So, it’s Obama who regularly chides/chastises only black or brown people for all their stereotypical faults, before — and for — the white world’s television cameras. It’s Obama who told black Americans that, “We must respect the verdict,” when the trial judge [a potentially risky jury trial, if I recall offhand, was opted out of by the cops] exonerated the New York City cops in the Sean Bell case, cop’s hail of fifty bullets, legalized murder case. And it’s Obama who publicly turned 180 degrees on his old friend Skip Gates, just as he turned his back on his old friend Jeremiah Wright (for something Wright said in church when Obama wasn’t even in church and wasn’t even going to that church at the time — or when Obama was a kid?) So, if these are “teachable moments,” as Obama said, then what are they supposed to teach us about Obama or any, “finally, honest national discussion” about race — like the Clintons turned both their backs on their “old family friend” Lani Guinier (even in the face of right-right-wing racist and sexist slurs!) when she wanted to have an honest national discussion about race (instead Bill turned to his phony racism commission), especially in the nation’s universities. So — once again — we know we will never get an “honest national discussion” about anything in the mainstream American media and especially not on television (not even on PBS or NPR), and certainly not from even the nation’s first officially or ostensibly black/African/biracial (whatever he actually calls himself) American president. My total wrap on Gates’ and Obama’s initial comments about the Gates arrest incident: they both said (at least from what I caught on the news) all the right things for all the wrong reasons.
No publishers are rushing to publish manuscripts by the young writers Justin Desmangles and Kofi Natambu. They are engaged in noble guerilla warfare against a propaganda machine that has billions of dollars at its disposal. NBC is worth thirty-eight billion alone. News Corp which sponsors Fox News includes right-wing individuals on its board with ties to multinational corporations, according to San Francisco’s Bay Guardian newspaper:
Occupying other seats at News Corp’s board table is an assortment of professors, attorneys, public-relations experts, and businessmen with their fingers in a variety of banks and multinational corporations. Among the more familiar names are Phillip Morris, Ford Motor Co., Hewlett Packard, Goldman Sachs, HSBC North America, and JP Morgan Chase. Lesser known are the investment banking firms that have stakes in the petroleum industry, utilities, mining companies, and real estate.
While the connections between corporate interests and the country’s leading conservative propagandist are extensive and obvious, there’s a stark contrast between the message delivered by Fox News and the interests of its parent company.
Pierre-Damien, also a radio host, Justin Desmangles and Kofi Natambu are waging an uphill battle by using limited equipment against the corporate Behemoth that smothers dissenting opinion, but this is an improvement over the situation in the past when blacks, Latinos and others were subjected to an electronic mugging with no means with which to fight back. Others have chosen the stage to combat the media’s smearing of unpopular groups. In the fall of 2009, I was also able to witness the collaboration between other young people of different ethnic backgrounds, in their effort to challenge the way unpopular and misunderstood groups are portrayed by the media.
From Jubilation at Election Night…
To Cries of Kill Him
(AOL September 30, 2009. “White supremacists and neo-Nazis have committed violence against African Americans around the country and fomented hate online for years. But in recent weeks, anti-Obama speech and behavior hinting at or advocating violence has surfaced at so-called town hall meetings and demonstrations against Obama’s health-care plan and other policies. The same has happened at forums frequented by fringe groups, including ‘birthers,’ who dispute Obama’s U.S. citizenship.
In August, the Secret Service investigated a man who displayed a sign reading ‘Death to Obama’ and ‘Death to Michelle and her two stupid kids’ outside a town hall meeting in Maryland. And in New Hampshire, a man brought a holstered gun and stood across the street from a presidential town hall with his weapon on full display, according to ABC News. And just last month, a North Carolina man pleaded guilty to threatening the president after he called 911 twice from his trailer just south of the Virginia border, saying he was going to assassinate the president, the AP reported.”)
The election of Barack Obama was a cause for celebration in November but by September 2009 there was real worry in the country about whether the president would live out his term. The Boston Globe pointed to the media’s role in creating the atmosphere in which the assassination of the president might be committed by a deranged individual or as in the case of JFK and MLK, a conspiracy.
September 2009 was typical. A poll conducted by a “juvenile,” appearing on Facebook, asked whether Obama should be killed. A writer for Newsmax.com, a site with connections with the Republican Party, called for a military coup against the president. Newsmax also distributed Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue, a book that received almost round-the-clock coverage by the media beginning on November 15. On John King’s State of the Union, from CNN where the ex-vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, was treated as a serious candidate for president come 2012, Barack Obama was ridiculed for bowing before the Emperor of Japan, with William Bennett leading the panel’s condemnation, without mentioning that President Eisenhower had bowed before General De Gaulle and that Richard Nixon had shown the same expression before Emperor Hirohito, who was the Emperor of Japan when Japan was regarded as an enemy nation! During the week film and photos surfaced showing George Bush Two holding hands with Saudi princes. Why didn’t John King mention these other bows when moderating a discussion about Obama’s bow before the Emperor of Japan? I run a zine that sometimes might receive one thousand hits in a day if we’re lucky. It’s managed by my youngest daughter. I sometimes fantasize about how formidable an outfit I would have were I to own the same kind of resources as the mainstream media. I would ask a member of my large staff — no intern could do the job — before going on to lead a discussion about Obama’s bowing before the Japanese Emperor, hey go and find whether any other president has bowed before a head of state or royalty and while you’re at it get me a cup of coffee at Starbucks. Was King lazy or was he instructed to treat Obama’s bowing as entertainment? I watched John King asking a panel about Barack Obama while waiting for a plane at the airport in Minneapolis.
Some white hunters of the sort who journey into Minnesota during deer season were also watching. I could tell what they were thinking. Even though the majority of the public, sixty-seven percent, including the majority of Republicans saw nothing wrong with the president’s bowing, the media carried the controversy into the last week of November.
Other shows also took up Obama’s bowing while treating Sarah Palin as a serious person. Mike Malloy was right when he said that while only nine percent of the public said that they’d vote for Palin, if she ran for president, she has a powerful constituency: the media. Malloy said that Palin’s appeal was her “hot ass” (Air America, November 19) and Jessica Yellin, one of King’s panelists called her a sex pot. And as if to prove their descriptions, Palin appeared on the cover of Newsweek as a sort of Playboy centerfold model with clothes. This cheesy flesh shot caused outrage among her followers who would be at a loss if you were to ask them to spell one of their buzzwords like “Constitution,” yet she posed for the photo. None of the cable networks, who reduced the president’s historic trip to China and Japan to a photo to prove that he wasn’t as manly as five-deferment and two-DUI Cheney, reported the career of Sarah Palin’s ghost writer. Gawker did: