by Ishmael Reed
Certainly, some immigrants view possessing light skin as a key to success according to The New York Times on January 28, 2007:
Light-skinned immigrants in the United States make more money on average than those with darker complexions, and the chief reason appears to be discrimination, a researcher says.
The scholar, Joni Hersch, a professor of law and economics at Vanderbilt University, looked at a government survey of 2,084 legal immigrants to the United States from around the world and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.
“On average,” Dr. Hersch said, ‘’being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education.’’
Senator Reid indicated that for some white people “ebonics” or “the Negro dialect” is a source of ridicule unless they can make millions imitating “ebonics” in rock, rock and roll songs, novels, movies and television. He also used the term “negro,” which thousands of blacks and black institutions still use. One of the reasons that the word “black” became popular is because, according to Headlines and Deadlines: A Manual for Copy Editors by R.E. Garst and Theodore M. Bernstein, newspapers found “black” easier to set than “African American.” Senator Reid’s comment was fodder for news entertainment for weeks, a kind of racial “Jeopardy,” game shows and “town halls” that are cheap to produce and which distract from the real issues of race in American society like the apartheid criminal justice system, disparities in the healthcare industry, and red-lining.
During the final days of December 2009, Deborah Howell, former ombudswoman for The Washington Post, died. Her comment that the Post’s Op-Ed page was “too white and too male,” could have been said of the rest of the media, even those headed by feminists, like The Nation magazine. A Christmas party photo reprinted by media hawk, Richard Prince, showed only one black staff member at the “progressive” Huffington Post, headed by the telegenic feminist and Obama critic, Arianna Huffington.
Despite the conclusion of several media studies that I cited in this book, Howard Kurtz, Imus buddy and supporter of National Public Radio’s notorious black pathology show, Ghetto 101, continued to embrace the myth that the press coverage of Barack Obama had sent the presidency into the “stratosphere” only for him to “fall to earth.” What “stratosphere?” During the campaign it was noted that The Associated Press was in the pocket of Senator John McCain, and given the negative analysis of Obama’s administration made by Ben Feller of that agency, printed in early January, they still were.
The coverage from the campaign through the first year of the administration hadn’t changed at Fox News either. For these and other media organizations, Obama’s position was always terrestrial, including his position at MSNBC, which, regardless of the presence of two progressives, Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann, allows conservatives like Joe Scarborough, and hard core white nationalist, Pat Buchanan, and Mika Brzezinski and their guests to denigrate the president for three hours at a time some mornings.
The idea that Obama had fallen from on high to earth was endorsed by the panelists, which included Bill Press, the media’s idea of a “progressive.” This is the Bill Press, who, according to Lydia Chavez in her book The Color Bind: California’s Campaign to End Affirmative Action opposed Affirmative Action in California. After an exchange about Proposition 209, the proposition that ended Affirmative Action, with a representative from the NAACP, Press told her, “you’re nothing,” according to the book.
Appearing on the December 27 program, Chris Stirewalt, a reporter for The Washington Examiner, said that in the conflict between the White House and Fox News, it was the White House “that got burned,” an opinion that was contradicted in a report from Media Matters.
He also joined the parade of white commentators who used scandals involving black celebrities to symbolize the end of an era or a decade. His nomination was Michael Jackson who, for him, “symbolized a decayed, corrupted society,” not the Army Corps of Engineers, whose negligence was cited by a judge during 2009 as being responsible for the flooding in the aftermath of Katrina, which caused widespread suffering, displacement, billions of dollars in property damage and the near extinction of the fabulous city of New Orleans. Not the large banks, and investment firms, whose crimes were tucked away on the business pages, or the drug companies who settled class action suits which held them responsible for putting toxic dangerous products on the market. Their profits exceeded the cost of the class action suits, so that poisoning people becomes just the cost of doing business. No, for this man, it was MJ, a performer who gave millions to charities located all over the world.
