crazy paranoia that just won’t go away (do a Google search for Obama and ‘birth certificate’ will be one of the top three searches). G. Gordon Liddy asserted on his nationally syndicated radio show that “our president was born in a slum in Kenya” (June 8) and claimed that Obama’s released birth certificate was “a forged fake” (August 26). Rush Limbaugh, the most popular talk show host in America with 13.5 million minimum weekly listeners, said the president “has yet to prove he is a citizen” and implied Obama visited his ailing grandmother late last year not to see her, but to tamper with his birth records. Limbaugh’s comments, like most of his most incendiary political remarks, received widespread coverage in the mainstream press.
These alarmist theories are spread not only by the far right wing, but by fundamentalist Christian organizations. LivePrayer.com has produced a half-hour infomercial questioning where the president was born. It has run on several networks, including one CBS affiliate in Lubbock, Texas. Hal Lindsey, an evangelical commentator on cable television (TBN, Daystar, CPM Network, Inspiration; various local stations) also pushed the birther conspiracy theory (in addition to implying that President Obama is the “anti-Christ” in the prelude to Armageddon). Another birther movement evolved from the recently formed “Anabaptist Church of Africa” in Pennsylvania, which lists as one of its articles of faith to set right the “unbearable injustice, and trampling of the Constitution of the United States, in thinking to force the people to accept a foreigner as the President of this Republic, ignoring the single most important qualification for the highest office in our land, that such a one, not just gain such ‘power by the consent of the governed’, but that he be naturally born amongst us as one of us.” (I guess no one told this group that John McCain was not born in any of the United States or its terrorities, but in Panama.)
The mainstream media coverage’s of these paranoid political conspiracy theorists has carelessly given credence to an issue that has been debunked time and again (see http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html and http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2008/jun/27/obamas-birth-certificate-part-ii/ for the evidence). For example, when a caller to Lou Dobbs’ radio show asserted Obama would soon be “exposed as having been born in Kenya,” Dobbs replied that “Certainly your view cannot be discounted.” On CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, Dobbs questioned the authenticity of the birth certificate provided by the State of Hawaii and at one point jokingly suggested that President Obama may be “undocumented.” CNN continually hounded the Hawaii Department of Health about the issue even after the birth certificate was released again.
By interviewing the birthers on cable and broadcast television, journalists give them some semblance of credibility. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews disparaged G Gordon Liddy on his “Hardball” in July, showing Liddy the birth certificate and the birth announcement from the Honolulu Advertiser in August 1961. Yet Liddy caught Matthews by surprise when he brought up claims of a “sworn deposition from [Obama’s] grandmother who says she was ‘present and saw him born in Mombassa, Kenya.”
What Liddy was referring to is actually an affidavit filed by a far right-wing evangelical preacher named Ron McRae, who interviewed Sarah Obama, wife of Barack Obama’s grandfather, through a translator. Sarah Obama’s words were misinterpreted in the translation, and she corrected him over and over again, but the itinerant preacher never accepted that (see http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2009/07/23/liddy/).
The danger in legitimizing the ‘birthers’ claims is that it subtlety encourages racism and violence, according to Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich. She points out that the political atmosphere before the Oklahoma City bombing eerily resembled today’s environment, with an up tick in paranoid political rumors and fear-mongering. We’ve already seen one murder from neo-Nazi assailant who killed the security guard at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. (it was discovered that James von Brunn, the accused murderer, helped spread the birthers’ claims on the Internet).
There are several theories about the birthers’ motives: wishing for a “magic bullet” that would invalidate Obama’s presidency; fear of foreign influence; fear of change. Yet the chief reason is rarely talked about in the mainstream media: racism. If one doubts that, then ask yourself the question: If our president’s father were born in Ireland, Scotland, or another European country, would anyone raise these questions? Or, if their true motive is to enforce the constitutionality of the “born in the USA” presidential requirement, then why didn’t they bring up that John McCain was born on a military installation in the Panama Canal?
The Internet has certainly made it easier for conspiracy theorists to espouse and share their views anonymously and without accountability. Some bloggers who have thoroughly researched the issue, like Alex Koppelman on Salon.com, correctly point out that “almost all of the people who’ve been most prominent in pushing the story have a history of conspiracist thought.” Yet the mainstream media, rather than conduct investigative reporting, generally report on the crazy lawsuits challenging the president’s birth and the reactionary groups who buy infomercials and downtown billboards without bothering to expose or discredit these fringe groups.
Of course, debunking the birthers with facts won’t change their minds, because facts can’t counter paranoia, but they can help the other conservative-minded folks who only listen to Fox News and talk radio for their news of the day. Instead of giving credence to wacky lawsuits and right-wing commentators who try to stoke the flames of fear and hostility against a black president, the mainstream media could steer a different path of responsible journalism and open dialogue about issues and policies instead of spreading propaganda and distortion.
