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Media Giving Rev. Wright a Pass
No member of the Fourth Estate ever cited "contextualizing" or the misuse of sound bites whenever a white person was excoriated for uttering the N-word.
Few comedies are as destructive and dispiriting as what the mainstream media has become in America. Facts, description, and perspective are habitually altered in the name of their mutated version of social justice. Many journalists believe that only when our collective consciousness changes can utopia result.
Of course, the characteristics of such a utopia would prove most unsavory. No doubt the first thing an omnipresent progressive government would do is shut down every independent outlet of information. That is what they have done in the past, and the leaders of such a state will respond to the celebrated mantra — “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” — by locking the cell door behind whoever utters it.
Luckily for the rest of us their coveted era has yet to arrive. Until then, the commentariat must be content to revel in fantasies of what their champion, Barack Obama, will do should he become president. Mr. Obama remains the probable recipient of the Democratic Party nomination despite Hillary Clinton’s roaring back in the polls like the lion she never was.
However, this has been a tough week or two for the “Change We Can Believe In” crowd. Barack’s cheerleaders, as the English say, are at sixes and sevens. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright imbroglio greatly unsettled them, but their champion’s latest explanation — which included an actual denunciation — should be enough to satisfy his fellow party members.
Given the paucity of primaries left, Hillary’s counter-strokes may be no more than a glorious ending to an inglorious campaign. Exploiting the serious weaknesses of the Democratic frontrunner is a job John McCain (read: conservative 527s) will inherit, which is not confidence-inspiring. The Republican nominee seems rather queasy about negative advertising.
Irrespective of the future, the recent spectacle that is Reverend Wright showcased numerous social pathologies, not least of which is the corrupt and illegitimate nature of the mainstream media. Only in November will we discern whether the antics of a part-time minister and full-time performance artist managed to alter the course of history.
The reverend’s whirlwind self-promotional tour — which took him to Bill Moyer’s PBS studio, a NAACP function in Detroit, and Washington, DC, among a legion of fans at the National Press Club — left no doubt that the man who baptized Senator Obama’s children is every bit the racist he initially appeared to be.
Certainly, his shtick at the Press Club underscored his contempt for the nation. He shared that we as a people deserved 9/11 due to the terrorism he imagines we commit. Wright regards the federal government as being so sinister that its minions intentionally spread AIDS among the black population. Yes, by the time he finished it became apparent that only Aldrich Ames is a citizen whose sense of patriotism is surpassed by the reverend.
Another trait that Wright gaudily displayed was megalomania. His narcissism is such that he equates criticisms of him with criticisms of the black church on the whole — even though most of their institutions revolve around the teachings of Jesus Christ rather than the virus known as black liberation theology.
While Wright’s spoken word recitals appear to have ended, the episode reveals both the biases and misperceptions of the mainstream media. The media’s inconsistency and hypocrisy concerning Obama and Wright will make their advocacy for him much less persuasive with the general public in the fall.
In March, when ABC News “broke” the story of his pastor’s anti-American ministry — a tale of which conservatives had been aware for over a year — pundits implied that quoting directly from his sermons was somehow unfair and an act of racism.
It seems Wright’s missives were “taken out of context” or were merely sound bites, and definitely not a complete picture of the man. Quoting from his monologues or publicly linking him with Obama was tantamount to playing the race card.
Of course, this was, and is, a bogus contention. Most of us reckon that what a person says correlates with his values. Moreover, judging men by the company they keep may be unprogressive, but it’s a time-tested way to ascertain the authenticity of strangers.
Journalists defended Obama religiously and cast aspersions on his foes, yet the circling of their carbon-neutral wagons was spurious. No member of the Fourth Estate ever cited “contextualizing” or the misuse of sound bites whenever a white person was excoriated for uttering the N-word. No qualifications would have been permissible in such a situation.
The fellow who repeats the same syllables that some blacks recite on a daily basis morphs into a Vir Horribilis seconds after doing so. Only two syllables can make a Caucasian an outcast with no mechanism for appeal. Indeed, the N-word is so poisonous that one can even be fired for saying something that sounds similar. Regardless of society’s empathy gap, Wright and the Democratic Party frontrunner both made chumps out of their defenders last week. They bedeviled the media by re-contextualizing the conversation for them.
The one they hail as uniter and redeemer clarified succinctly that there is nothing redeeming about Reverend Wright: “I’m outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday. … The person I saw yesterday was not the person I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but they also give comfort to those that prey on hate and I believe they do not accurately portray the perspective of the black church. They certainly do not accurately portray my values and beliefs.”
