FOXMAN AND OBAMA, PART II

By dnA

Yesterday I pointed out the hypocrisy of ADL Chairman Abraham Foxman demanding that Barack Obama denounce his pastor and leave his church, given Foxman's unwillingness to refer to the Armenian genocide as such, forcing the Armenian community to, in the words of one ADL worker, "use all the strategies we invented to deal with Holocaust denial."

But the fact is Abraham Foxman, in keeping with the pattern of high profile Jewish political figures who routinely misrepresent the political views of most American Jews, has a record of attacking progressives with charges of anti-Semitism while letting Right wingers off the hook.

Glenn Greenwald pointed this out months ago, when Abraham Foxman denounced MoveOn.org because an ad contest produced a single entry that compared Bush to Hitler.

"It is shocking that a mainstream political group like MoveOn.org not only allowed this vile and outrageous comparison of the American President to Adolf Hitler to be entered into its ... contest in the first place, but that they even went so far as to make it available to the public on the Internet," said Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League.

I agree that the comparison of Bush to Hitler is entirely overblown...as are similar comparisons made using Louis Farrakhan and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but don't expect Foxman to care if someone outside the Republican Party faces similar charges.

There was a pile-on of Jewish organizations who condemned the ad, who then remained completely silent as voices on the Right compared liberal political figures to Nazis at every opportunity.

During his failed crusade to convince Democratic candidates to boycott Yearly Kos, Bill O'Reilly spent weeks, on a virtually nightly basis, labelling Daily Kos as Nazis. On Fox News, O'Reilly repeatedly said things like this: "There's no difference between the KKK and the Nazis, who have websites, than the Daily Kos." And: "The [Daily Kos] website sells hate, as does the KKK and the Nazis. The comparison is valid."

On his talk radio show last night, Mark Levin labelled MoveOn and Media Matters as "brownshirts." Michelle Malkin this morning excitedly touted Levin's attack, cheering the "no-holds-barred Mark Levin" for labelling both groups as the "brownshirts of the Clinton crime family."

On September 17, Bill O'Reilly had Tammy Bruce and Kirsten Powers on to wallow in outrage over a blog post written by Jane Hamsher in which she criticized Elizabeth Edwards for reciting right-wing talking points against MoveOn.org. Hamsher's picture was displayed while she and FDL were branded by O'Reilly as "fascists" and "Nazis." The largest right-wing blogs cheered on this smear.

On September 26, Tammy Bruce went on Fox and, discussing Media Matters and MoveOn, said that "a Gestapo has emerged in America," and "you have a media Gestapo in Media Matters and a political Gestapo in MoveOn.org." She used the word "Gestapo" continuously to refer to these groups.

Despite his earlier statements decrying the MoveOn ad, Foxman has remained entirely silent while Right wingers repeatedly invoked the Nazis in political attacks on liberals.

Foxman eventually responded to Greenwald and claimed to be "profoundly disturbed by your continuing efforts to smear ADL as being "extremely reluctant" to condemn Nazi/Hitler attacks emanating from the political right." He was concerned by "the efforts to smear" the ADL but not their tendency to exclusively criticize political uses of the Holocaust and the Nazis on the left.

Given Foxman's record of giving those on the Right a pass, it is no surprise that Foxman casually decided that he was entitled to issue a political threat to Barack Obama based on his association with the "racist" Trinity United Church, despite reporting that has shown Trinity is nothing of the sort.

GET THIS M-FER OFF TV


It never ceases to amaze me how some people who talk about race have absolutely no experience or knowledge of the people they refer to other than what they see on television. Yet, they remain undeterred, rattling off nonsense as though they had any idea what they were talking about.

