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

That afternoon, progressive talk show host Ed Schultz’s guest was an admitted conservative who trashed Obama’s economic program, a program that most economists credited with having saved the country from a depression.

The left said that they wanted Obama to be more like Lyndon Johnson, forgetting apparently that Johnson’s aggressive foreign policy got him into trouble. Brent Budowsky of The Hill was brought on by progressive Air America to criticize Obama’s performance during his first year in office. Go to The Hill website and one will find the black point of view represented by two right-wingers Ron Christie and Armstrong Williams, former aide to Strom Thurmond, a segregationist everywhere but in bed. (On November 16, The New York Times acknowledged that the criticism of Obama was coming from both the right and the left.) Accompanying the photo was that of three hosts, one of whom plays liberal, Chris Matthews, and two progressives, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, all-white. In the same section was an article about Newsweek ’s problems. All three executives pictured were white including the managing editor, Jon Meecham, who believes that the country is center right (even though it rejected John McCain, who campaigned from the center right) and that Billy Graham looks like God.

After Democratic losses in November 2009 in Virginia and New Jersey, the segregated media was once again speaking of Obama’s bad week and the failure of his administration and pronouncing victory for the tea-baggers whose challenge to the Republican establishment led to the election of the first Democratic congressman from New York’s 23rd district in over one hundred years. Even with losses in both New Jersey and Virginia, where the candidate for governor ran as an Obama Republican, Obama’s poll numbers remained high.

Despite the encouraging news of the week ending on October 30, the Sunday show panels, which have been criticized for their lack of minority representation, continued their yearlong criticism of the Obama administration. Much attention was given to Senator Joseph Lieberman, who threatened to block health legislation if a public option were included. The commentators didn’t reveal that Lieberman has received over two million dollars from the insurance industry and that his wife has lobbied on behalf of the health insurance industry. After making predictions about Obama’s failures — predictions that weren’t borne out — you’d think that members of the Jim Crow media fraternity would be more cautious. For weeks they were predicting that a health bill would come out of the House, minus public option. A bill with a public option passed the House despite the prediction of a CNN newswoman who, the night before, predicted that it wouldn’t.

Though few black women reporters and commentators are seen on television, white women are plentiful both on national and local television. They are among those who appear on camera to lash out at Obama. I’ve mentioned Mary Matalin, editor of one of the most abominable books about the president. She receives gentle treatment when she is brought on to comment about the president’s alleged failures. This woman worked for Dick Cheney who advocated the torture of prisoners and is suspected of outing a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, a treasonable offense. During the August 5, 2008 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends , Fox News contributor Bob Beckel said to Jerome Corsi, author of the book The Obama Nation , edited by Matalin:

“You said that Barack Obama supported a bill that allowed mothers to kill their babies even after they were born. Now, were they gonna use knives, guns, or how were they gonna do that? And do you actually believe that to be true?” Corsi responded, “Well, it’s true,” and asserted that “Obama, on the floor of the Illinois state Senate, said that woman had an absolute right to abortion, to kill the baby even if it survived that abortion.” In fact, during the floor debate on the bill Corsi was discussing — which opponents said was unnecessary, as the Illinois criminal code unequivocally prohibits killing children, and said that it posed a threat to abortion rights — Obama never said any such thing, as Media Matters noted in response to similar false claims by Corsi in several media appearances.

Beckel later brought up several controversial comments by Corsi:

“Can I give you a couple other Corsi comments just so that people can understand the person writing this book? Corsi on Muslims: ‘Ragheads are boy-bumpers and clearly are woman-haters.’” Beckel further said, “Corsi on — you called ‘John Effing Commie Kerry. He married Teresa then he became a Jew.’ You say about Hillary Clinton, ‘Fat Hog’ Clinton.” Later in the discussion, Beckel asked Corsi, about his comment about Hillary Clinton. Corsi had said “Anybody asked Hillary why she couldn’t stop B. J. Bill being satisfied? She’s a lesbo.” Beckel asked, “When did you say that?” Corsi responded, “Bob, I never defend these comments. They’re ancient history,” and claimed, “Ad hominem attacks on me are a fairly low way of trying to get to the substance of what I’m saying.” Beckel later stated, “Doctor, I have looked through a good part of your book. All I can tell you is, you say you have 600 sources. Most of those sources are people who have right-wing agendas who are against Barack Obama.” Beckel also said to Corsi: “[I]f you’re holding yourself out here to be an expert on Barack Obama and say the kinds of things you’ve said, you have to understand why some of us question not only your standing, not only the accuracy of your book, but also your history.”

Mary Matalin, editor of the book, defended this scurrilous rubbish. The fact that she is awarded hours of TV time to criticize the president is a disgrace and shows how low Jonathan Klein, CNN president, will stoop to get ratings.

With the election of a black president, the media have become a sort of white power government in exile taking its lead from Fox News. When President Obama and his team began to treat Fox News as an arm of the Republican Party, the “mainstream” media rallied to defend Fox and even suggested that their criticism of Fox would only serve to improve Fox’s ratings. Wrong again.

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters wrote:

…we saw nearly universal agreement among media elites that the White House decision to publicly call out Fox News was monumentally dumb, thin-skinned, short-sighted, and uncivil. [Paging the etiquette police!]

Everyone said so. Therefore pundits were certain that Fox News’ ratings were way up and that Obama and his aides had made a huge tactical blunder. The ratings angle simply provided statistical ammunition for what the Beltway press corps already knew to be the truth: Fact-checking Fox News, in the immortal words of The Washington Post ’s CW-loving Sally Quinn, was “absolutely crazy.”

Except it turns out none of that was true. There was no viewer stampede toward Fox News.

From Fox, MSNBC, where a man who has a history of making racist and anti-Semitic remarks, Pat Buchanan, has been given unlimited time to criticize the president, to CNN, that features a man who designed a racist ad for Senator Jesse Helms, Alex Castellanos, and a professional scapegoater of African Americans, William Bennett, Obama faces a rogue’s gallery of pundits with a history of racist comments and campaigns against blacks. Bennett was rewarded with a regular CNN spot after his remark that if you were to abort black babies the crime rate would decline (apparently unaware that seventy percent of the crimes in the U.S. are committed by whites). Relying apparently on the short memory of the American public, Bennett is allowed to criticize the president’s economic plans. Bennett, a constant critic of black family values, has been exposed as such a gambling addict that his losses at one point totaled eight million dollars, which is pertinent because Republicans are always comparing the way individual citizens manage their personal budgets with the way “tax and spend” Democrats manage the government.