Given their prior false accusations of racism, one hoped that the commentariat would do the honorable thing and apologize, but that is not their way. Instead, they spun in a new direction.
Predictably, the New York Times editorialized in Obama’s favor. They too, it now appears, thought Jeremiah the Entertainer “shocking” even though there was nothing new about Wright’s statements. His virulent opinions were available on YouTube for over a month.
The Times was not content to merely take Barack’s back. They assumed omniscience and pretended that his March speech — which they heralded as “Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage” — made distinctions they never thought “would sit well with many voters.”
Their claim, unlike Reverend Wright’s invective, is shocking. When did they express such reservations? Was it when they observed that Obama’s “speech should end the debate over his ties to Mr. Wright”?
The fact is that they never offered any reservations. Their conclusion was unambiguous. Obama “not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.” Though that was the last thing he did. The candidate’s earlier speech was but a sham.
Regardless, the Times, along with most of the press corps, “moved on” the second after Obama rebuked Wright. Soon the whole caper will be no more than a trivia question in their minds.
By the end of their latest editorial, the Gray Lady went over to the offensive. The editors signaled that in the future they will libel as racist any criticisms of Obama’s relationship with his spiritual mentor: “This country needs a healthy and open discussion of race. Mr. Obama’s repudiation of Mr. Wright is part of that. His opponents also have a responsibility — to repudiate the race-baiting and make sure it stops.”
What an audacious trick. By their calculus, that Obama has a closet brimming with embarrassment is the fault of conservatives due to their having the nerve to notice it. Our pointing out that he cavorts with racists renders us … racists. Once again we find that the press fears logic almost as much as pajama-clad bloggers typing on keyboards.
The Times recommends an open discussion as long as it is operationalized within their predetermined parameters. Verboten to such a conversation is the subject of the baleful haters with whom Senator Obama has associated for over two decades.
As they often are, the publishers of “All the News That’s Fit to Print” omitted a major truth. Mr. Obama previously said, “I can no more disown him [Reverend Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” These sentences cannot be banished from the psyche via editorial. The bond between the two men is fair game, and one that our side must exploit.
This wayward duel of egos, along with the kultursmog proliferated as a means to shroud it, remains germane. In the leftist vernacular, we must ask, “What did Barack know and when did he know it?” Let’s keep him under the microscope because one who walks with demons usually gets singed. Hopefully, Obama’s marks will remain detectable at least until November.
Bernard Chapin wrote Women: Theory and Practice and Escape from Gangsta Island, along with a series of videos called Chapin’s Inferno. You can contact him at veritaseducation@gmail.com.
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19 Comments
1. Ed Wallis:OBAMA: “I can no more disown him [Reverend Wright] than I can disown the black community.”
OBAMA: ““I’m outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday. … The person I saw yesterday was not the person I met 20 years ago.”
OBAMA: “JUST WORDS?!…”
No, Barry, they’re the words of someone with such poor judgement that he should never be allowed to become President of the United States of America.
Nice article. It’s not too hard to “connect the dots” when one keeps one’s ears and mind open. It’s just sad that the NYT has exercised fraudulent journalism for so long.
May 7, 2008 - 2:53 am 2. George:Great article.
May 7, 2008 - 3:09 am 3. MarineCorpsVet:If I may, the esteemed Robert Byrd, may he die soon, did successfully utter the N-word in an interview with Tony Snow some time back.
He DID however preface it with “there’s White N-word’s’ if you want to use that word”.
So, there you have it. Vileness is the habitat of the left. A place scattered with bones of men and women, black and white.
Wonderful article. You are such a wordsmith. Kultursmog, indeed. You’re my new-word-a-day education.
May 7, 2008 - 5:07 am 4. Boris:A pass? Right. I guess Wright should be hung for his remarks.
Anyway, the right wing is desperate to have the election be about anything but issues. I’ll give you this: it is your only chance.
May 7, 2008 - 5:21 am 5. Angry African:Oh puh-lease. You can’t be serious. Wright got a pass? Obama got a pass? Are you passed out from some liquid intake? So, you want to talk issue hey? Let’s go and talk issues – real issues. Like a never-ending war, and the economy tanking, and the rights of Americans being taken away, and torture, and, and, and. Get to the issues then. If you think Wright is the problem that America faces then you have your head stuck up your …. deeper than I thought.
