Tag Archives: FOX News

All The Media’s Stereotypes

21 Sunday Apr 2013

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Dzhokhar & Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston Marathon crowd moments before bomb blasts, April 15, 2013. (http://www.mirror.co.uk)

Dzhokhar & Tamerlan Tsarnaev in Boston Marathon crowd moments before bomb blasts, April 15, 2013. (http://www.mirror.co.uk)

The mainstream American media was just one big, almost unbelievable fail this past week. Between the Boston Marathon bombing and the subsequent hunt for brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the ricin letters to Mississippi GOP politicians and President Obama and the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas. In the last case, the one that killed and injured more people than two dumb asses in Boston. Yet, somehow, in a world in which the best answer should be “I don’t know” or “We don’t know yet,” media folks and their experts have been tweeting and reporting at the level of gossip for the past five or six days.

Usually a fairly careful journalist/columnist, Jonathan Capehart of The Washington Post tweeting three hours after the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, “April 19: Anniversary of storming of Branch Davidian compound & the Okla. City bombing.” At that point, we didn’t even know the number of people killed, maimed or injured. Nor did we know the number of bombs that had exploded in Copley Square. Think, man, think!

The more famous comments of the week came out of CNN’s shop, though. John King had breaking news Wednesday afternoon that law enforcement officials had identified a “dark-skinned male” suspect. Being a White guy working in mainstream media means that you never have to say “I’m sorry,” apparently. Especially when all of his “breaking news” reporting turned out to be completely wrong.

Let’s not really analyze the so-called reporting of FOX News or the New York Post. You’d get more truth from a psychic doing a Vulcan mind-meld with Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s brain right now than you could from Murdoch’s news media world in a year.

Let’s also not forget many of the so-called terrorism experts whom guessed wrong about race, immigrant status and so many other details this past week. Not to mention reports whom apparently couldn’t find Chechnya on a map if the republic were blown up to 100x normal map size and they put a floodlight on it.

But the most disturbing — yet not very surprising — thing about the past seven days has been how the US media has engaged in a near-endless campaign of racial stereotypes, immigrant stereotypes, terrorism stereotypes, religious stereotypes, patriotism stereotypes, and hyperbole that attempts to defy history. A simple list should help:

  • Terrorist(s) = Arab Muslims
  • Males from the Caucasus = Caucasians, but not White
  • Muslims who commit a violent act = terrorists
  • Violent criminals = anyone not White (especially Blacks & Latinos)
  • Violent mass-murdering Whites = mentally disturbed (i.e., NOT terrorists)
  • Arab Muslims = immigrants, NOT US citizens
  • Indo-Europeans who are White (phenotypically) & citizens but not born in US = Immigrants
  • Boston = city terrorized like no city ever before

On this last one, I must put on my academic historian hat. As in — are you kidding me? Anyone ever hear of Boston in the years before and during the American Revolution? Or, in more recent times, the Oklahoma City bombing in ’95, 9/11 and Lower Manhattan, the DC sniper rampage in ’02? Or, if the idea here is that terrorism should only be viewed through the prism of those who feel terrorized, what about poor Blacks on the South Side of Chicago, in SE Washington, DC, or poor Latinos in cities like Albuquerque and Phoenix? Or, for that matter, innocent civilians in Yemen and Pakistan attempting to avoid being among the “collateral damage” caused by our drone wars for terrorist scalps?

And then, there was the need for release, for yelps of relief and cheers of joy over the successful capture of Dzhokhar Tsarneav late Friday evening, with chants of “USA! USA! USA!” included. Of course people should feel relief for the end of a tense situation. But let’s not get carried away with the tide here.

Stereotype quote taken from Annie Murphy Paul article (May 1998) in Psychology Today, January 16, 2011. (http://nwso.net/). In public domain.

Stereotype quote taken from Annie Murphy Paul article (May 1998) in Psychology Today, January 16, 2011. (http://nwso.net/). In public domain.

