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This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, friends or associates who may visit this blog or post their own opinions. In addition, my thoughts and opinions change from time to time…I consider this a necessary consequence of having an open mind and student of experience. This weblog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot and manifestation of the various memes running around my brain, and as such any thoughts and opinions expressed within out-of-date posts may not the same, nor even similar, to those I may hold today. I consider the human race to be an evolving entity. Our views and standings in life are equally subject to our experiences, future knowledge, readings, and associations with other members of the human race. We should be allowed to be human and to be as the Creator intended, a free-will and independent entity who will err from time to time. Enjoy a trip around my brain.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sarah Palin And Republican Hypocrisy
Most of the election has been super-serious. Well, I wouldn't be the JEDI if I didn't find this video and post it. Enjoy a laugh at all of the Hypocrisy in the Republican Party. Please voice your comment.
Oct. 9, 2008--To everything, there is a season. If summer is the time for civil (or close to civil) discourse in presidential politics, fall is the time for blood sport. And if you're a Republican trailing in the polls, it's the season for racist fear mongering.
No one should be surprised by the assault John McCain launched this week. His campaign is flailing—dropping out of once-contested states, defending newly insecure ones and, by one adviser's reckoning, "looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis." Those hard realities set the stage and, on Monday in New Mexico, McCain stepped into its center with a sneering performance before a crowd that sounded more like a mob than a rally.
"There are essential things we don't know about Sen. Obama," McCain warned, a charge that is as pointed in divisive sentiment as it is unsubstantiated in fact. His supporters responded with the roar of a fight-night audience eager for gore—"Take those gloves off, John!"
McCain obliged, rattling off a series of catch phrases that sound all too familiar when hurled at "elitist" Negroes. "It's as if the usual rules don't apply," he huffed in complaint about Obama's refusal to respond to smears masquerading as questions. "What does he plan for America? In short, who is the real Barack Obama?!"
The crowd was ready with an answer. "A terrorist!" is the cry several observers heard from at least one McCain fan. Similar slurs flew at McCain camp rallies all week. Someone at a Sarah Palin event in Florida hollered "kill him!" when she repeated her now-infamous smear about Obama "palling around with terrorists." (It's unclear whether the supporter meant Obama or '60s-radical-turned-academic Bill Ayers, the terrorist pal in question.) The crowd eventually turned on the press galley covering the speech, shouting threats and taunts. A black camera crew member was told, "Sit down, boy."
By yesterday, Team McCain had cooled things down a bit. They at least kept the race baiting out of McCain and Palin's mouths—even if they still haven't stopped others on the platform from conspicuously repeating "Barack Hussein Obama." But the crowd's reactions this week lay bare the coded language McCain and Palin have deliberately used. The message from the McCain camp was clear: This Obama guy is different than you in "essential" ways. He represents people who aren't like you. Don't trust him. He is other.
There's nothing new about this line of attack. It's familiar to American politics in general and this campaign in particular. Right-wing bloggers and Fox News have peddled the Obama-as-scary-other narrative all year, and both Clintons flirted with it during the Democratic primary. But what's unexpected is that no less a bastion of mainstream journalism than the Associated Press called McCain out for his loaded words. "Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism," an AP analysis of the campaign's tone-shift declared last weekend.
Perhaps the primary campaign's obsession with Jeremiah Wright has ironically primed political reporters for racism that usually goes unflagged. Or maybe the AP was prodded by lefty charges that its coverage has been pro-McCain. But whatever prompted the AP story, it generated as much buzz as the campaign itself because it was a unique thing: an example of the Washington press corps abandoning "objectivity" long enough to tell the naked truth. That's just what the McCain campaign is betting won't happen widely, but it's precisely what must occur—not only if we are to have a fair election, but if we are to ever have an honest conversation about race in America.
Too often, journalists concerned about being labeled biased work to create balance where there is none. When the McCain camp began telling plain, demonstrable lies about Sarah Palin's record in Alaska, for instance, too many journalists covered it as tit-for-tat, citing mischaracterizations from Obama that paled in comparison. As the ground war turns negative, many will be tempted to do the same when covering McCain and Obama's jabs. But there is a meaningful difference between tarring your opponent's record and demagoguery. The former is ugly; the latter is dangerous, and journalists have a responsibility to point it out.