During the September 19 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, discussing his recent trip to have dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton at Sylvia's, a famous restaurant in Harlem, Bill O'Reilly reported that he "had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful," adding: "I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship." Later, during a discussion with National Public Radio senior correspondent and Fox News contributor Juan Williams about the effect of rap on culture, O'Reilly asserted: "There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer, I want more iced tea.' You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all." O'Reilly also stated: "I think black Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They're getting away from the Sharptons and the [Rev. Jesse] Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They're just trying to figure it out. 'Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it."

Until now, Bill O'Reilly has probably never been in a room full of black people in his entire life. Yet black culture is a subject on which he comments endlessly, as though he actually had any frame of reference beyond what he has seen in popular entertainment. The man has even admitted that he's "scared of having black friends," but he is not apparently, scared of pontificating forever about people he's never spent five minutes around outside of a newsroom. It's clear he didn't ask anyone in Sylvia's a single question besides "Can I have Another Coke?". And the media has another million people just like him.

To a normal person, this experience would have raised questions about their previous judgments and stereotypes held about black people. But O'Reilly, who is a pathological liar and in a state of perpetual denial, cannot actually let go of a previously held bias, no matter how wrong. So it's not that black people were never what he believed them to be, it's that "we're getting away from Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton."

This is a man expressing literal shock at the realization, no, the mere possibility that black people are human beings.

Xposted at Too Sense

THEY WANT YOU TO HATE



The July 25 edition of Hannity and Colmes marks the first and only moment Right Wing water-carrier Sean Hannity has ever expressed a concern about the wall between Church and State. Not surprisingly, Hannity's concerns centered not around a Christian religious institution, but a secular Arab language and culture school in Brooklyn. Hannity compared the school to a "madrassa," an Arabic word that literally means "school" but in the Fox News context has come to mean "a Muslim school that trains terrorists". Hannity was actually suggesting that The Khalil Gibran International Academy was a school for training terrorists, based on no more evidence than the cultural focus of the school's mission.

On the July 25 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity previewed a discussion of plans to operate an Arabic language and culture school in Brooklyn, New York, by saying that "if you live in New York City, guess what? Your tax dollars could be going to fund a madrassa," and that "the city that fell victim to the biggest terrorist attack in world history challenges the separation of church and state and using tax dollars to fund an all-Muslim school." During a later preview an on-air graphic read: "funding fatwa." In fact, the school's "advisory council" is made up of several Christian ministers, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim imams, according to a comment posted by Daniel Meeter, a member of the advisory council, on The New York Sun's website in response to an April 24 Sun article attacking the school. Co-host Alan Colmes also noted that the person after whom the school is named, author and artist Khalil Gibran, was a Maronite Christian, an eastern rite Lebanese sect in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

According to the New York City schools website: "The Khalil Gibran International Academy's mission is to prepare students of diverse backgrounds for success in an increasingly global and interdependent society. Our focus is on holistic student development and rigorous academics."

What makes Hannity's criticism all the more maddening is that he himself attended Catholic schools throughout his youth, including Sacred Heart Seminary and the now defunct St. Pius X Prepatory Seminary, which included two years of junior college schooling along with high school. The simple fact is that Hannity doesn't believe that Arabs or Muslims are entitled to the same religious freedoms white people or Christians are, and if he needs to, he will use his media venue to infringe upon the religious freedom of others.

Nevermind that our government suffers from a lack of Arabic language specialists, and that a recent Pew poll showed that knowledge of Islam and contact with Muslims drastically affects people's perception of Islam and its adherents. Hannity's concern is not safety or security, but "purity". His dedication to preserving what he sees as America's cultural heritage, a heritage defined by whiteness, Christianity, heterosexuality, and a narrow understanding of masculinity trumps any obligation he feels he might have to tell his viewers the truth, or to base his opinions on any empirical evidence. And in this way, Hannity is not so different from his admirers.

CBC Still Pushing Fox Debate...Even Though No One Is Going

The CBC's defense of their partnership with conservative propaganda outlet Fox News Channel is becoming increasingly absurd:

"We're moving forward no matter what. We're definitely having a debate in Detroit in September," said CBC Chairwoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, who serves on the institute's board and represents Detroit in Congress. "We may change the format. We might have more than just the presidential candidates," she said.