We know nothing of motive, but we do know that the police will return to its regularly scheduled racial and socioeconomic profiling in the coming days. We can’t wrap our collective heads around the idea that two assimilated White American immigrants decided to kill runners at the Boston Marathon. Yet we also somehow decided to culturally and legally un-Americanize them — something we didn’t do with Timothy McVeigh. Chants patriotic might be a way to show solidarity, but we refuse to come to grips with the racial/xenophobic and anti-Muslim psychology that comes with these impromptu outbreaks of so-called unity.

Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” remains just as relevant now as his tune about the American news media was three decades ago. Still, the completely centrist and biased, always-concerned-about-the-bottom-line media is a mere reflection of our narcissistic and imperialistic selves.

Dumb, Discussion

31 Thursday Mar 2011

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Inspired by my friends Catherine Lugg (see her recent comments about the Obama Administration and their ignoring of the unemployed) and James Lee via Facebook (running a one-man crusade on our government’s daily hypocrisy), and my Twitter folk, the video above is for all of you. It is my montage to the past thirty years of obfuscation, dissembling, exaggeration, plausible deniability, and spittle-laden spin that is our everyday news and politics. Or, as the post-grunge band Live would say in their “White, Discussion,” (1994) the “decibels of this disenchanting discourse continue to dampen the day/the coin flips again and again and again and again, as our sanity walks away.”

So I put six minutes of video together from President Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech (1983), a YouTube video “A Tour of Detroit’s Ghetto” from camosilver, and a couple of pictures I took from the Rally to Restore Sanity here in DC back in October. Along with clips from:

  • The Daily Show (with Jon Stewart eviscerating Bernie Goldberg and FOX News via “gospel,” April 20, ’10)
  • Real Time with Bill Maher (one with Keith Olbermann from last year, the other from a couple of weeks ago calling Rep. Ellison’s religion [Islam] one “filled with hate”)
  • Glenn Beck’s insanity on FOX News
  • The O’Reilly Factor
  • Sarah Palin being interviewed by Chris Wallace on FOX News last year
  • ITN’s coverage of the tsunami in northeast Japan earlier this month
  • Protests in Egypt after January 25 (Russian TV)
  • The protests in Madison, Wisconsin at the end of February (Russian TV)
  • Rachel Maddow’s “Home of the Whopper” segment from the Fall ’10 election cycle (MSNBC)
  • The infamous Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson clip accusing all left-of-center folk of causing 9/11 (CBN)
  • President Obama’s Libya speech from Monday evening, March 28 (PBS).

Now I’ve given credit where credit is due and claim fair use under US copyright laws. But if our American public discourse doesn’t look dumb after watching it with Live’s “White, Discussion” playing in the background, I’d dare say that you’ll need to see an optometrist as soon as possible. In fact, I think we all need to get our brains, ears and eyes checked after three decades of being dummied down.

P.S. Also meant to give credit to NBA and Derrick Rose for a clip of his dunk against the Phoenix Suns last year.

An Alternate Universe Donald

23 Tuesday Nov 2010

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Muppet as Michael Steele on The Daily Show Screen Shot, November 23, 2010. Source: http://tellingthetruthiness.blogspot.com

In light of revelations — skin-deep, that is — from FOX News’ not-so-dumb-butt Megyn Kelly in an upcoming GQ article titled “She Reports, We Decided She’s Hot,” it seems to me that I missed out. Not in taking photos that reveal arms, chest, butt, abs or flanks. But in the massive gold rush that anyone with brains and without a conscience could have been a part of over the last thirty years. That gold rush? The “I’m a conservative and will saying anything, true or not” gold rush.

If I had turned conservative while at Pitt or Carnegie Mellon, it would’ve opened up doors. More doors than have been opened to or for me over the past twenty years. Imagine, a tall Black guy with a doctorate and still in his twenties and willing to serve as a mouthpiece for low taxes on the rich, a minimal social welfare safety net, and corporatization of public schools and Capitol Hill? I’d be a senior staff person of the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation by now, with a 3-handicap on the golf course to boot!