Jimmy Carter and racism debate
ONCE AGAIN, MEDIA OUTLETS AVOID DISCUSSION OF RACISM
INACCURATE REPORTING CREATES FUROR
By MC Burton
The headlines on September 16, 2009 were predictable:
· “Jimmy Carter says racism behind animosity to Obama.” (Washington Post)
· “Racism behind anger toward Obama: Carter.” (AFP)
· “Are Obama’s critics racist? Jimmy Carter thinks so.” (L.A. Times)
· “Carter blames racism for anger against Obama” (NBC News)
· “Carter’s ‘racism’ claim draws widespread criticism.” (FOX News)
Contentious stuff – a former president claiming racism is behind the motives of those who disagree with the current president. There’s only one problem: He didn’t say that.
In an interview with a NBC reporter on September 15, Former President Jimmy Carter said this:
“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he is African-American,” Carter said. “Racism…still exists and I think it has bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply,” he said.
If you read that statement closely, the former president did not say that the majority of people who oppose the current Administration’s policies are racist. He did not even say the people out in the picket lines and demonstrating against the president are racists. What he said was that the majority of the most extreme protests – the most “intensely demonstrated animosity,” have an underpinning of racism. This is an important distinction the mainstream media missed, and I believe they intentionally missed it to create confusion and avoid dealing with the issue they’ve skirted around and marginalized since the presidential primaries.
Although MSNBC did not release the full interview with Carter, it set the tone for how the other mainstream news outlets handled the story. The network news editors framed the story as that of a controversial politician who invoked racism to “discredit the critics” of the current president. NBC’s Matt Williams acted shocked and chagrined at Carter’s comments: “Why does race have to be made part of it (the public debate over healthcare)?” he asked. NBC’s White House correspondent called the remarks “pretty striking” and reported it purely in terms of how the White House would respond.
Most other news outlets followed suit and framed the issue as a political one the White House had to address. Many, like Johanna Neuman in the LA Times, reported the comments even more out-of-context, leaving off the key words in Carter’s sentence (“the most intensely demonstrated animosity’) in lead paragraphs.
Because of the way it framed the issue, the media expanded the already fractured schism between political opponents and further eroded open dialogue that is needed in this country. Janet Daily in the Daily Telegraph wrote that Carter “made an outrageous, unfounded, and potentially inflammatory remark about race.” Bloggers were incensed, writing comments such as this: “If you don’t agree with blacks, you are a racist!? Thank you, Mister Carter, for downgrading the USA!”
Most Democrats quickly downplayed Carter’s remarks under a furor of criticism. Then the media moved on to cover the controversy it created by its inaccurate reporting. The cycle helps declining circulation and low network news ratings, while fueling partisan agitators on the Internet. This allows national reporters to keep failing to address the issue of racism that is still prevalent and is growing more open by the day.
Around the country, protest groups are marching with placards of President Obama in white face (as the Joker from the last Batman movie), signs saying he should ‘go back to Africa,’ and constant references about his “dubious” U.S. citizenship. At a recent protest rally in Washington, protestors paraded the streets with signs that read “Obama is a Muslim,” “Obama is the AntiChrist,” “The zoo has an African (picture of a lion) and the White House has a lyin’African,” and “Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy.” Over the Internet, emails and web blogs compare the president or his wife to a monkey. T-shirts are sold with Obama’s image that says “Somewhere in Kenya or Indonesia, a village is missing its idiot.”
Hate speech on talk radio has emboldened many of these bigots. Remember when Rush Limbaugh played a song called “Barack the Magic Negro” on his radio show during the primary campaign? The song was the brainchild of Tennessee Republican Chip Saltsman, former national campaign manager for presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who sent it to Republican National Committee members as a Christmas present. He defended the tape as satire.
Since prejudice is no longer underground, it is easier for the extreme zealots to express their views overtly in the debate over healthcare reform. For example, Rep. David Scott of Georgia received emails and faxes from his constituents that were tinged with racial hatred. One fax used the common image of Obama as the joker, this time with the hammer and sickle stamped across his forehead, with the message: “Death to Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!” Below that, it addressed the Congressman directly with a variation of the ‘n’ word before rattling off a lengthy diatribe which included this phrase: “The folks are not going to stand for socialized medicine even though most Negros (sic) refuse to stand on their own two feet.”
A friend of mine is an editor of a community newspaper in Louisiana. The main reason for the extreme vitriol against President Obama, he says, is due to racism.
“I grew up in Jim Crow times, and I know all the all code words, and I hear them here. It is so sad. This whole thing with his speech to school kids is not about socialism or indoctrination. A lot of these parents just don’t want a black person telling their kids what to do. It’s sad. I thought this country had gotten over all that. I may be talking through my hat here, but I can’t help but see it this way.”
Jimmy Carter is right. Much of the criticism of the president is beyond the bounds of acceptable political discourse, something no other president has encountered. Why was he excoriated for saying the obvious – that the radical fringe element of the Republican Party is influenced by deep-seated racial fears and animosity? Those who accuse our president as being un-American, a terrorist, a Muslim, an Arab, or something less than a person are not attacking his policies, they are attacking something else, and we have a name for that behavior– racism.
