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

With his lies, Sgt. Crowley not only made fools of Stuart Taylor, Huffington Post commentators Robin Wells and Frank Serpico, who accepted his false report, but most depressing, Greg Palast, a leader in the fight against the caging of voters. Moreover, Crowley, who, after the beer summit, seemed grateful that things didn’t have to get “physical” with Gates, a fifty-eight-year-old man who walks with a cane.

The American media have sided with the police most of the time, even when the police led the invasions of black neighborhoods where the inhabitants were massacred, or when they simply stood by and watched — something that the Cambridge and Boston police didn’t learn in school, nor did the whites, the media’s “general public,” who, when polled, took Crowley’s word over Gates’. The Newseum in Washington, DC should have a hall of shame, which would display the headlines of newspapers whose inflammatory reporting led to race riots: Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1921; New Orleans, 1900; etc.

Showman Lou Dobbs praised Sgt. Leon Lashley, the black policeman who backed Crowley as some kind of martyr to political correctness, without mentioning that the officer said that he would have handled the situation differently. Can you blame the guy? He has to work with people like Justin Barrett, the Boston cop who called Gates “a banana eating jungle bunny” and threatened that if Gates had given him some “belligerent non-compliance” he would have “sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper spray].” Officer Barrett is suing the city of Boston because in the view of him and his lawyer, he was fired, unjustly, by Boston’s mayor. His suit lists the damage that the mayor has caused him “…Pain and suffering; mental anguish; emotional distress; post-traumatic stress; sleeplessness; indignities and embarrassment; degradation; injury to reputation; and restriction on his personal freedom.”

His lawyer Peter Marano said that Barrett didn’t mean to characterize Gates as a “banana eating jungle monkey,” but only meant to characterize Gates’ behavior.

Appearing on the Larry King Show , however, Barrett said that he didn’t know what made him say that, a statement which just about pleads for a new branch of psychiatry, or at least of an exorcism. His pathetic attempt at wit is the kind of thing that black policemen have had to deal with for decades: racist graffiti posted on bulletin boards, on emails, overheard on police radios, pasted on their lockers.

Lou Dobbs wasn’t the only commentator cherry-picking the information from the Gates-Crowley encounter. Ed Schultz, a progressive, didn’t even mention Ms. Whalen’s disputing of Officer Crowley’s report. He supported the media line that both Gates and Crowley overreacted, with Gates doing the most overreacting.

The typical response by the talking heads — even the token progressives — took Sgt. Crowley’s word over that of a black professor and a white woman. In a show of ethnic solidarity with Crowley, the Morning Joe show’s Mike Barnicle said that the next time Gates needed a policeman, he should call the Harvard lounge, a remark that drew round-the-clock thigh slapping and yuks from his colleagues. In other words, blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans should accept any action from the police even when it violates their rights, because they, the taxpayers who pay their salaries, might need them in the future.

Chris Matthews, another member of MSNBC’s Irish-American mafia, nominated Crowley for governor of Massachusetts after Crowley’s arrogant and unremarkable press conference. (If a poll were conducted in Ireland, Gates’ version of events would probably prevail over Crowley’s.)

An on-camera left-wing Irish American is as rare as a left-wing African American or Hispanic. Salon ’s Joan Walsh won’t do. She agreed with the Albany jury that acquitted the police who murdered Amadou Diallo, who didn’t have a PhD. Like Maureen Dowd, Joan Walsh has cops in her family. If CNN and MSNBC were interested in recruiting some left-wing Irish commentators they might contact the newspaper Irish Echo , which they ought to read. Of course if Celtic-African-American President Obama showed signs of solidarity with the brothers and sisters, like that shown toward Crowley by Scarborough, Matthews, Barnicle and Joe Queenan, appearing on the Bill Mahar Show , he’d be dismissed as an angry black chauvinist. Black and brown cable faces are also drawn from the political right. The lone progressive CNN Hispanic contributor is often outnumbered three to one. The leader of CNN’s Hispanic right is Cuban American Rick Sanchez, who ran down a homeless man named Jeffrey Smuzinick after imbibing “a few cocktails” at a Dolphins game. One of the few Hispanic syndicated columnists is Ruben Navarrete, Jr. whose assignment, like the three at CNN, is to take it to the brothers and sisters from time to time. (Leslie Sanchez, a Republican spokesperson, appears on both MSNBC and CNN.) For example, Navarrete, accepting Crowley’s account, blamed the whole incident on Gates’ not being deferential to the cop. Maybe Gates should have said something like “Bossman police, Iz sorry for bein’ in my own house,” followed by an offer to shine his shoes. I reminded Navarrete that Crowley lied. He answered with a sarcastic note. Navarrete is the writer who said that he was okay with The New York Post cartoon in which President Obama was depicted as a dead chimp slain by the police. Even Rupert Murdoch, the closest media owner we’re likely to get to Goebbels, apologized for that one. The black face at Time is Ramesh Ponnuru, perhaps a reward for his taking the flak at The National Review when Asian-American groups protested a cartoon, which they found offensive. Ramesh Ponnuru defended the cartoon. One of the editors at the time told the protestors that he would not “kowtow” to their demands.

Gates might have raised his voice, he might have yelled, but there was no evidence that he was “belligerent,” in the words of blogger and yoga instructor Robin Wells or “cantankerous,” the word used by sportscaster Stephen A. Smith, who also blamed the incident on Gates. Why would Ms. Wells take the word of Officer Crowley over that of her colleague in the sisterhood, Lucia Whalen? Does Arianna Huffington agree with Ms. Wells?

The fact that black commentators also accepted the officer’s testimony shows the compromises that some blacks have to make in order to keep their jobs in an industry owned by the white right. Oh, sure, the reporters might be liberal, but they don’t run Clear Channel, Fox, CNN, MSNBC and McClatchy.

Before integration, black newspapers were so powerful and independent that J. Edgar Hoover wanted to charge them with sedition according to A Question of Sedition by Patrick Washburn. He was overruled by Franklin Roosevelt’s Attorney General Francis Biddle. Black journalism was weakened when some of the more talented journalists got jobs with mainstream newspapers where they have no power. While Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough can go apoplectic any time they feel like it, the few blacks on camera have to keep their cool so as not to appear angry.

Even so, Eugene Washington, who speaks in almost a whisper, just about called Crowley a liar when he said that he didn’t believe that Gates made a slur about the officer’s mother.

Knowing Gates, I don’t either, but then Washington caught himself by adding that he doesn’t know whether a white Harvard professor would have received the same treatment. He called that hypothetical. Hypothetical? Like the theory of gravity? Even tough-lover Bob Herbert, who, like some other token black writers, got angry over the way Gates was treated (Herbert had received a Talented Tenth award from Gates). Herbert blames society’s failings on rap music and says awful things about Michael Jackson, whose contributions to charities were in the millions, but his opinion isn’t shared by the Times ’ sales department, which devotes whole sections to Jackson and the rappers in an effort to woo younger readers. He should go to the Times ’ advertising department and threaten to quit if they don’t cut it out.