Time Magazine Does an "OJ" Photo of Obama

Fear of the dark is a primordial one, and just as Time magazine ran an infamous one darkening OJ Simpson during his darkest hours, Barack Obama is getting the same skin-tone treatment as he embarks on the question to the become the 44th POTUS.

Contrast and compare a 2006 cover of Time of Obama with its 2008 DNC edition. Back then he was light, bright, and damn near white. Now he's...Well, you decide.

Fox's Ministry of Truth re Mrs. Obama and the "World"

Doing a post-mortem on Michelle Obama's DNC speech, Fox News' Megyn Kelly did a neat trick with Mrs. Obama's statement: "The world as it is just won't do."

Kelly said: "If you replace 'world' with 'country', you are back to the same debate, arguably, that you have been having about Michelle Obama's feelings about the country."

Huh?

Let's take Kelly's argument at "face value." Even if she wants to exchange "world" for "country," according to a USA Today poll, Mrs. Obama would be in good company:

"The electorate remains deeply pessimistic. Eight in 10 say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the USA, and even more rate the economy as "only fair" or poor. Seven in 10 say it's getting worse."

This is Fox News, which means the distorted record is more important than what was actually stated.

Colorblind Media in Denver

Is it a naive belief that if an organization, or organizations, is constantly reporting on race or using race as a prism for understanding the nation's politics, shouldn't that organization also fairly reflect the nation? After all, the media, traditionally called "the press," acts in the public's interest.

The media's mission is often to gauge the state of race in America, but often doesn't reflect the fact that it has a tremendously bad record in reflecting that American reality. As Media Matters has noted in one of its reports, media racial and gender equity has gotten somewhat better but not by much.

If one watched the major broadcast networks' coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver, hardly a black, Hispanic/Latino, or Asian face appeared as a reporter or news analyst.

On NBC there was Brian Williams as anchor, along with Ann Curry, David Gregory, Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd, Savannah Gutherie, and Tom Brokaw.

On ABC Charles Gibson served as the anchor with Diane Sawyer, Jack Tapper, Kate Snow, and George Stephanopoulos.

CBS, with Katie Couric as anchor, had Bob Schieffer, Jeff Greenfield and Byron Pitts, the lone reporter of color.

A week ago, Michelle Martin posted a concern on the Root.com about the selection of PBS's Jim Lehrer, CBS's Bob Schieffer and NBC's Tom Brokaw to host the three 2008 presidential debates. To state the obvious, it's the same color and gender scheme despite the fact that a white woman and black man waged an epic battle for the Democratic Party's nomination.

While the rest of the nation is given a critical examination or taken to task if it doesn't live up to the nation's ideals about equality of opportunity, equal rights or diversity, the nation's media doesn't hold itself to the same standards.

As matter of fact, if an intelligent, articulate, gay woman gets her own show on a TV, as has Rachel Maddow, some of the purported liberal intellegentsia will have a bigger problem with that than if a black commentator trafficks in spurious assertions about a black candidate's wife.

What does say about a society where its armed forces are more integrated than its own Fourth Estate?

On Super Tuesday, last February, this pallor color scheme was in effect. The only major difference between then and now was that Tim Russert was alive. Now his son, Luke Russert, is "reporting" from Denver, along with Brian Williams' own daughter, Allison, who is also "on the NBC payroll."

Why is it that candidate Barack Obama has to constantly answer questions about affirmative action when the questionable affirmative action practice of hiring Luke Russert or Allison Williams goes unquestioned?

A Gay Swimmer at the Olympics? NBC Ain't Saying So

It was interesting watching the Olympics. The Team USA won a total of 110 medals; of that number, 36 were gold medals. The host nation, China, won 100 medals; of that total number, 51 were gold.

Now, we do recognize that China, formally the People’s Republic of China is a police state; a Communist police state at that. The America media, including Bob Costas at NBC, constantly reminded people that China has problems despite putting on a spectacular show and hosting the event, and beating the Red, White and Blue in the total number of gold medals won. We all know that China does not brook dissent, mostly in regard to issues like Tibet and Darfur, etc. It has allowed its people to get rich but not have an overt say in the affairs that govern them.

