Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media

by Ishmael Reed

  As in Clinton’s case, Obama’s June 14 finger wagging at black men was a case of pandering to white conservative voters. This follows a pattern of using public perceptions of black men fanned by the media and Hollywood to win political favor. Bush One and his sleazy cohorts won votes by depicting black men as dangerous. After the Willie Horton ad, featuring a black rapist, was aired, support for Bush soared twenty percent among southern white males, according to Willie Brown, former San Francisco mayor. Obama, by depicting them as irresponsible, saw his poll numbers climb to a fifteen percent lead over McCain, according to a Newsweek poll. With his speech, he received a bounce in the polls that was denied to him after he gained the Democratic nomination. He also enjoyed the bounce in the polls from Pennsylvania and Ohio.

  According to pundits, the reason he lost these states during the primary was because he couldn’t bowl. His Father’s Day speech was meant to show white conservative males that he wouldn’t cater to “special interests” groups, blacks in this case. This was the consensus of those who appeared on MSNBC and other opinion venues of the segregated media on June 16, 2008, even the progressive ones. (Segregated? Not quite. The two percent of African Americans who support Bush all seem to have jobs as pundits, columnists and Op-Eders). Michael A. Cohen, writing in The New York Times, June 15, 2008, acknowledging Mr. Obama’s Sister Souljah moment, wrote: “Indeed, just yesterday, Barack Obama had his own mini-‘Souljah moment’ as he decried the epidemic of fatherlessness and illegitimacy among black Americans. While it is a message that Mr. Obama has voiced before to other black audiences, speaking unpleasant truths about issues afflicting the black community may provide political benefit for a candidate whom some working-class white voters are suspicious of—just as it did for Clinton sixteen years ago. ” (When is Cohen going to air “unpleasant truths about issues afflicting” his community?)

  The talking heads also concluded that Obama’s speech before a black congregation in which he scolded black men for being lousy fathers and missing in action from single-parent households and being boys, etc., was clearly aimed at those white male Reagan Democrats, who, apparently, in Obama’s and the media’s eyes, provide the gold standard for fatherhood, which fails to explain why there are millions of destitute white women, “displaced housewives” and their children whose poverty results from divorce, or why, according to one study, ninety percent of middle class white women have been battered, or have witnessed their mothers, sisters, or daughters being battered. A smug John Harwood of The New York Times said that Obama was telling black men to “shape up.” As long as men of Mr. Harwood’s class dominate the avenues of expression, who’s going to tell white men to “shape up?” Judging from my reading, American men of all races, ethnic groups and classes need to shape up when it comes to the treatment of women.

  Blaming black men exclusively for the abuses against women is a more profitable infotainment product. Hypocrisy is also involved. MSNBC host, Joe Scarborough, who welcomed Juan Williams’ latest demagogic attack on blacks, printed in The Wall Street Journal, still hasn’t addressed the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of his staffer, Lori Klausutis, who was found dead on the floor of his office or why he had to resign abruptly from Congress (http://www. whoseflorida. com/lori_klausutis. htm). And is Juan Williams, whose career has been marred by repeated sexual harassment complaints against him really one to criticize the personal morality of others? Is Bill Cosby?

  According to the census, a woman’s income on the average is reduced by seventy-three percent after divorce in a country in which fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. Moreover the Times revelation, shocking to some, that elderly whites are taking to cocaine and heroin, a genuine epidemic, hasn’t drawn a response from the legions of columnists and commentators and book publishers who profit from any signs of social “dysfunction” among blacks. Nor have Harwood, George Will, David Brooks, Pat Buchanan, who are always scolding blacks for whatever, commented on the rising incarceration rates of white women. Apparently, Lindsay and Paris are not alone, nor are the Barbie bandits.

  Don’t expect Obama to bring up this rampant substance abuse before a white congregation. He had to just about whisper about the values of blue-collar whites, those who he said clung to guns and religion; he was exposed by a woman who recorded his comments, furtively. Even though the media, which rank ratings above facts, continue to criticize him for these remarks and have made them a campaign issue, sixty percent of Pennsylvanians, according to a Zogby poll April 17, agreed with him. (The media were also wrong to suggest that Hillary got the worst of it from the press during the primary. A Pew study from Harvard contradicts this.)

  Predictably, Obama’s verbal flagellation of black men, who don’t have the media power with which to fight back, was cheered on the front page of The New York Times, which places a black face on every story about welfare, domestic violence and unmarried mothers, and uses Orlando Patterson to parrot these attitudes on the Op-Ed page, yet a study published by the Times showed a steep decline in the rate of births to unmarried black women over the decade while the rate among Hispanic women has increased, contradicting what Cohen described as an “epidemic of illegitimacy” among blacks. An indication that the Op-Ed editors at the Times are so willing to believe the folklore perpetrated by such writers as Cohen that they don’t fact check a writer whose assumptions are at odds with the reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that they published on December 6, 2007, and at odds with their token black columnist, Bob Herbert, who said on June 20, 2008 that illegitimate births have “skyrocketed” over the decades.