Americans have notoriously short memories, so it's often assumed that the critical clamor journalists hear from both left and right is new. It actually began with Southern segregationists brow beating Northern news organizations covering the Civil Rights Movement. Both sides of the Jim Crow battle knew the news media would shape how the country viewed them, so segregationists did all they could to make reporters part of the story. The liberal-media trope was their brainchild, and they used it to provoke the sort of false moral equivalencies that today's political reporters too often draw. (this comment is reprinted from www.theroot.com)
Oct. 9, 2008--To everything, there is a season. If summer is the time for civil (or close to civil) discourse in presidential politics, fall is the time for blood sport. And if you're a Republican trailing in the polls, it's the season for racist fear mongering.
ReplyDeleteNo one should be surprised by the assault John McCain launched this week. His campaign is flailing—dropping out of once-contested states, defending newly insecure ones and, by one adviser's reckoning, "looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis." Those hard realities set the stage and, on Monday in New Mexico, McCain stepped into its center with a sneering performance before a crowd that sounded more like a mob than a rally.
"There are essential things we don't know about Sen. Obama," McCain warned, a charge that is as pointed in divisive sentiment as it is unsubstantiated in fact. His supporters responded with the roar of a fight-night audience eager for gore—"Take those gloves off, John!"
McCain obliged, rattling off a series of catch phrases that sound all too familiar when hurled at "elitist" Negroes. "It's as if the usual rules don't apply," he huffed in complaint about Obama's refusal to respond to smears masquerading as questions. "What does he plan for America? In short, who is the real Barack Obama?!"
The crowd was ready with an answer. "A terrorist!" is the cry several observers heard from at least one McCain fan. Similar slurs flew at McCain camp rallies all week. Someone at a Sarah Palin event in Florida hollered "kill him!" when she repeated her now-infamous smear about Obama "palling around with terrorists." (It's unclear whether the supporter meant Obama or '60s-radical-turned-academic Bill Ayers, the terrorist pal in question.) The crowd eventually turned on the press galley covering the speech, shouting threats and taunts. A black camera crew member was told, "Sit down, boy."
By yesterday, Team McCain had cooled things down a bit. They at least kept the race baiting out of McCain and Palin's mouths—even if they still haven't stopped others on the platform from conspicuously repeating "Barack Hussein Obama." But the crowd's reactions this week lay bare the coded language McCain and Palin have deliberately used. The message from the McCain camp was clear: This Obama guy is different than you in "essential" ways. He represents people who aren't like you. Don't trust him. He is other.
(this comment was reprinted from www.theroot.com)
There's nothing new about this line of attack. It's familiar to American politics in general and this campaign in particular. Right-wing bloggers and Fox News have peddled the Obama-as-scary-other narrative all year, and both Clintons flirted with it during the Democratic primary. But what's unexpected is that no less a bastion of mainstream journalism than the Associated Press called McCain out for his loaded words. "Whether intended or not by the McCain campaign, portraying Obama as "not like us" is another potential appeal to racism," an AP analysis of the campaign's tone-shift declared last weekend.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the primary campaign's obsession with Jeremiah Wright has ironically primed political reporters for racism that usually goes unflagged. Or maybe the AP was prodded by lefty charges that its coverage has been pro-McCain. But whatever prompted the AP story, it generated as much buzz as the campaign itself because it was a unique thing: an example of the Washington press corps abandoning "objectivity" long enough to tell the naked truth. That's just what the McCain campaign is betting won't happen widely, but it's precisely what must occur—not only if we are to have a fair election, but if we are to ever have an honest conversation about race in America.
Too often, journalists concerned about being labeled biased work to create balance where there is none. When the McCain camp began telling plain, demonstrable lies about Sarah Palin's record in Alaska, for instance, too many journalists covered it as tit-for-tat, citing mischaracterizations from Obama that paled in comparison. As the ground war turns negative, many will be tempted to do the same when covering McCain and Obama's jabs. But there is a meaningful difference between tarring your opponent's record and demagoguery. The former is ugly; the latter is dangerous, and journalists have a responsibility to point it out.
Americans have notoriously short memories, so it's often assumed that the critical clamor journalists hear from both left and right is new. It actually began with Southern segregationists brow beating Northern news organizations covering the Civil Rights Movement. Both sides of the Jim Crow battle knew the news media would shape how the country viewed them, so segregationists did all they could to make reporters part of the story. The liberal-media trope was their brainchild, and they used it to provoke the sort of false moral equivalencies that today's political reporters too often draw.
(this comment is reprinted from www.theroot.com)