For example the New York Times said this about China in a post-Olympics editorial:

Along the way, government critics were pre-emptively rounded up and jailed, domestic news outlets tightly controlled, foreign journalists denied full access to the Internet and thousands of Beijing’s least telegenic residents were evicted from their homes and out of camera range. On Friday, the Chinese police confirmed that six Americans protesting China’s rule in Tibet had been sentenced to 10 days of detention.

As stated above, China, after all, is a police state.

Given that the United States, the leader of the free world, is dedicated to liberty, freedom and basic democratic and human rights, an openness to a diverse array of people, how is it that NBC neglected to mention that a gold medal-winning swimmer was gay?

No, not Michael Phelps who has ADHD, but Australian diver Matthew Mitcham, who won the gold in the 10m platform diving event, scoring an upset over the Chinese team.

NBC, taking a page for China’s Thought Police, seems to have screened that out from its broadcast.

Censorship has its uses here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

The Right Comes Full Circles with Corsi's Obama Book

Rick Perlstein's seminal Before the Storm chronicles the fall and rise of the Republican Party before and during the 1964 presidential election. What made Before the Storm an interesting history was to note that what later made the conservative movement successful was the routing of liberal/moderate conservatives like Nelson Rockefeller, and how conservatives like William Buckley led a movement to kick out the crazies: the anti-Semites, rabid race-haters, and other crazies that made conservatism a backwater joke since the New Deal and up to the election of Ronald Reagan.

But a funny thing happened to the conservative movement/Republican Party: it picked up some new crazies if not exactly the same ones. While conservatism and the Republican Party had become the so-called party of ideas, it had also picked up allies--fundamentalists/anti-civil rights Southerners--and an unholy whole host of those who have essentially used their assocation with the GOP to spout hate and contempt for all their enemies. I won't bore you with the odious wit and wisdom of Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly, but the chickens have come home to roost with Jerome Corsi's Obama Nation tome.

Just as Buckley sought to kick out the crazies from the GOP/conservative movement, there now appears to be a knot of like-minded conservatives who refuse to any association with the kind of work that Corsi has produced. Huffington Post's Tom Edsall has cited four who have denounced Corsi's work: Peter Wehner, Ross Douthat, Jon Henke and John Hawkins.

Edsall writes :

"All four make the case that Corsi presents a greater danger to the conservative movement and the Republican Party than to Barack Obama -- that for the right to take Corsi under its collective wing represents a moral and intellectual failing. This breakaway faction does not pull its punches as it challenges."

Edsall quotes Wehner writing at Wehner's Commentary blog as saying:

"Conservatism has been an intellectual home to people like Burke and Buckley. The GOP is the party that gave us Lincoln and Reagan. It seems to me that its leaders ought to make it clear that they find what Dr. Corsi is doing to be both wrong and repellent. To have their movement and their party associated with such a figure would be a terrible thing and it will only help the cause of those who hold both the GOP and the conservative movement in contempt."

Interesting, but Corsi doesn't seem to be a friend of the GOP; he has stated that he's more likely to vote for the Constitutional Party rather than for the Republican Party. Corsi claims that he's even been critical of John McCain. What's even more interesting is that the imprint for Corsi's book, Threshold, a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster, is headed by a well-known GOP operative, Mary Matalin. However, books like Corsi's makes it seem questionable if conservatives were ever really concerned with the movement's "moral and intellectual" foundation. The rise of the conservative/GOP foundation has often rested on pure power politics and strategic thinking, and marketing.

If this dissent is truly the case, as Edsall has written, then the Republican Party has come full circle:the crazies like Corsi have returned; it doesn't matter if someone like Corsi isn't a member of the GOP. He engages in the same kind of smear tactics that McCarthy, Limbaugh, Coulter and others have trucked in for years. The contempt for the truth and facts is so palpable, the hatred so thick that is no small wonder that recent shoots have focused on "liberals" at the Universal Unitarian Church in Knockville, or the Democrat Party chairman in Little Rock.

The crazies have come back, locked and loaded.

The New York Post Follows the Party Line

If you want to see a good example of how journalism has replicated into party-line formulation, as practiced by the New York Post, read the article re Obama's down and out half-brother in Kenya. Notice how the senator and soon-to-be nominated Democratic presidential candidate is reduced to being an example of the C-word.

Where have seen this characterization before? Hmmm?

Obama's 1995 TV Interview

Interested in the real Obama? Take a look at a 1995 TV book interview, in which he discusses his memoir "Dreams From My Father."