The rest of Kurtz’s all-white media jury agreed with Stirewalt about Jackson, even though Jackson had been acquitted in a case where a child, who lied under oath in a previous case, was found to have been manipulated by his mother, who, in 2006, was convicted of welfare fraud, a story ignored by the media. The 2006 case was based upon a 1993 charge brought against Jackson by another child manipulated by a parent, whose mental problems were apparent to anybody who studied the case. In 2009, the year of Jackson’s death, the parent committed suicide, another story ignored by the media.
Barack Obama gave his administration a B plus, a grade that some might consider modest, since it was the consensus among economists that his administration had saved the country from a depression. I’d give him an A minus because I understand the shackles placed upon him and his administration in a country where the most powerful weapons and the money are in the hands of whites. Though African-American celebrities and organizations might criticize him for ignoring the deepening depression now being experienced by African-American communities, where in some cities, the unemployment rate is at thirty-five percent, as a result of banks denying blacks access to capital, the decline of manufacturing jobs, as a result of the Bush-Clinton policies, and the swindling of black homeowners by criminal banks, whose crimes are ignored by a mainstream and progressive media that have gone bonkers over MJ, Tiger, Michael Vick, Chris Brown and O.J., whose case has led to mass hysteria, were Obama to behave like a black president, his doing so would expose him to more racist attacks than the ones he is now experiencing; it would cripple his administration. Though Obama sometimes reminds one of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, he might resemble Booker T. Washington more than the other two. Wearing the mask. Scolding African officials for their corruption, following a meeting during which he was able to increase the commitment to Africa by five billion dollars. When he answers critics who question his commitment to black employment by suggesting that economic recovery for all will lead to black employment, he sounds like Booker T. Washington.
I am disturbed by the collateral damage that is occurring in Afghanistan, but I am convinced that were Al Qaeda to get a hold of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons there would be massive casualties. This is a group that wishes to restrict the rights of women by using the most extreme measures and whose leader has made racist comments about blacks living in Africa, calling African women “prostitutes” according to Chinweizu, who, along with other important African intellectuals, is alarmed by the spreading influence of Islam on the continent. This is an anti-Art group that destroyed thousands of years of Buddhist art.
What is the attitude toward blacks held by Al Qaeda? They bombed the embassy in Kenya, causing hundreds of African casualties and really didn’t care about anybody’s race when they bombed the World Trade Center. If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had succeeded in blowing up a plane over Detroit there might have been a large number of African-American casualties, yet I’m aware that it was the disease of white supremacy, rampant among Western nations, that led to the creation of groups like Al Qaeda in the first place. How many more people will have to be humiliated, racially profiled, and murdered for the maintenance of white supremacy?
Obama as president has made another contribution. His presence as the leader of the executive department
has smoked out the virulent racism that has been covered by euphemism and code words like “busing,” “political correctness,” “welfare” and “crime.” All one has to do is to read the vicious blogs about the president’s family, the tea party signs, witness the joker who called Mr. Obama a liar during his address to Congress. He has ripped the mask off of “conservatism” and found the contorted ugly face of racism behind it. Even those who felt the sunrays of post-racism have been chilled by the president being likened to a witch doctor and a chimp (by Aussies at The New York Post who are referred to in a similar manner by the British) and his children being referred to as whores. When they refer to an African-American pioneer it’s Jackie Robinson (but ignore the part where he used to beat up white officers who called him a “nigger”), but in comparison to the achievement of President Obama, who, according to one historian, might be the most powerful black person in history, regardless of the limitations placed upon his presidency by the Jim Crow media, and a Republican Party, whose members believe that cooperating with Obama might get them called “nigger lovers” back home, Robinson’s integrating baseball seems modest.
My giving Obama an A minus isn’t the grade awarded Obama by the media where Obama received a low or failing grade even though at the end of the year, holiday retail sales were up, stocks were healthy and unemployment had not exceeded ten percent, some of the banks that had received bailouts were repaying billions of dollars to the government and GM, which, in 2009, was on the verge of collapse, predicted profits in 2010. Yet, the white nationalist pundits both on the left and right continued to mock him.