But back in the days when I attended Pitt, conservatives were not nearly that organized. There were plenty of them, but not working to identify future leaders the way conservatives have at places like Dartmouth or Stanford or even Carnegie Mellon, my second grad school. No, at Pitt, most conservatives hunkered down in bathroom stalls calling people like me the N-word or offered me bananas through their scrawlings on the metal partitions and doors.

College Republicans and other conservatives were much more organized on Carnegie Mellon’s campus, and with nearly four years there, I could’ve joined at any time. I’d probably adapted my music list. I’m not sure Mariah Carey or Jon Secada would’ve gone over well with this group, much less Tupac or Wu-Tang. I definitely would’ve needed to shave the goat-tee, my signature look for most of the past seventeen years. And I would’ve started using a knife and fork to eat fried chicken for sure.

Still, these would’ve been small prices to pay for steady and well-paying employment. I would’ve hit a six-figure income before I turned thirty. And I would’ve easily been able to turn my history of multicultural thoughts and actions of African Americans in the twentieth century — Fear of a “Black”

John McWhorter at the ISMIL conference in Leiden, June 2008, downloaded November 23, 2010. Jasy jatere (in public domain)

America — into a book about the fears of Blacks and Whites of a new and dangerous multicultural world. I might’ve even been able to keep my title, without the word Black in quotes, though. It would’ve been a bestseller, and I would’ve offed Dinesh D’Souza and John McWhorter as the intellectual giants of conservative thought on race. Yay, alternative me!

I’m not sure if me and my wife of more than ten years would’ve made it past the boyfriend-girlfriend stage. Her views are less leftist and more amoral in some areas than mine. But I couldn’t see her supporting me being a mouthpiece against gay rights and marriage, abortion, education reform without community engagement and austerity cuts in public services. It probably wouldn’t have mattered how much money I made. All of my memories of marriage, of good times and bad, of arguments and making up, of Noah from pregnancy to seven — all gone. Only a person equally conservative and amoral — more than likely White, although Tara Wall or Amy Holmes are among notable exceptions. — would’ve likely married me or would’ve wanted to have a kid with me.

For some folks, this is a pointless exercise. I’m a liberal, a social-Christian, democratic-leftist, one with a handful of cultural conservative views around etiquette and public conduct that I wouldn’t impose on anyone except myself, a progressive, in a word. I didn’t have tons of opportunities to become a lucrative mouthpiece and writer for the Right. And I wouldn’t have taken them if I’d been taken to a strip club and given a suitcase full of $100-bills to be turned. Still, it’s good to dream. To realize that my life, such as it has been, has had so much more color and flavor to it than it would’ve in this Faust-Kafka vision of one of my alternate universes.

Celebrity Deathmatch Meets Brave New Media

15 Monday Nov 2010

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A screenshot of Beavis and Butt-head as seen on ''Celebrity Deathmatch', November 15, 2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deathmatchb%26b.PNG. Though this image is subject to copyright, its use is covered by the U.S. fair use laws, and the stricter requirements of Wikipedia's non-free content policies, because: The image is being used in an informative way and should not detract from the show.

If MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch were still on the air, how well would it play in our uncertain and fear-mongered times? As an occasional betting man, the hilariously gruesome claymation standby would play well these days, especially if it were done as a SNL skit or as part of a Comedy Central routine. We’ve had so much furor recently over the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, Juan Williams and FOX News and Muslims, Keith Olbermann not asking permission to make campaign contributions from MSNBC, Rachel Maddow interviewing Jon Stewart in a black ops room. It seems to me that we need a new Celebrity Deathmatch series. Except that this one should just have journalists, commentators and politicians.

 

The theme music should be Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry,” with a two-pound, barely seared steak slammed down on a pearly white china plate, just so the blood can splatter and flow freely. The words “If it bleeds it leads — whether liberal or conservative!” scrolling across the screen. Let the folks who host

Pic of Bloody Rare Steak, November 15, 2010. http://davidwadegourmet.com/images/rare_steak.jpg. Though this image is subject to copyright, its use is covered by the U.S. fair use laws because this photo is only being used for illustrative purposes.

