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

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.

(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.”)