  Patterson, Williams and Herbert have to rough up the brothers and sisters from time to time in order to hew the editorial line set by their employers. This was the conclusion of a study (The New York Times, June 23, 2008) by Bob Sommer, who teaches public policy communications at Rutgers, and John R. Maycroft, a graduate student in public policy. They examined 366 opinion articles published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Star-Ledger. They found that at each newspaper ninety to ninety-five percent of the published articles agreed with the editorial page stance on the issue at hand.

  Moreover, why aren’t Obama and other tough-lovers acquainted with a study cited by Michael Eric Dyson in Time Magazine on June 30, 2008? In his Viewpoint piece, “The Blame Game,” in which he also takes on Obama’s blame-the-victim speech, he refers to research by Boston College social psychologist that found “black fathers not living at home are more likely to keep in contact with their children than fathers of any ethnic or racial group.”

  I asked for a correction of both Herbert and Cohen’s assertions, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report indicated a higher rate per thousand births to unmarried Hispanic women, but only received an automatic reply from the Times. A June 11, 2009 report commissioned by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and the National Council of La Raza found that “Latino teens have the highest rate of teen pregnancy and births among all racial/ethnic groups.” Why don’t the legion of politicians like Obama, writers like The Manhattan Institute’s John McWhorter, Fox News’s Juan Williams, Harvard’s talented tenthers, all of whom scold blacks under the guise of tough love, love Hispanics, the country’s largest minority group? No box office appeal? No publishing contracts? No votes from Reagan Democrats?

  A 2007 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed some alarming statistics. “Latino high school students use drugs and attempt suicide at higher rates than their black and white classmates.” In addition “Latino students were more likely than either blacks or whites to… ride with a driver who had been drinking alcohol, or use cocaine, heroin or ecstasy. ”

  Other studies show that of the three hundred gangs located in Los Angeles, over sixty percent of their members are Latino. Most of the nation’s drive-by shootings occur in Los Angeles. Over fifty percent of the nation’s school dropouts are Hispanic.

 
; One month after the 2007 report, I still hadn’t read a single tough-love column about the conclusions. Not even from the handful of Hispanic commentators or syndicated columnists, who, like the colored mind doubles, are restricted about what they say lest they alienate the white viewers or readership by appearing to be angry. For example, I asked Jonathan Capehart, the genteel editorial writer for The Washington Post, whose assignment from MSNBC is to link Rev. Wright to Barack Obama, why he didn’t explore the relationship of Senator Clinton and John McCain to pastors who’ve made outrageous statements? I mentioned McCain’s buddy, the late Rev. Falwell and his remark that the Anti-Christ was a Jew. Capehart answered that this wasn’t the topic.

  While white commentators might range over a number of topics, the black commentators have to stick to their assignment lest they appear to be out of control or “angry.” That’s why the black commentator who spends the most time on camera at MSNBC and elsewhere is Michelle Bernard, president of the far-right Independent Women’s Forum. She apparently puts the white audience at ease. People For The American Way provides some information about the Independent Women’s Forum at their website:

  The Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) is an anti-feminist women’s organization founded to counter the influence of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and “radical feminists” on society.

  Frequent targets: Title IX funding, Affirmative Action, the Violence Against Women Act, full integration of women in the military, and those who oppose President Bush’s controversial judicial nominees.

  Opposes the United Nation’s Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

  IWF’s credo/mission: “The Independent Women’s Forum provides a voice for American women who believe in individual freedom and personal responsibility. We have made that voice heard in the U. S. Supreme Court, among decision makers [sic] in Washington, and across America’s airwaves. It is the voice of reasonable women with important ideas who embrace common sense over divisive ideology.”

  IWF was organized in defense of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas during his controversial nomination hearings.

  In the words of Media Transparency, “The Independent Women’s Forum is neither Independent, nor a Forum. Not independent because it is largely funded by the conservative movement. Not a forum because it merely serves up women who mouth the conservative movement party line.” Two other black MSNBC favorites are Ron Christie, former aide to Bush and Cheney and Joe Martin, Republican strategist.

  Either Obama and the pundits don’t love Hispanics or there’s more money and political opportunity in exhorting blacks. Racist appeals played a role in the election of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, both Bushes and even Clinton, but there is such euphoria among many African Americans about the possibility of a black presidency that his dumping of a bunch of lazy clichés on them will be forgiven. They will forgive him for throwing them under the bus as he did Rev. Wright, whose criticism of American foreign policy and remarks about the toxic attacks on the inner city were based upon facts. He provided his corporate media critics with a bibliography, but they apparently were too busy palling around with the people whom they cover to read it.

  Blacks will overlook Obama’s snubbing of the distinguished panel of black educators, politicians and intellectuals who appear on Tavis Smiley’s annual State of the Black Union, and overlook the fact that he found the time to appear before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee where he made belligerent threats against Arab nations and even promised Israel an undivided Jerusalem, he got so carried away, which undercuts a notion, held by Maureen Dowd and Susan Faludi, that he is the feminine candidate. When it comes to seeking Jewish votes and putting down black men, in order to obtain votes from white male conservatives, he can become John Wayne.