WWE or MMA do the play-by-play for the matches, with Alan Colmes in as a more than occasional analyst.

 

It would be a spectacle well before the actual matches. Who would be the big draws? I’d start with Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly. The pre-match taunts would be beyond funny. Olbermann: “By the time this match is all over, the world will know that Bill-O The Clown really doesn’t have a brain!” O’Reilly: “That sonofabitch wouldn’t stand a chance against a working-class stiff like me!” But then the fight would begin. O’Reilly would get in a few punch, before Olbermann would turn on a gigantic fan with a stack of 20,000 pieces of paper in front of it. The thousands of paper cuts would gash O’Reilly so much that the top of his head would come off. Then, lo and before, the world would learn that Olbermann was right — O’Reilly really doesn’t have a brain!

Other draws for me would be Jon Stewart vs. Bill Maher, Rush Limbaugh vs. Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), and Glenn Beck vs. Rick Sanchez or Ed Schultz. One not-so-under undercard I wouldn’t mind seeing would be Rachel Maddow vs. Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-MN).  That would be a rolling-on-the-floor-with-laughter event. Maddow would wipe the floor with Bachman — literally face-first. But not before Bachman would make Maddow angry by breaking her geeky glasses early in the match.

The one thing that I would change about this Celebrity Deathmatch format is that there would be a playoff system, where there would be a final eight, leading to seven matches worthy of the Highlander series award known as “There can be only one.” An epic struggle that would involve boring opponents to death with speeches and monologues, with endless questions about media and objectivity, along with participants smashing each other in their heads with dictionaries and microphones.

I think that this version would sell. I can see it now. Millions of viewers gathering in front of HD TVs and iPhones, at bars and in arenas, watching week after week and season after season. Heck, I’d watch it even if FOX News was the home of this series. Even if it meant watching Joy Behar beat Nancy Grace to a pulp!

Opposite World

06 Monday Sep 2010

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Ignorance and Apathy. Source: http://iftheshoefitz.com

I know that I don’t fit very well in this world. My way of speaking, my walk, my music tastes. They and so much more make me an oddball in a land full of narcissistic conformists who all believe that they’re special. It’s opposite world for me, and has become more so over the past thirty years. No longer is it that “the customer’s always right.” It’s acceptable that people refuse to give up space in public, step on your shoes and toes and dare you to make them say “excuse me.” Folks refuse to say “thank you” for simple and well-meaning gestures, as if a courtesy would force them to acknowledge your existence. Blind loyalty is how we define patriotism, and becomes a quick path of career advancement. It’s a world that’s full of crap, and makes me wish I owned a societal sewage treatment or compost plant to deal with it all. But none of it is more disappointing that our world’s embracing of stupidity.

As any serious scholar knows, there’s a long history of anti-intellectualism in American culture. It’s existed since the days of Woodrow Wilson, and likely at least a generation longer than that. Yet that’s not what I’m concerned with here. These days, we have a people absolutely proud of their lack of knowledge, choosing to avoid knowing anything for fear of rejection by friends, colleagues, voters and leaders. Our pride in ignorance and stupidity knows no bounds. We have folks like Maureen Dowd and Kathleen Parker, as well

Michael Moore's Stupid White Men (should include women as well). Source: http://www.michaelmoore.com

as Faux News, of course, critical of President Obama, mostly because of his biracial Black and elite education background. That includes criticisms over his being “overly patient” and “too deliberate” in addressing complex foreign policy issues. We have NFL coaches laughing on HBO’s Hard Knocks because they couldn’t figure out that two yardsticks and one twelve-inch ruler equals seven feet in length, something that any fifth-grader supposedly should be able to do.