May 7, 2008 - 6:54 am 6. BMoon:No, no Boris. The issue is who is the real person behind the thickly woven smokescreen of sickly pungeant and, apparently (I’m not inhaling at the moment, thank you) intoxicatingly vacuous rhetoric of hopey-dopey-changeyness. Why the irresistible mutual attraction between Obama and racists, haters, terrorists, anti-Semites in this wonderful yet frightening page in American politics? The left assumes, as Obama himself so elegantly elucidated to his millionaire SF sycophants, that the unwashed masses are so benighted that, like cheap used car salesmen, they can snooker them through their massive media outlets by simply diverting the attention from the man to “issues” – the goody bags they dangle before them (which they will later pay dearly for with interest.)
May 7, 2008 - 6:58 am 7. Chris R.:The MSM should keep giving out passes, including the pink ones they must give to employees as their subscriber base gets smaller. Any person who lives in the USA knows the race card when it’s played. There is no way to hide it. Any person with two brain cells to rub together knows that it will take a lot more than Obama and his pals to “heal” our racial divide. So far, Obama has only made racial problems worse by forcing a public discussion about data that was known but not discussed openly.
The MSM and PC crowd’s efforts to hide information by not discussing it causes people to wonder about what else they are hiding. I recall using the same tactics with my parents when I was a kid. The flawed childhood logic of, “if I don’t say anything, maybe they won’t find out” didn’t work on my parents, and it won’t work on the American people as a whole.
May 7, 2008 - 7:00 am 8. cfbleachers:BC, …precisely! Leftists are now on to spewing vacuous homilies about “moving on” (apparently with Soros money to try to hedge fund away our communal consciences and corner the market on our polluted deadwood information stream)
The leftists want this election to be about the vapors they are in over their media darling, now media crafted, media bubble encapsulated, media shilled… Prince of Pap.
The leftists who embrace Ayers and Dorhn, who embrace Louis Farrakhan’s message, who embrace the underlying message of Jeremiah Wright, who embrace Frank Marshall Davis’s message, who embrace Chomsky’s message….they want to stop talking about the hatred, bile, contempt for this country, sedition, and venom that lies behind their forked tongues.
Here is the thing: We better NOT stop talking about it. We better NOT stop vetting it. We better NOT stop digging for the truth…the moment we do…our information stream is dead.
They have been gangraping the information stream for over 40 years. Faked photographs, intentionally distorted stories, fabricated out of whole cloth stories, forged documents….ALL…done to bastardize the truth and prostitute themselves for the very same “message” as delivered by Ayers, Dorhn, Wright, Farrakhan, Frank Marshall Davis, Chomsky and their ilk. Dispatriots all…and it is high time we stop pussyfooting around about it.
If one is unable to see the anarchist, revolutionary tinge to Ayers, Dorhn, Wright, Farrakhan, Frank Marshall Davis, Chomsky…then one is blind. If one is unable to discern the protective bubble that has been shrink-wrapped around Sen. Obama’s candidacy by the leftist deadwood media, then one is barely cognizant of the world operating around themselves.
“Connecting the dots” is what we all must do. Sen. Obama not only has strong, lifelong ties to this extremist, anarchist, “tear down the institution” brand of America hatred…he has been bathed in it his entire life. He has Nation of Islam staffers that are and were high ranking members of his staff. He has a much deeper and broader association with the likes of Wright, Ayers, Dorhn, Davis, and their ilk …than has been briefly touched upon in the deadwood media.
Radical leftism…not race…is the man behind the curtain,…pulling the strings. The deadwood media, Hollywood, academia…are all in the bag for that “message”. They will lie, distort, fake photographs, forge documents, cheat, steal, plagiarize, …do virtually anything to get that message out and keep further inspection of it to a bare minimum.
It is Sen. Obama’s lifelong attraction to radicalism that keeps him uneasy wearing a flag lapel pin…that keeps his hands away from his heart during our National Anthem. It’s not about race…but, that’s the taboo that will be used to keep distracting the inquiry into the “message”. Read the tea leaves. Connect the dots.
May 7, 2008 - 7:04 am 9. Nice Try:Boo friggin’ hoo.
The media gave him a pass? Really? Last time I checked, Wright had more coverage than any preacher since Jim and Tammy Fay Baker.
It was 24/7 for weeks.
You’re just mad that it didn’t hurt Obama and you don’t know how to attack him.
Get over it.
May 7, 2008 - 7:27 am 10. Boris:“ntoxicatingly vacuous rhetoric of hopey-dopey-changeyness.”
Dude, even McCain is running as a “change” candidate, because that’s what the people want. That’s why rightwingers want to talk about what somebody’s preacher said or who sat on a board with who or who doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin–because that’s the only way you can express your patriotism, by postage stamped sized symbolism.
