Obama '08?

A Complex Speech, Boiled Down to Simple Politics
A Complex Speech, Boiled Down to Simple Politics
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 20, 2008; C01

It was a 37-minute speech that ranged widely across the jagged landscape of race relations, with Barack Obama challenging the media to lift their level of discourse above the inflammatory rhetoric of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

On the nightly newscasts and in the morning papers, many journalists did try to grapple with the complexity of Obama's Tuesday address about the roots of racial tension. But when the story hit the Cuisinart of talk-show debate, it got whipped into a single question: Did Obama adequately distance himself from the radioactive reverend?

Not surprisingly, most liberals loved the speech and many conservatives -- though not all -- lambasted it.

"Folks, don't fall for this," Sean Hannity said on his radio show. "Most of America is not going to buy this flimsy excuse. . . . If you can't disown Reverend Wright, you're not qualified to be the president of the United States. I don't even think you're qualified to be senator."

"How do you possibly associate yourself in any way," Glenn Beck asked on his Headline News show, "with someone who believes the government invented the AIDS virus to kill African Americans?"

On the left side of the spectrum, radio commentator Ed Gordon called the speech "brilliant." CNN's Donna Brazile dubbed it "very courageous." Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart, on "NBC Nightly News," pronounced it "a very important gift" for the country.

"He did not oversimplify," said MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. "He actually brought down his rhetorical tone a notch so that this would be something that brought light and not heat to a subject on which there is so much heat. . . . I actually think that the speech did call out to Americans' better angels."

By inviting journalists to join a nuanced conversation about race, the Illinois senator was poking at a sore spot. News organizations are skittish about racial subjects, preferring to wrap them around the flap of the day rather than deal with underlying anger and grievances.

As Obama put it, the media often "tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the O.J. trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina." They can abandon that model, he said, or "we can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel every day" and make the presidential campaign about whether "I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words."

Many mainstream journalists cast the speech in a positive light. A Boston Globe news story called it "a frank reflection on the problems of race in America that rejected the minister's words but also drew a broader personal and historical context in which to read them."

NBC's David Gregory and Newsweek's Howard Fineman each called the speech "gutsy." ABC's George Stephanopoulos said it was "sophisticated" and "eloquent." CBS's Jeff Greenfield described the address as "exemplary," saying: "Only an African American can talk this bluntly about race." Time's Jay Carney said it was "exceptional" and "breathtakingly unconventional." "Nightline" co-anchor Terry Moran, who interviewed Obama afterward, said the senator was trying "to talk honestly about race."

Most voters didn't watch the morning speech, which was carried live on the three cable news channels, although a YouTube version was viewed 1.2 million times in the first 24 hours. Still, television excerpts have been critical in framing the narrative. The most frequently replayed lines were these, which followed Obama's criticism of Wright's harshest rhetoric: "I could no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I could no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother . . . who once confessed her fear of black men who pass her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

That proved a lightning rod for some conservative critics. "What he did," the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes said on Fox, "was throw his grandmother under the bus."

Others on the right offered mixed reviews. National Review called the speech "eloquently written, and at times moving. . . . But it should be noted that Obama deployed his formidable talents to try to minimize and excuse Rev. Wright's rants."

To their credit, the network newscasts ran four or five sound bites to evoke Obama's broader argument that while the anger of older blacks like Wright, 66, is understandable, the country needs to move beyond the racial wounds of the past. But Obama, 46, is trying to win the Democratic nomination, so the anchors kept returning to one core question.

"Is it enough to reassure white voters?" ABC's Charlie Gibson asked.

"Does it make too many white voters uncomfortable?" asked CBS's Katie Couric.

One lingering question for the news business is why, during 15 months of intense and largely positive coverage of Obama's candidacy, it took so long to focus on the pastor and family friend whose controversial views were no secret.

In March 2007, Fox News's Hannity conducted a contentious interview with Wright, saying that if a church made such comments about whites, "wouldn't we call that church racist?"

"No, we would call it Christianity," Wright responded.

Also that month, the New York Times quoted Wright as saying he had been disinvited from Obama's presidential announcement to avoid negative attention.

There were other hints. In a YouTube video posted a year ago, Wright rattled off a series of assertions about the country: "America is the number one killer in the world. . . . We put [Nelson] Mandela in prison. . . . We believe in white supremacy and black inferiority and believe it more than we believe in God."

In January, the Baltimore Sun reported on a sermon in which Wright repeatedly "singled out 'white reporters' for criticism," "talked of blacks being held down by attitudes of white supremacy," and charged that Bill Clinton "did the same thing to us that he did to Monica Lewinsky." And that same weekend, Post columnist Richard Cohen criticized Wright for his support of Louis Farrakhan, an issue also raised by NBC's Tim Russert at a debate last month.

But it wasn't until last week, when Fox News and ABC News bought DVDs of Wright's sermons from the church, that the simmering controversy reached full boil. The recordings have long been sold by the church, but journalists did not seek them until now.

Fox Chicago correspondent Jeff Goldblatt says he was looking into whether Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ deserved its tax-exempt status. In his report on Wednesday, March 12, he played a clip of Wright saying that the country is "controlled by rich white people" and that Hillary Clinton "ain't never been called a [N-word]."

"When it became palpable to the public is when there was a videotape," Goldblatt says.