Sarah Palin’s still a popular candidate — perhaps for president, but more likely as a conservative lightning rod — in no small part because she’s refused to embrace knowledge and “those so-called experts” of such. Apparently it’s okay to not listen to what the opposition has to say because they attended Harvard or graduated from Princeton. At least she’s not as stupid as she appears, having made $13 million since the beginning of ’09 off of selling ignorance to her fans.

We have policy wonks, politicians and bigoted Tea Baggers willing to dismiss any and all evidence — not opinion, but objective, painstakingly gathered evidence — that doesn’t fit their White is right and the Right is right view of the world. We have progressives and liberals — from assisted suicide advocates to vegans — who deny others’ points of view or overall context, leaping into full-throated arguments without looking or without imparting their opinions or their knowledge.

Anyone who disagrees with any side based on evidence, knowledge, and of course, wisdom, can expect to see their knowledge shoved to the side. If it were a book, they’d all burn it. If it were a person, they’d jail it. That’s how much our nation hates knowledge and those who possess it. It’s what makes this world so uncomfortable to live in.

Race, Racism and Bigotry

05 Thursday Aug 2010

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Seven and a half years ago, at a retreat for a gathering of social justice fellows in Northern California, a lengthy discussion of -isms occurred. The premise was the fact that every human being has prejudices, biases, can come off as a bigot.

At one point, I made the point that there’s a difference between bigotry and racism. The average bigoted person usually doesn’t have the ability to slander, libel or otherwise act on their bigotry in a way that discriminates against the person or a whole class of people who are the object of this individual’s bigotry. Afterward, a fellow insisted that all bigotry rose to the level of an -ism of some sort, no matter how little the power or influence the person harboring this bigotry possessed.

In recent weeks, between the New Black Panther Party, FOX News, Ben Jealous and the NAACP, Shirley Sherrod, the USDA, the White House, the workplace shooting in Hartford, Connecticut, the radioactive issues around race and racism have reared their ugly heads. For a society forty-five years removed from the end of Jim Crow — and 146 years removed from the end of slavery — we’re still much in need of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on race. But in order to have a real conversation on race, we need to understand that there are differences between race, racism and bigotry, that these words aren’t interchangeable.

Take the term race. As defined by so many other scholars over the past 110 years — it’s a social construction based on skin and hair-deep differences between groups of people from various parts of the world.  Not to mention the legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery in the Western Hemisphere. Saying that there are differences based on race between the incomes of Blacks, Whites, and Latinos, for instance, is merely a statement of fact, and not an implication that any individual or group is practicing racism. Nor does race make sense outside of cultural distinctions. Tens of millions of us are living proof that there’s only one human race, genetically speaking, that is.

The word racism involves much more than mere racial distinctions and history. It involves the embracing

in words and deeds ideas and systems that either deliberately or inadvertently discriminate against other groups based on their race. It’s an expression of bigotry, but not just simply to acknowledge or enlighten oneself or others. Rush Limbaugh’s spit-flying session on President Obama in the weeks before the ’08 Election — “It was all about RACE! It was all about RACE!” — is a good example of this. Limbaugh was arguing that Obama was winning the election because of racism. Specifically, reverse racism among African Americans and White guilt over racism among independents and progressives. Limbaugh all but kissed his microphone while hollering out of a rage that can only be described as racism.

Anyone can express racism or be a racist. But where should we draw the line between bigotry and racism? I’ll use my mother as an example. She’s complained for thirty years how “all the jobs been taken by West Indians and Spanish people” in Mount Vernon and other parts of Westchester County. Well, working-class jobs, anyway. There’s no doubt that this is an expression of bigotry. But does this mean that my mother’s a racist? Hardly. For whatever it’s worth, my mother has worked with, gone to church with, and broken bread with folks regardless of their race or ethnicity, and not begrudgingly. Even with the authority to hire and fire thirty years ago, my mother worked to ensure that all under her supervision weren’t discriminated against.

But while all of us have a smidgen of bigotry in our hearts and minds as occasionally expressed from our mouths, many of us aren’t racists or practicing racism. But a racist is without a doubt a bigot. So experience, intent, position in society, and race (not racism, not bigotry) are all involved in making someone’s words and deeds examples of racism, and that person a racist.

