Ishmael Reed - Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media - The Return of the Nigger Breakers

Appearing on This Week with George Stephanopoulos , May 30, 2008, Obama critic Paul Krugman said that many women felt that Senator Clinton had been treated unfairly, ignoring the poll conducted by Pew that concluded differently. He also reminded us that those Hispanic journalists who warned their white colleagues that they should be cautious when writing off Barack’s efforts to win the Hispanic vote aren’t the only points of view that are neglected by a segregated arrogant media. In her reply, his fellow panelist Donna Brazile, dissenting, had to remind him, “I’m a woman, too!”

Obama Scolds Black Fathers Gets Bounce in Polls5

( Barack Obama was congratulated by white politicians and members of the media, some of whom were divorcees, adulterers and substance abusers, when he criticized black fathers for their lack of “personal responsibility.” When Rev. Jesse Jackson correctly described this speech as one that talked down to black people, he was sacked by the media. A week after his Father’s Day speech, Obama appeared before The Council of La Raza and said that he shared the values of the Hispanic community, which, in some categories, have more dire statistics than those of blacks.)

It’s obvious by now that Barack Obama is treating black Americans like one treats a demented uncle, brought out from his room to be ridiculed and scolded before company from time to time, the old Clinton Sister Souljah strategy borrowed from Clinton’s first presidential campaign when he traveled the country criticizing the personal morality of blacks and wooing white voters by objecting to what he considered anti-white lyrics sung by rapper Sister Souljah. (Though former President Clinton denied that his campaigning for his wife included a racist appeal, a book published in January 2010, Game Change , by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, quoted him as telling the late Senator Ted Kennedy: “a few years ago, this guy [Obama] would have been getting us coffee.”)

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.