###
INACCURATE REPORTING CREATES FUROR
By MC Burton
The headlines on September 16, 2009 were predictable:
· “Jimmy Carter says racism behind animosity to Obama.” (Washington Post)
· “Racism behind anger toward Obama: Carter.” (AFP)
· “Are Obama’s critics racist? Jimmy Carter thinks so.” (L.A. Times)
· “Carter blames racism for anger against Obama” (NBC News)
· “Carter’s ‘racism’ claim draws widespread criticism.” (FOX News)
Contentious stuff – a former president claiming racism is behind the motives of those who disagree with the current president. There’s only one problem: He didn’t say that.
In an interview with a NBC reporter on September 15, Former President Jimmy Carter said this:
“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he is African-American,” Carter said. “Racism…still exists and I think it has bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South but around the country, that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply,” he said.
If you read that statement closely, the former president did not say that the majority of people who oppose the current Administration’s policies are racist. He did not even say the people out in the picket lines and demonstrating against the president are racists. What he said was that the majority of the most extreme protests – the most “intensely demonstrated animosity,” have an underpinning of racism. This is an important distinction the mainstream media missed, and I believe they intentionally missed it to create confusion and avoid dealing with the issue they’ve skirted around and marginalized since the presidential primaries.
Although MSNBC did not release the full interview with Carter, it set the tone for how the other mainstream news outlets handled the story. The network news editors framed the story as that of a controversial politician who invoked racism to “discredit the critics” of the current president. NBC’s Matt Williams acted shocked and chagrined at Carter’s comments: “Why does race have to be made part of it (the public debate over healthcare)?” he asked. NBC’s White House correspondent called the remarks “pretty striking” and reported it purely in terms of how the White House would respond.
Most other news outlets followed suit and framed the issue as a political one the White House had to address. Many, like Johanna Neuman in the LA Times, reported the comments even more out-of-context, leaving off the key words in Carter’s sentence (“the most intensely demonstrated animosity’) in lead paragraphs.
Because of the way it framed the issue, the media expanded the already fractured schism between political opponents and further eroded open dialogue that is needed in this country. Janet Daily in the Daily Telegraph wrote that Carter “made an outrageous, unfounded, and potentially inflammatory remark about race.” Bloggers were incensed, writing comments such as this: “If you don’t agree with blacks, you are a racist!? Thank you, Mister Carter, for downgrading the USA!”
Most Democrats quickly downplayed Carter’s remarks under a furor of criticism. Then the media moved on to cover the controversy it created by its inaccurate reporting. The cycle helps declining circulation and low network news ratings, while fueling partisan agitators on the Internet. This allows national reporters to keep failing to address the issue of racism that is still prevalent and is growing more open by the day.
Around the country, protest groups are marching with placards of President Obama in white face (as the Joker from the last Batman movie), signs saying he should ‘go back to Africa,’ and constant references about his “dubious” U.S. citizenship. At a recent protest rally in Washington, protestors paraded the streets with signs that read “Obama is a Muslim,” “Obama is the AntiChrist,” “The zoo has an African (picture of a lion) and the White House has a lyin’African,” and “Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy.” Over the Internet, emails and web blogs compare the president or his wife to a monkey. T-shirts are sold with Obama’s image that says “Somewhere in Kenya or Indonesia, a village is missing its idiot.”
Hate speech on talk radio has emboldened many of these bigots. Remember when Rush Limbaugh played a song called “Barack the Magic Negro” on his radio show during the primary campaign? The song was the brainchild of Tennessee Republican Chip Saltsman, former national campaign manager for presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who sent it to Republican National Committee members as a Christmas present. He defended the tape as satire.
Since prejudice is no longer underground, it is easier for the extreme zealots to express their views overtly in the debate over healthcare reform. For example, Rep. David Scott of Georgia received emails and faxes from his constituents that were tinged with racial hatred. One fax used the common image of Obama as the joker, this time with the hammer and sickle stamped across his forehead, with the message: “Death to Marxists! Foreign and Domestic!” Below that, it addressed the Congressman directly with a variation of the ‘n’ word before rattling off a lengthy diatribe which included this phrase: “The folks are not going to stand for socialized medicine even though most Negros (sic) refuse to stand on their own two feet.”
A friend of mine is an editor of a community newspaper in Louisiana. The main reason for the extreme vitriol against President Obama, he says, is due to racism.
“I grew up in Jim Crow times, and I know all the all code words, and I hear them here. It is so sad. This whole thing with his speech to school kids is not about socialism or indoctrination. A lot of these parents just don’t want a black person telling their kids what to do. It’s sad. I thought this country had gotten over all that. I may be talking through my hat here, but I can’t help but see it this way.”
Jimmy Carter is right. Much of the criticism of the president is beyond the bounds of acceptable political discourse, something no other president has encountered. Why was he excoriated for saying the obvious – that the radical fringe element of the Republican Party is influenced by deep-seated racial fears and animosity? Those who accuse our president as being un-American, a terrorist, a Muslim, an Arab, or something less than a person are not attacking his policies, they are attacking something else, and we have a name for that behavior– racism.
###
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)