Debates between minor candidates are not rare. Biden, Kucinich and Gravel discussed the Iraq war at a June 6 debate at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. But it is unusual for such events to enjoy the backing of a national cable news channel.

Under such circumstances, one might expect Fox News to be making for the studio exit. But a representative said the network is "moving forward with the debate as scheduled on Sept. 23."

So the lack of attendance at the debate is going to change the format of the debate so drastically that not just the tier 3 presidential candidates are going to be invited, but black people are still supposed to believe that a network that has gone out of its way to portray African Americans in a negative light is going to be one worth paying attention to? From what Congresswoman Kilpatrick is saying, it might not even be a "presidential debate" anymore.

Naturally, Fox is sticking to the deal. With Biden and Gravel attending, the opportunities to make Democrats look like lunatics will be endless.

Bennie Thompson (D-LA) still hasn't quite given up on convincing the front runners to attend.

Fox has been seeking to improve its relations with African-American groups, especially after an embarrassing incident last month when it mistook Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) for indicted Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.), another black lawmaker. Pulling out of the black caucus debate would likely jeopardize the network's outreach efforts.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), head of the CBC Institute, said he still held out hope that he could convince the front-runners to attend. He preferred not to dwell on the idea of a lonely stage with Biden, Kucinich and Gravel lobbing bombs at their absentee rivals.

"We're still working to get the other people to reconsider," Thompson said. "Their decision to make Fox News the issue is not a good idea. Whether you agree or disagree with [Fox], they have a viewership."

What an absurd argument. Every cable news station has a "viewership".

As frustrated as I may be with the Politico sometimes, they manage to mention something few people discussing the CBC debate have--that there is another debate scheduled that will air on CNN, rather than FOX.

Thompson said the CBC Institute would make debate viewers aware of the no-shows.

"There will be a direct effort to put in the minds of [viewers] that every candidate had more than enough time to put this on their schedule," he said.

But the major candidates are unlikely to face criticism from the black community for taking a pass on this one. Most have accepted an invitation to appear at another black caucus debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., in January. That one is televised by CNN.

That fact preempts the kind of laughable criticism from FOX and their allies that Democratic candidates refusing to attend the debate on a racist network are simply unconcerned with issues facing African Americans. The problem, quite clearly, is the FOX News Channel.

The influence of African American voters in the Democratic primary has probably never been greater. Regardless of how one feels about Obama as a candidate, his presence alone makes competition for black votes more fierce, and forces the other major candidates to respect our concerns.

The new rhetorical strategy conservatives employ when dealing with the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Brown is the idea that the goal of Brown was to achieve a "colorblind" society. To say you "don't see someones' color" may seem like a compliment, but it's actually a patronizing insult. Not only is it dishonest, since to make such a comment you would have to be conscious of my color as a social factor to believe not "seeing it" is some kind of virtue, but what the philosophy of colorblindness actually says is that being black is somewhat like having a disability, it is something to be "overlooked", ignored, like the stump of a severed limb or an awkward lisp.

Of course, what conservatives mean by colorblindness is the removal of all cultural and historical context from matters of importance--not because such issues don't matter, but because it allows them to write their own prejudice out of history.

Take George Will's most recent column:

The court ruled 5 to 4 that Seattle, which never had school segregation, and Louisville, which did but seven years ago completed judicially mandated remedial measures, must stop using race in assigning children to schools to produce particular racial ratios in enrollments. How did we get from this: "Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and invidious that a state bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not invoke them in any public sphere" (the NAACP's brief, written by Thurgood Marshall, in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case), to this: local public education establishments routinely taking cognizance of race in assigning children to schools?

