by Ishmael Reed
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.
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.
Glenn Beck was hired by CNN after he called the survivors of Katrina “scumbags.” Another example of how talk show culture influences politics was the announcement of the Palin-backed conservative candidate for New York’s 23rd district congressional seat, Doug Hoffman, that Fox News host Glenn Beck was his inspiration. He lost. During the week of November 16, the Anti-Defamation League blasted Beck for his demagogic and inflammatory attacks on the president in an alarming report about the growing anti-Obama rage that is being promoted partially by the media.
Although much of the recent anti-government anger has been generated by a combination of partisan politics, grass-roots activists, and extreme groups and movements, the mainstream media has also played a role in promoting anti-government anger and pandering to people who believe that the Obama administration is illegitimate or even fascistic.
The most important mainstream media figure who has repeatedly helped to stoke the fires of anti-government anger is right-wing media host Glenn Beck, who has a TV show on FOX News and a popular syndicated radio show. While other conservative media hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, routinely attack Obama and his administration, typically on partisan grounds, they have usually dismissed or refused to give a platform to the conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists. This has not been the case with Glenn Beck. Beck and his guests have made a habit of demonizing President Obama and promoting conspiracy theories about his administration.
Much of the animus directed at Obama from Fox is meant to destroy his administration according to court documents filed by Sandra Guzman, a former Fox employee. Gawker reported:
The 38-page complaint was filed by former employee Sandra Guzman, and she claims she was fired in retaliation, after publicly condemning a racist cartoon published in the paper depicting President Obama as a dead chimpanzee. (…)
Guzman’s complaint also states that “Charles Hurt, the Post’s Washington D.C. Bureau Chief told Guzman that the Murdoch-owned Post’s ‘goal is to destroy Barack Obama. We don’t want him to succeed.’”
Rupert Murdoch also owns Fox News, which Fox News’ Senior Vice President for Programming, Bill Shine recently admitted had the goal of being �
�the voice of opposition” to the Obama administration. Murdoch also stated in a recent interview that he agrees with Glenn Beck that President Obama is a racist.
The allegations in Guzman’s lawsuit, if true, paint Rupert Murdoch-owned newspapers and media outlets, as having a set agenda to slant news coverage to bring down the Obama administration.
When minority American journalists met at a convention in 2004, the media were termed the enemy. With the removal of black, Hispanic and Asian-American journalists from the media groups whose members voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama, the president continues to be judged by all-white commentary, a punditry which includes members of the Imus Alumni, those loyal to Don Imus, who was fired for calling black female members of a basketball team “nappy-headed hos.” Howard Kurtz, David Gregory, Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan and others remained loyal to Imus until the end. And though this book is critical of Obama’s chastising of African Americans, Africans, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kanye West in order to please a white constituency, the Sister Souljah strategy, I am the first to acknowledge that it took great courage for him and his family to campaign for a job that even General Colin Powell’s family declined for fear of his being murdered. Just as the American media is the enemy of blacks and Latinos, Obama’s candidacy and presidency have been treated with a similar hostility, (not only from the right but the left, as Bush could always count on Fox) that at least one newspaper, Boston Globe, has commented that through their actions they have increased the threats on the president’s life. “Threatening language has also found its way into talk radio broadcasts and social networking websites, raising fears that individuals not normally considered threats to the president could be incited to violence.”