I’ll concede, the distractions might work, but I think the rightwing noise machine has blown its wad a tad early. Just wait till the people are reminded of McCain campaigning for Bush. It should be fun, at least we can agree on that.
May 7, 2008 - 8:01 am 11. Justin:@ Angry African
McCain is more opposed to torture than any of the other contestants because he was tortured himself. McCain has a vision and experience where as Obama only has rhetoric.
May 7, 2008 - 9:26 am 12. rvastar:Let’s go and talk issues – real issues. Like a never-ending war…
5 years is never-ending? Well, I guess it must seem like forever to you leftists who’ve been feeding on a inexhaustible supply of Bush-hatred for 8 years.
…and the economy tanking…
The only thing that seems to be tanking are you leftists’ predictions of the economy tanking…oh, and global warming.
…and the rights of Americans being taken away…
The only American right I seeing being trampled on is free speech, in the form of anyone criticizing Obambi being labelled a “racist” by leftist dopes like you.
…and torture…
Yeah, I’m all broken up inside by the fact that a couple of sadistic mass-murders had some water poured on their faces. So are most Americans.
(Yawn)
May 7, 2008 - 1:24 pm 13. Javelin:rvastar,
May 7, 2008 - 2:48 pm 14. bob:Your ugly mind, for lack of a better word, seems just chock full of right wing cliches, slogans and insults, like the archetypal party man. It’s because you are both spiritually as well as mentally dead inside. Bacisally, you are just talking trash because that is what you are. I dunno, they say this blog is sending the MSM down the river but all I see is the usual infantile screed I can find on a hundred other retarded blogs.
Angry African:
YOu sir are a rascist and like Wright cant seem to get over it. You have been afforded nothingbut opportunity in this country you hate so much. Get off the HIp hop, out of your moms basement, and do something for yourself and accept aome personal responsibility instead of the poor victim mentality who and wright are spreading like posion.
May 7, 2008 - 6:50 pm 15. schnargley:Javelin hit the mark!Bullseye! All you close-minded evolutionary throwbacks, blind leaders of the blind, cannot see the Hope because your hearts are hardened by unbelief. If you would only open your hearts and just believe you would not need to label, call names, or look at side issues such as Rev. Wright, Ayers, Rezko, Frank Davis, or many other ones I am sure you will dredge up. The issue here is hope. It is change. It is believing that we are the change that we hope for! Yes we can! Just say it a few times and then you will fell it! You do not need to think so much. Just believe! You will feel a chill going up your leg like one of our objective, most intelligent commentators said! All the meanness, the badness, the hate will just melt away if you give it a try.
May 7, 2008 - 7:43 pm 16. rvastar:Your ugly mind, for lack of a better word, seems just chock full of right wing cliches, slogans and insults, like the archetypal party man.
Coming from a Leftist idiot such as yourself, Javelin, I’ll take your tired, fact-free, emotive screeching as a compliment!
So, thanks!
Note to all Leftists: your ability to cower people with threats of being labelled “Racist!” or “Fascist!” is ending. And against me, you can simply forget your silly name-calling.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the power you’ve had for the past 50 years, because in the span of another 50 years, you’ll be utterly spent as a political force.
The West has been enjoying this “holiday from history” since the close of WW2, but eventually, the party always ends. People have dabbled with liberalism for one simple reason: soft times allow for soft philosophies. Well, now, reality is returning, and that reality is only going to get harder and harder.
Want a sample of the future? Take a look at the right-ward veering European election results for the past 4 years and then take a look at the poll results regarding European attitudes towards multiculturalism and immigration.
Barring any overly jarring events (nuclear/chemical attack against a Western country), it will still take a few decades for the stench of the Leftist rot that’s settled on the West to be blown away. But, hmmmm…I can already feel that cool breeze blowing…
May 8, 2008 - 12:52 pm 17. George:“Barring any overly jarring events (nuclear/chemical attack against a Western country), it will still take a few decades for the stench of the Leftist rot that’s settled on the West to be blown away. But, hmmmm…I can already feel that cool breeze blowing…”
May 9, 2008 - 3:17 am 18. Media Mythbusters Blog » Blog Archive » Media Bias Roundup - 05/09/08:God forbid the former, and amen to the latter.
You sound “bitter” rvastar.
Keep the faith.
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May 9, 2008 - 1:25 pm 19. Rick554:lol I have yet to hear any specific “issues” from either of these democrat twits.
May 11, 2008 - 7:34 amI guess associating with race-baiting “preachers” and domestic terrorists (and foreign terrorists ,as well ) just arent “issues” to the left