On "Good Morning America" the next day, Brian Ross played video of Wright saying "God damn America," asserting that the government gives African Americans drugs and that the 9/11 attacks showed "America's chickens are coming home to roost."

Ross says the tapes he ordered came in early this month and he soon "realized they went beyond what had earlier been reported. . . . The 'God damn America' and 'US of KKK A' and 9/11 took it to a level that surprised me." Ross dispatched a crew to the church and the story was supposed to run early last week, but got bumped by the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal.

But even as CNN and MSNBC began airing the Wright videos, the New York Times and "NBC Nightly News" ran only brief items Friday, and The Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, USA Today and the "CBS Evening News" carried nothing. It wasn't until Saturday that the controversy hit The Post's front page.

Bernie wrote-



I read up to -



only to laugh out load. The piece had got a bit repetitive already by then. One could see the point early on.

But what made me laugh was how the hyperbole of "the hideous grasp of Satanic liberalism" was employed to suggest that we are obviously not in the hideous grasp of Satanic liberalism when a lot of people are pretty certain that we actually are in the the hideous grasp of Satanic liberalism or soon will be if some reactionary force ceases to provide real opposition.

So the public's perception of the drift towards the hideous grasp of Satanic liberalism, and it has to be Satanic to be hideous, and vice-versa, will be the determining factor, thus liberals have a duty to themselves and their liberal project to ensure that the public feels itself to be within the folded arms of heavenly bliss.

So lets have some reductions in the price of beer and fags. And gas. Or can you not afford to give us those things due to the proliferation of offices and trips and general goodies as Mr Parkinson redicted.

I knew he would be a good candidate because he cares about the community having lived there his entire life and raising a family in the very schools he served on the school board as chairman. His children (when they were children; I met my husband (then he was my boyfriend but we was 'going together' a long time) when I 12 and he was 13 we married when I was 17 and he was 18) all went to public schools so I knew he cared about the public school system despite being a republican. I think perhaps when it comes to hometown things republican/democratic issues kind of pushed aside when it comes to public schools; at least way back then; might have changed since then.

But I guess you are right; it might of have been a bit clannish to vote for him just because he was my father-in-law. Doubt I would have voted republican if he wasn't. My family on all sides have always been democrat and big on unions coming from iron workers and coal miners and such. In fact it was an issue when I first started going with my husband; kind of surprised me as I didn't think of stuff like that then; just thought he was cute and funny.

Guess I brought this on myself once again injecting personal stuff into threads. Don't know what has gotten into me lately. Don't ask me any more personal stuff; I can go on forever about myself. :wink:

Progress, of a sort.

Now, next time, start at the top and go down.

Thank you, Blatham for the link to "Tentacles of Rage" by Lewis Lapham of Harpers Magazine. I read it four years ago and thought that I remembered to save the issue, but alas, I had not. It is a remarkable piece and I do hope all on this thread read it. Slowly the monied foundations have changed the way many view "liberal values".

Spendius...I also think you need to read it carefully.

Satanic liberal here

My pleasure, darlin.

I just received a PM from somebody that informed me that my last post was offensive. I apologize for that post, and will make every effort to refrain from using such adjectives in the future.

But Bernie-

You have side-stepped the points I raised.

I will,of course read the whole piece, but my laughing at " hideous grasp of Satanic liberalism" broke my concentration and sent my thoughts down another route which is, as you know, the only way to read properly. In fact the mind cannot help itself in this regard.

It seemed a long piece and there was nothing up to that point I'm not familiar with so I pursued my other thought and while it was hot I stuck it on the thread.

You had asked somewhere who there was to have a discussion with but your sliding past the points I raised seems to indicate that you're not the man.

I can see people slipping out of side-doors on their tiptoes from 8000 miles.

revel-



No sweat kid. I hope I clarified the point for you. Maybe a careful reading of my Spengler quote will be useful.

It's a good sign when you accept a point that is going against what you previously thought and maybe cherish. A very good sign.

We might as well go ahead and get this on here as it made all the evening news magazines last night. Greta VanSustern has offered Obama a full unedited 1-hour forum to come in and talk about it with her. (Greta is not a wild-eyed liberal but neither would anybody describe her as a conservative.) She says so far the Obama campaign won't take her phone calls.

Sorry, old boy. Not going to play with you in such fora. You're rule book is from lawn bowling and mine from badminton.

Good for him. A full-on moratorium for this network would be even better than the limited one now in place.

I agree with Bernie. Obama doesn't need to talk about this, and certainly not on Fox.

It's nothing but a trap designed to make him look bad. No matter how well he answers the questions, they will not only make him look bad, but keep the story going. Not what he wants or needs right now.

Cycloptichorn

hmmmmm

For those of you who haven't watch "Outfoxed", you can watch it here. It's a documentary on the origins, personalities, techniques and goals of Fox news.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6737097743434902428

Fox isn't news it's propaganda.
Period.

What Candidone said.

It doesn't take very long to realize they are not "balanced." Only the neocons see it that way!

Fox is not the only news source nor the first one to report this latest turn of events. But by all means deflect the story to be another Fox bashing session. That's really useful after all.

Even letters to the editor in Salon recently have noted that Obama won't go on the record at length with anybody re any sticky wickets in his record That is his right of course. But it does little to calm any questions people might have about him.