[...]

reyer said that last week's decision abandons "the promise of Brown." Actually, that promise -- a colorblind society -- has been traduced by the "diversity" exception to the equal protection clause. That exception allows white majorities to feel noble while treating blacks and certain other minorities as seasoning -- a sort of human oregano -- to be sprinkled across a student body to make the majority's educational experience more flavorful.

This repulsive practice merits Clarence Thomas's warning in his opinion concurring with last week's ruling: Beware of elites eager to constitutionalize "faddish social theories." Often, they are only theories. As Roberts said, Seattle and Louisville offered "no evidence" that the diversity they have achieved (by what he has called the "sordid business" of "divvying us up by race") is necessary to achieve the "asserted" educational benefits.

Evidence is beside the point. The point for race-mongering diversity tinkerers is their professional and ideological stake in preventing America from achieving "a colorblind mentality."

Once again, someone hostile to integration has chose to quote Justice Thurgood Marshall in a lengthy and out of context manner, distorting his words to fit an essentially racist end.

The fundamental premise of Brown is simply this: "Segregated is inherently unequal."

By no measure are public schools in America either integrated, or equal in the education they provides their children. The Supreme Court case doesn't rely on Jim Crow to maintain segregation, but rather the cultural practice of racism that results in the de-facto segregation of residential areas. There is no need for Jim Crow when Americans segregate themselves voluntarily.

Since a significant portion of the American electorate still feels as though any effort to help African Americans gain access to adequate public education, the best way to create opportunities for minority children is to place them in schools where those opportunities exist--most of these schools are white schools. The goal of "colorblindness," a social farce; the only people who claim never to take race into account are those who do so without restraint. The purported goal of "colorblindness" is an attempt to distract from Brown's real goal, a goal the United States has failed, to give the same educational opportunities to black kids that it gives to white kids.

The court can choose to ignore the circumstances out of a desire for "colorblindness" but "colorblindness" has become a euphemism for "blind to the issues faced by people of color."

George Will gave us a taste of his conception of "colorblindness" last week when he wiped away the reasons for George Wallace's Presidential Campaign:

A candidate can succeed in giving an aggrieved minority a voice—e.g., George Wallace, speaking for people furious about the '60s tumults.

Any mention or understanding of he fundamental, the only purpose of Wallace's campaign, "Segregation Now, Segregation Forever" is eliminated from Will's account of his success in representing "an aggrieved minority".

This is the "colorblindness" conservatives are aiming for. One where racism is removed from all historical and social context; not to grant equality of opportunity, but to pretend that racism doesn't exist as social force, and never did. Not a world where race doesn't matter, but a world where you can't say that race matters.

The results of such a goal, not the elimination of Americas' racial prejudice but the willful ignorance of it, we can see, are not so different from those of Governor George Wallace.

The goal of those interested in eradicating racism should not be that society pretends racism does not exist, but rather, as Manning Marable puts it:

New formations composed primarily if not exclusively of racialized ethnic minorities have a special responsibility for crafting new strategies of political intervention and mobilization. What we should seek is not a color-blind society but a more democratic social order where race disappears as a fundamental category for the distribution of power, material resources and privilege.

That of course, as anyone who has read Will's column regularly knows, is the last thing he would ever want.

Hey NMMNB readers!

I'm dnA, and I'll be one of the folks guest blogging for Steve while he's away.

In the meantime...

I interrupt this No More Mr. Nice Blog post for a brief sequence of images containing the pudgy, youthful visage of Tucker Carlson.









Your previously scheduled No More Mr. Nice Blog post will now continue. From Media Matters:

On the July 2 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, host Tucker Carlson said of presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL): "He seems like kind of a wuss." Carlson made this comment after claiming that in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, "Someone's going to give the middle finger to the man," adding: "And the man in this case is a chick!" -- referring to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY).

And to think this comes only a few years after Tucker's mommy stopped dressing him.

Which might explain why he's so threatened by Hillary Clinton. The man clearly has mommy issues.