These are subjective definitions, and I could be challenged and wrong. However, they’re based on twenty years of work as a writer, scholar, historian, professor, and forty years living in post-Civil Rights America. We need to start somewhere to have a real and serious discussion of race. Maybe this is it.

More Than a Jealous-y Problem

28 Wednesday Jul 2010

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I have yet to weigh in directly on the Ben Jealous-NAACP-FOX News-Tea Party episode. Between the recent death of my sister Sarai, the week I spent in New York helping to plan her funeral, the end of a summer course, looking for additional work, and working on other writing projects, not to mention the incompetence of PEPCO and Comcast in Montgomery County, I haven’t exactly been in the mood.

This post, though, will not be a kvetching session about the foibles of a highly educated, if somewhat enigmatic man. Nor will this be about the illegitimacy of a news organization that offers an irradiated-hamburger-meat kind of news. And really, I already spent too much time playing race psychologist for the Tea Party and all of its discontents in the past week. Instead, I want to focus on the dead organization that is the NAACP, which, by the way, should change its name to the National Organization for the Advancement of People of Color (NAAPC).

Within that sentence is a simple lesson, that progressive organizations working on behalf of groups of color must agitate, collaborate and develop programs to address everyday issues of their constituents as part of a broad-based coalition. This is the future of Black leadership and the social justice movement in a multicultural America. This isn’t a problem unique to the NAACP. Even for the more forward thinking organizations such as National Urban League, National Council of La Raza, and the National Congress of American Indians, new programs, movements and coalitions are difficult to sustain, financially and otherwise.

So the following proposal is for the NAACP and for identity-based social justice organizations. Because of the current funding environment and overall conservative climate, it will work in the NAACP’s favor to form coalitions with other progressive organizations. Key issues loom for all groups of color in American society, including educational reform, workforce training and development, affordable housing, small business development, and adequate health care access. These are all issues in which the NAACP, NUL, NCLR, and NCAI all share an affinity.

This isn’t a new suggestion. It certainly isn’t an adequate one by itself. These organizations should go further by approaching the foundation community, the business community, state and federal officials, and their members as a coalition. This would provide strength in numbers (i.e., dollars and constituents) and free these organizations from reinventing programs or developing programs from scratch.

If the main hindrances are around pride, turf violations, or who gets credit for the work, it need not be. Working in coalition on specific civil rights-related issues would enable the NAACP, NUL, NCLR, NCAI and other organizations to build a broader multiracial constituency. There is more than enough work to go around in addressing issues that affect many of the 110 million persons of color in the United States today. Addressing educational reform directly in African American, Latino, and Native American communities, for instance, is a task too big for the federal government to take on, much less one organization.

It isn’t sexy work, but confronting the single greatest need of persons of color between the ages of twelve and 24 – by creating the academic, cultural, and socioeconomic conditions necessary for high school and college completion would guarantee a future purpose for the NAACP. Not to mention the NUL, NCLR, NCAI, and the social justice movement. This would also give the NAACP and these other organizations the broad-based constituency necessary for political influence, something that they could all use in more sufficient quantities.

This proposal is better than the current state of affairs at the NAACP. One in which everything is about the eight-second-soundbite, about Hollywood giving Black actors more work, or complaining that leaders in the Tea Party have refused to rein in their most bigoted speakers. That’s a waste of breath and time, something anyone with a title can do.

For this to work, the NAACP must get over its Brown v. Board of Education and Civil Rights Movement hangover. The organization can and should continue its role as an agitator for the civil rights of African Americans and continue to be part of the fray with the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to redress civil rights violations. Yet we must recognize that we are forty-five years removed from the height of the Civil Rights Movement. If many White progressives are sober enough to have learned that the 1960s are over, it’s not too late for the NAACP’s leadership to recognize that activism and membership dues alone are insufficient to address civil rights needs of African Americans today (as well as other “colored people”).