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

When the National Association of Black Journalists protested the firings of blacks from National Public Radio, Vivian Schiller, NPR’s chair and CEO said, in an attempt to stonewall the NABJ, that “the definition of diversity includes not only race and ethnicity, but also socioeconomic background, political perspective, gender and sexual identity, age, geography, point of view and a multitude of other factors that may not be obvious or measured.” Ms. Schiller must have adopted Gloria Steinem’s proposition that “gender” is the most “restrictive” element in American life. White gender that is! The white feminists and their surrogates didn’t care about the Central Park Five, whom they helped to send to prison for a crime that they didn’t commit, even though their mothers belonged to the same gender as they. Ms Schiller probably believes that her condition is worse than that of Emmett Till. Apparently Ms. Schiller isn’t aware that among the groups she mentioned, whites are at the top of the hierarchical ladder. When it comes to playing the race card, whites continue to hold all of the aces and so with the kind of absence of black journalists except those who mimic the views of the media owners (the only on-air African-American commentator at National Public Radio is right-winger Juan Williams, who is also a Fox contributor), President Obama continues to be reviewed by all-white panels, and whatever gains his programs might achieve, for them, he will always come up short or even fail. His children will be the targets of vicious comments. Juan Williams called his spouse, Michelle, “Stokely Carmichael in a dress.”

From Monday to Friday, October 26 through 30, 2009, there was good news for the economy. It was announced that that the stimulus plan had saved or created 640,000 jobs. (On November 30, Paul Krugman, media-designated Obama critic and Nobel Prize winning economist, had to admit that, “Basically, we started out with a year that matched the Great Depression, but have since pulled back a bit from the edge of the abyss.”) Ford Motor Company announced a profit of nearly a billion dollars due partially to the administration’s “cash for clunkers” program. Home buying increased by 6.1 percent, the most since 2006. Construction spending rose. Manufacturing grew for the third straight month. The GDP came in at an annualized rate of 5.7 percent during the fourth quarter of 2009. A few weeks later GM announced that it would repay the government’s bailout money five years ahead of schedule.

This news didn’t diminish the steady flow of criticism emanating from Obama’s adversaries on talk shows and panels that aired the following Sunday — shows that have been criticized over the years for lacking black representation or for using tokens. On Meet The Press it was Tavis Smiley, who had been outed by a blog called TheRoot for being the advance man for Wells Fargo in its successful attempt to sell toxic mortgage loans to inner city residents. He said that maybe those who during the campaign said that Barack Obama lacked the experience to be president were right. Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union , on Sunday, Mary Matalin ridiculed the president’s programs and repeated the GOP talking point that the public was opposed to the administration’s public option plan, even though there was a consensus among those polled that the majority of the public was for it. (On the following Monday, William Kristol, a guest on The Washington Journal , echoed Matalin’s talking point and was also allowed to create an “American public” that rivaled that reflected in the polls, without being challenged by the moderator.) Ms. Matalin’s presence on a panel on which the majority followed the line introduced by Saturday Night Live , a comedy show, was an example of how even Obama’s fiercest enemies are given time to weigh in on the president’s alleged failure.

Saturday Night Live , on October 3, opened with Fred Armisen as President Obama, delivering an address from the Oval Office. “When you look at my record,” he said, “it’s very clear what I’ve done so far, and that is nothing.” During the following week and months the show, a comedy show mind you, was cited around the clock as proof that President Obama hadn’t accomplished anything.

Whether this was a result of journalistic lethargy, an unwillingness to consult the facts, or whether it was talking points required of pundits by the media owners, the Saturday Night Live writers — who tend to be white — were wrong. What are the facts? The St. Petersburg Times ’ PolitiFact.com’s Truth-O-Meter listed promises that Obama had made. They included:

15

Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners;

33

Establish a credit bill of rights;

36

Expand loan programs for small businesses;

58

Expand eligibility for State Children’s Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP);

76

Expand funding to train primary care provides and public health practitioners;

77

Increase funding to expand community based prevention programs;

88

Sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;

110

Assure the Veterans Administration budget is prepared as “must-pass” legislation;

119

Appoint a special adviser to the president on violence against women;

125

Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq;

222

Grant Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send money to Cuba;

239

Release presidential records;

269

Increase funding for national parks and forests;

290

Push for enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act, which expands hate crime laws to include sexual orientation and other factors;

327

Support increased funding for NEA;

337

Use the International Space Station for fundamental biological and physical research;

346

Appoint an assistant to the president for science and technology policy;

359

Rebuild schools in New Orleans;

371

Fund a major expansion of AmeriCorps;

411

Work to overturn Ledbetter vs. Goodyear ;

435

Create new criminal penalties for mortgage fraud;

452:

Weatherize 1 million homes per year;

459

Enact tax credit for consumers for plug-in hybrid cars;

480

Support high-speed rail;

500

Increase funding for the Environmental Protection Agency;

507

Extend unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspend taxes on those benefits;

513

Reverse restrictions on stem cell research.

Did nothing? All of these promises were kept. Yet, the mainstream cable news channels used the Saturday Night Live comic interpretation as a hook that was even picked up by progressives. Typical was Ed Schultz, of Air America, who criticized Obama for his lack of “aggression,” with the knowledge that a black “aggressive” president becomes to his enemies an “angry black man” and one who, as Glenn Beck of Fox said, hates white people. On November 9, 2009, Keith Olbermann cited an interview conducted with Rupert Murdoch by an Australian newspaper during which Rupert Murdoch agreed with Glenn Beck that Obama was a racist.) If criticism of Obama from the white right and mainstream weren’t enough, some of Obama’s harshest criticisms came from The Huffington Post, Salon.com and Air America which, on November 5, invited listeners to judge Obama’s first year. Most of the respondents and the guest host Nicole Sandler gave him a failing grade. She gave her opinion that Bush was a more effective president, an idea offered by comedian Bill Maher, begrudgingly, yet fifty-seven percent of Americans polled during that November period held that Obama was more effective than Bush.