  Finally does anyone doubt that the hypocrisy exhibited by some leaders of the conservative movement in recent years doesn’t trickle down to many of their white working class followers in both states, who are idealized like a Norman Rockwell by talking heads, like Hitler-apologist Pat Buchanan?

  I had a glimpse of these talking heads’ lifestyle last May when walking toward a New York City restaurant called The Bombay Palace located across the street from CBS. The street was lined with chauffeurs awaiting the talking heads, who pose as experts on the white working class.

  And if many African Americans agree with John McWhorter that racist attacks on African Americans, including predatory mortgages, racial profiling, capricious traffic stops, racism in the criminal justice system, job and medical discrimination, outlaw drug experiments and the exoneration of police who murder unarmed blacks will end the day after the election of a black president, they’re in for a big let down. Again.

  McCain Gurgles in the Slime6

  (While the Clintons tried to use the fear of black rule and painted Obama as the Other in their effort to break him, McCain’s campaign used the tactics that had been used against blacks in the South, historically, that of presenting Obama as a threat to white women and children, an image that Mrs. Clinton’s associates used in the infamous 3:00-am ad. So desperate was McCain that he enlisted the help of those who used robocalls to slander him as the father of a black child, the calls that got Bush elected. At first, he even employed the mastermind of the ad that associated Harold Ford with a white Playboy model. Later, he took the advice of Kristol the Younger and accepted Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate, a choice that doomed his candidacy. This was the assessment of even those inside McCain’s campaign in post-election interviews. A book entitled Game Change, published in early 2010 revealed her lack of qualifications. She didn’t know about the Korean War and didn’t comprehend why North and South were separated. She didn’t know what the Fed did. She said it was Saddam Hussein who attacked the United States on 9/11. When asked to identify the enemy that her son would be fighting in Iraq she drew a blank. No wonder that PolitiFact at The St. Petersburg Times cast her comment associating the health care reform bill with “death panels” as “The Lie of the Year.”)

  Unlike The Zulu’s Heart, The Girls and Daddy (1909) constructs a blackface caricature as an outright sexual predator, a wanton threat to two angelic white girls.

  Daniel Bernardi, writing about the films of D.W. Griffith in The Birth Of Whiteness: Race And The Emergence Of U.S. Cinema.

  M

  cCain campaign manager, Rick Davis, in a television performance, which, if he were a woman, would be called strident, or a black man, angry, faced down a cowed Andrea Mitchell after she questioned him about a McCain ad that even offended The New York Times’ gentle Bob Herbert. Herbert wrote:

  Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

  The Republican National Committee targeted Harold Ford with a similarly disgusting ad in 2006 when Mr. Ford, then a congressman, was running a strong race for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. The ad, which the committee described as a parody, showed a scantily clad woman whispering, “Harold, call me.”

  Herbert even located some dog-whistle meat in the ad. Phallic symbols like the leaning tower of Pisa. Davis for his part accused Obama of playing the race card, when he commented that he didn’t look like the presidents whose faces appear on the currency. Of course, Hillary Clinton said something similar during the primary, yet nobody accused her of playing the gender card, but Davis and his associates weren’t interested in consistency.

  Their ad, which suggested a sexual connection between Obama and two blondes, was meant to do for McCain what the Willie Horton ad did for Bush One and what the Ford ad did for Senator Bob Corker. So clumsy and obvious and removed from contemporary culture was this ad that Paris Hilton replied with one that was superior and probably cost less.


  That they would slime-ball Obama from the bottom at this stage of the campaign might be viewed as a sign of panic, no matter what cable reports claim about a tight race. His campaign must know something that the MSNBC and CNN infotainers and McCain enablers of the segregated media don’t. This kind of Hail Mary pass, using the kind of sports metaphor that commentators on shows like Morning Joe use to convince their viewers of their familiarity with the working class, usually occurs in October a few weeks before the election. What Robert Crumb might call the When-The–Niggers-Take-Over-America ad. After the ad, cable ran panels which included the usual prattle, filler that takes place between ads, except this time, Rachel Maddow, the brightest of the on-air commentators, David Gergen and Ron Brownstein deciphered the racist codes of Davis’s recent appeals, for example, that Obama was “presumptuous,” while black on-camera puppets of the far right denied that this was the case. They all seemed to be employees of Rev. Sun Moon, one of whom was used to frame the discussion on Jonathan Klein’s sinister attempt at gaining ratings, the sleazy infotainment spectacular, Black In America, replete with the sort of images of blacks CNN runs each day: criminals, addicts, sexual predators (especially when the victims are white women) and the stragglers of American society, only this time dignified with panels—a carnival of charismatics—who competed with each other for applause lines. Klein, America’s Julius Streicher (Nazi propagandist), and Davis probably think that their values are superior to those of the families of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.