NQ First Responders – Sadly overlooked articles
By LisaB on August 1, 2009 at 5:45 PM in Current Affairs
This round-up includes a real “teachable moment” for the media with its double standard towards two famous black women that differs solely because of their politics, the aristocratic scolds who are the most upset about the blue-collar Sgt. Crowley’s treatment of Henry Louis Gates, and the “group think” that explains the media’s sudden preoccupation with the birther movement.
1) While the US is supposed to be experiencing a “teachable moment” about race, realclearpolitics has a brief piece that shows how subjective such “moments” are. Back in the Bush era, it was OK to satirize Condoleezza Rice in unflattering ways, including a major newspaper cartoonist labeling her a “house n—-r.” But the same is not true for Mechelle. You probably figured that out already.
It’s a short piece, without analysis, but the illustrations are, well, illustrative.
2) Also at realclearpolitics is a piece about how classism is playing out in our national discussions of race and environment. You’ll probably be surprised to know the author is calling out people for the old “do as I say, not as I do” stand on both issues.
The rest of us would find these environmental scolds [Gore and Friedman] more convincing if they chose to live modestly in average tract homes. That way they could limit their energy consumption, and provide living proof to us of how smaller is better for an endangered planet earth.
Elite critics in the business of racial grievance offer the same contradictions.
Recently, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates got into a spat with a white policeman who arrested him in his own home for disorderly conduct.Gates immediately cried racism. He argued that his own plight was emblematic of the burdens that the black underclass endures daily from a racist white America.
——–Indeed, citing racial grievance at times proves a valuable asset for wealthy celebrities. Michael Jackson and O.J. Simpson posed as victims of various racial oppressions when they found themselves in their own self-created legal problems. Race-baiter Rev. Jeremiah Wright simply retreats back to his three-story mansion on a golf course in between his day job of denouncing whites as exploiters.
Then we have other aristocrats on the barricades railing about the economic inequality of America. Former Sen. John Edwards preached about “two Americas,” one poor and abandoned, one wealthy and connected. Edwards should know since he built himself a multimillion-dollar gargantuan mansion in which he might better contemplate upon the underprivileged outside his compound.
Sen. Chris Dodd sermonizes about corporate greed and credit card companies’ near extortion. But Dodd managed to squeeze out of the corporate world a low-interest loan, a sweetheart deal for a vacation home in Ireland, and thousands in campaign donations.
Former Sen. and Cabinet nominee Tom Daschle was a big proponent of hiking taxes to nationalize our health care system. The problem, however, was that the populist Daschle both hated paying taxes and loved limousines – and so he avoided the former but welcomed the latter.
In the old days, critics for the most part of what we called the “system” were at least blue-collar workers, underpaid teachers or grassroots politicians whose rather modest lives matched their angry populist rhetoric. Now the most vehement critics of America’s purported sins are among the upper classes. And their parlor game has confused Americans about why they are being called polluters, racists and exploiters by those who have fared the best in America.
——-
Here’s a little advice for all of America’s aristocratic critics: a little less hypocrisy, a little more appreciation of your good lives – and then maybe the rest of us will listen to you a little more.
I think this last sentence is exactly why so many AA commentary, including DesireG on CNN’s iReport and mentioned in a post here at NQ, didn’t buy Gates’ claim of racist treatment.
3) Why are so many media outlets piling on the whole “birther” story now? Personally, I’m aware of the so-called “birthers” who question Obama’s legitimacy as a US citizen, but I’ve not paid it much attention.
But the media has recently gone on a feeding frenzy against “birthers.” Why? Or, more accurately, why now? These folks have been around for a while. Well, I guess it could be useful to divert attention from the lackluster performance of Obama’s health care initiatives, but that doesn’t really fit to me.
David Kuhn at realclearpolitics has an idea. He says it’s probably “group-think” by the press. Of course, the press would vehemently deny they’re capable of group-think, but that’s another story.
Am I the only one who finds it odd that the media is paying exponentially more attention to the “birther” issue today than during the campaign? There was reason to ignore conspiracy theories during the campaign. There were a great deal of lies flying around about Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008 (there were a few flying around about John McCain and Sarah Palin as well).
————-
Both sides have their ideological fringe that will believe their passions despite the facts. The mainstream media did not, to the same degree, discuss the conspiracy theorists that believed Bush and Cheney were behind the 9/11 attacks, in order justify an invasion for oil, in the context of liberals or Democrats.
Kuhn doesn’t mention the horrible “trig-truthers” out there (Andrew Sullivan) who continue to question whether Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s son or not. Sullivan wants pictures or video of the event, apparently. But no matter. Kuhn says this type of piling on is evidence of bias.
Conservatives often think of the liberal bias in the media in a top-down sense. But most of the time there isn’t some big man calling down to reporters and broadcasters and telling them to do this or that story to nail conservatives (though that may happen on occasion). Instead, what happens could be more accurately described as a bottom up bias created by groupthink. Most reporters are cut from the same cloth–they live in cities or urbane inner-suburbs, are motivated by the same ideals, and like most professors most are not terribly well paid but are very well educated–and this can sometimes produce a collective bias. The outsized “birther” coverage feels like a case of that bias.
That seems about right to me. But note that Kuhn says reporters are well-educated. Sounds like more class bias as well. When those who “deliver” the news and increasingly create and comment on it as well, consider themselves more educated than the rest of us, it’s a recipe for condescension and failure.
by Ronald Scott
* More novels by 
* 
(
)
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
