In her February 12, 2008, New York Times article, entitled "Seeking Unity, Obama Feels Pull of Racial Divide," journalist Ginger Thomas chronicles some of the careful orchestration and staging of racial issues by the Obama campaign. Let's be clear, Obama's official doxa is that "race" does not matter and that Americans are all unified as one. However, no one in the Obama campaign takes this as real orthodoxy. Instead, it is the image the campaign projects for the public and the media, while it calculates, behind-the-scenes, how to tailor its message to different crowds based on their racial or ethnic or religious make up. (How many of Obama's Hollywood cult followers would endorse the anti-gay preachers that traveled with him in South Carolina, or his anti-Semitic minister in Chicago?)
Oprah Winfrey has proclaimed at rallies "I am not voting for Obama because he is black. I am voting for Obama because he is brilliant." Really? There are many brilliant people in the world, most of them not qualified to be President. What makes Obama qualified? That he is "black," it would seem, despite Oprah's protestations. Why, according to Obama and his acolytes, is he able to appeal to a broad range of voters? Presumably because he is bi-racial. Why don't people just admit as much?
Midway through the article, I was startled to find a description of a conversation between Al Sharpton and Mr. Obama during a secret meeting held to orchestrate their respective roles:
“'We agreed on inside-outside roles,'” Mr. Sharpton said, referring to himself and Mr. Obama, echoing a famous conversation between President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 'I would continue my work agitating the system from the outside, and he would do what he could to make changes from the inside.'”
That's funny, but this is the very same distinction Mrs. Clinton made between President Johnson and Dr. King that led the Obama campaign and his cronies to accuse Mrs. Clinton of racism. Although he claims to be a unifying candidate for a post-racial world, he basically played the so-called "race card."
What is even worse is that the media chose to ignore the hypocrisy, perhaps because it was so instrumental in adding fuel to the fire. It seems this is yet another example of the media's imbalanced coverage of the democratic candidates in which Obama receives obvious favoritism (or, as Christopher Hitchens has recently termed, a "tsunami of drool.") Mr. Obama has gotten free passes on his drug use, his failure to take a position as a legislator (i.e., his "present" votes in Illinois), his inexperience (e.g., 3 years as a US Senator, most of which has been spent campaigning to be President), a platform consisting almost entirely of feel-good motivational speeches, his failure to explain WHAT exactly he will change and how he exactly will accomplish it, his association with anti-Semites (and his failure to denounce them), his 17-year relationship with fund-raising Rezko (indicted on 26 counts), his pandering to the nuclear corporation Exelon...just to name a few subjects on which one would expect to see some objective journalism.
The democratic process relies on the press to ferret out facts and reality from the image and propaganda set forth by politicians. Unfortunately, the media (print and television) has irresponsibly served as Obama's mouthpiece.
Oprah Winfrey has proclaimed at rallies "I am not voting for Obama because he is black. I am voting for Obama because he is brilliant." Really? There are many brilliant people in the world, most of them not qualified to be President. What makes Obama qualified? That he is "black," it would seem, despite Oprah's protestations. Why, according to Obama and his acolytes, is he able to appeal to a broad range of voters? Presumably because he is bi-racial. Why don't people just admit as much?
Midway through the article, I was startled to find a description of a conversation between Al Sharpton and Mr. Obama during a secret meeting held to orchestrate their respective roles:
“'We agreed on inside-outside roles,'” Mr. Sharpton said, referring to himself and Mr. Obama, echoing a famous conversation between President Lyndon B. Johnson and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 'I would continue my work agitating the system from the outside, and he would do what he could to make changes from the inside.'”
That's funny, but this is the very same distinction Mrs. Clinton made between President Johnson and Dr. King that led the Obama campaign and his cronies to accuse Mrs. Clinton of racism. Although he claims to be a unifying candidate for a post-racial world, he basically played the so-called "race card."
What is even worse is that the media chose to ignore the hypocrisy, perhaps because it was so instrumental in adding fuel to the fire. It seems this is yet another example of the media's imbalanced coverage of the democratic candidates in which Obama receives obvious favoritism (or, as Christopher Hitchens has recently termed, a "tsunami of drool.") Mr. Obama has gotten free passes on his drug use, his failure to take a position as a legislator (i.e., his "present" votes in Illinois), his inexperience (e.g., 3 years as a US Senator, most of which has been spent campaigning to be President), a platform consisting almost entirely of feel-good motivational speeches, his failure to explain WHAT exactly he will change and how he exactly will accomplish it, his association with anti-Semites (and his failure to denounce them), his 17-year relationship with fund-raising Rezko (indicted on 26 counts), his pandering to the nuclear corporation Exelon...just to name a few subjects on which one would expect to see some objective journalism.
The democratic process relies on the press to ferret out facts and reality from the image and propaganda set forth by politicians. Unfortunately, the media (print and television) has irresponsibly served as Obama's mouthpiece.
1 comment:
Obama “has taught the black community you don’t have to act like Jesse Jackson, you don’t have to act like Al Sharpton,” conservative commentator Bill Bennett said on CNN on Jan. 3. “You can talk about the issues. [Obama has] great dignity.”
What a joke!
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