The week before, Matthew Continetti, appearing on Howard Kurtz’s Reliable Sources, December 20, gave Barack Obama a C. Mr. Continetti is the author of The Persecution of Sarah Palin. He’s employed by The Weekly Standard, a publication that was recently purchased by a wealthy Christian fundamentalist. One panel member was media juror Diane Dimond, a sleazy tabloid wag, a Michael Jackson stalker and pal of Jackson’s persecutor and prosecutor, District Attorney “Mad Dog” Sneddon. During the show, Dimond, one of the most repugnant of tabloid personalities, who had rented a boat to go out and snoop about Tiger Woods’ dwellings, lectured the viewers about personal morality.
Years from now, when the corporate media is stored away in a print and electronic museum, mercifully, media historians will mark a phase of its final period as being dominated by tabloid types like Dimond. I believe that this began when respectable journalists began appearing with reporters from The National Enquirer during the O.J. trial. This tabloid infection has even influenced the progressive media with places like progressive Air America getting as down and dirty as the supermarket tabloids. Bill Press, Keith Olbermann, Ed Schultz and other progressives devoted considerable amount of time to Michael Jackson and Tiger.
On the day that personnel from Blackwater, the off-the-shelf corporate warriors employed by the government, were acquitted for killing seventeen Iraqi citizens, progressive Ed Schultz was commenting on Tiger Woods’ relationship with a porn star.
He spent a program on December 27 on Tiger, and two callers complained about Tiger’s being rude to their children. He failed to mention Tiger Woods’ contributions to charity. The Orange County Register was one of the few sites that noted his contributions.
Say what you will about Tiger Woods and his latest antics. The golf star’s OC-based nonprofit foundations raised more than $50 million and spent more than $40 million last year, and got high marks from charity watchdogs.
His contribution to charity was also ignored by sports writer David Zirin of The Nation, who criticized the athlete for not being activist enough.
On Reliable Sources, Kurtz linked Obama to Chris Brown, a black singer who was the subject of months of media scorn for assaulting his girlfriend.
About the host of Reliable Sources, Howard Kurtz, Jamison Foser of Media Matters wrote that “Kurtz just couldn’t get Tiger off his mind,” and as if to validate Foser’s opinion, Kurtz came back to Tiger for a third program aired on Sunday, January 10, which turned into a feast of hypocrisy. Kurtz and David Brody of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network defended Brit Hume’s comment that Tiger Woods had a better chance at redemption from Christianity than from Buddhism. Brody saw nothing wrong with Hume’s statement, because “Jesus is the god of creation.” Brody said that Hume’s remark was problematical since it dissed other religions. Hume went to Fox’s Bill O’Reilly to defend his comments about Tiger’s converting to Christianity, which raises the question, how is that band of god-fearing Christians at Fox News behaving? DemocraticUnderground.com reports:
To be sure, in promoting the rumor of a Hume-Kendall tryst, Schur had help from reality. Hume’s wife of thirteen years, Kim Schiller Hume, headed the Washington bureau until recently; a report in the New York Daily News suggested that marital tensions had played a large role in her departure. Kendall, meanwhile, is recently divorced. As of today, in fact, she is reverting to her maiden name, Megyn Kelly, for on-air use.
Moreover, getting involved with an underling is virtually par for the course for Fox higher-ups. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of FNC parent News Corp., embarked on an affair with his current wife, Wendi Deng, when she was an employee of the Star TV affiliate, and married her in 1999. Roger Ailes, now chairman of Fox Television Stations, divorced his second wife, Norma, in 1995 and went on to marry his current wife, Beth Tilson, who had been his second-in-command at America’s Talking. And star pundit Bill O’Reilly famously described elaborate sexual fantasies over the phone to one of his producers, Andrea Mackris, leading to harassment allegations and a settlement of undisclosed size (reportedly around two million dollars).
As though begging for intervention, Kurtz added a second segment devoted to Tiger Woods. This time Gilbert Arenas, a basketball player who had brought a gun into the Washington Wizards’ locker room, was brought on as an extra added attraction. This panel included two white men. Sports writer Mike Wise gave Arenas and Tiger some slack.
We’re all flawed, he said. He was opposed by Buzz Bissinger whose Vanity Fair prose was used in an attempt to dignify a topless portrait of Tiger photographed by Annie Leibovitz, a woman who is obviously desperate to pay off her debts. Bissinger scolded both Arenas and Tiger for displaying “a false image,” before Wise challenged him to take an “inventory” of his own life. Bissinger’s comments show that separate but equalism exists even among the billionaire class, as evidenced by the media thrashing that Reginald Lewis, a billionaire, received as he was dying. A billionairess whom Dominick Dunne suspected of murdering her husband was able to get a story about Dunne’s suspicions killed at Vanity Fair.
On February 21, it was Tiger again whom a woman sports writer from USA Today compared to President Obama, O.J. and Kobe Bryant. Extra added attraction in another black-men and domestic violence media sideshow was Gary Coleman being grilled by second-generation black-male basher, Lisa Bloom.
Given the fact that most of Woods’ choices were Nordic types, could this be a case of shiksa envy on Kurtz’s part, or maybe Kurtz should begin an Obama/Tiger recovery group. (Ironically, one of the sponsors of this particular show was National Car Rental whose pitchman was wife beater, John McEnroe.) As though he were competing with Diane Dimond, the Tiger segments were followed by one about Warren Beatty’s seduction count. Kurtz is becoming a regular old media ho.
Progressive Ed Schultz, a radio talk jock, could join the recovery. He wasn’t the only commentator linking Obama to Woods to Chris Brown to Michael Vick in a sort of media chain gang of shame. Media Matters titled its December articles: “Newsmax’s Lowell Ponte compares Obama to Tiger Woods: ‘eager to give cold cash to get hot love’ at climate change conference,” and “Fox Nation: ‘Why Obama is Worse than Tiger?’” Fox’s shock jock Glenn Beck compared Tiger with O.J. Simpson. (A black comedian appearing on a show sponsored by Shaquille O’Neal, the basketball star, said that during 2009, blacks got Obama and whites got O.J.)
And, of
course, O.J. Simpson was tossed into the mix. While Tiger Woods was said by Frank Rich and others to represent the corruption at the end of this decade, O.J. Simpson was chosen to represent the end of the Millennium, no less, and while Rich associated Tiger with the Enron scandals, in 1997, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston put on an “End Of The Millennium” show curated by Christoph Grunenberg, in which O.J. Simpson was linked to Chernobyl!
The white progressives and liberals who had supported Obama in the beginning had begun sharing the right’s enthusiasm for assailing the president. For progressive Amy Goodman, he was uppity; she criticized his “swooping” into the scene of the Copenhagen climate change conference. On January 1, during her annual retrospective program, Obama was subjected to withering criticism by her guests and this was followed the next day on progressive Pacifica radio, by Doug Henwood, a Marxist economist, who was just as unrelenting in his criticism of Obama. Even while admitting on his Pacifica show, aired on January 9, that manufacturing jobs were beginning to return, he, using the kind of language that slave masters used when trapping the movements of a fugitive slave, referred to Obama as “slippery” and like some others who are treating nonwhite voters as invisible, noted that Obama was “losing his friends.”
Sam Roberts, who is a kind of Paul Revere for white nationalism, a man thrilled by the fact that whites with children are re-populating Manhattan and that Harlem no longer has a black majority, noted, maybe with alarm, that a coalition of nonwhites almost elected an obscure black politician over Mayor Bloomberg who spent over one hundred million during his campaign for Mayor of New York, yet white progressives still view themselves as Obama’s base ignoring the fact that Southern blacks provided him with his winning margins in the South and Hispanics in the West. Both the mainstream and progressive whites have ignored this harbinger of things to come.
