Op-Ed Column: Same As It Ever Was

As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Though the Democrats swept the midterm elections, they still can’t manage to call for a binding resolution against The Decider’s troop surge. And, for the most part, the mainstream media looks the other way while failing to make clear to the American people that the surge is already on.

Though many members of the media have confessed in the past, however tepidly, to not asking tough enough questions leading up to the war in Iraq, they are currently repeating  their mistakes with regards to the Bush administration’s assertions, and now alleged proof, that Iran is killing our soldiers in Iraq.

Though they cry foul when attacked for concentrating their coverage on subjects such as John Mark Karr or TomCat’s wedding while Iraq burns, genocides flourish, our Constitution withers, New Orleans languishes and oceans rise, they pounced on Anna Nicole Smith’s sad yet otherwise inconsequential death with the kind of self-control exhibited by crack-addicted monkeys.

Though members of this same media often decry the quality of the presidents from which we are left to choose every four years – in between yucking it up at what jolly good fun these darn horse races are - they continue, more than any other factor in our political system with the possible exception of money, to determine who is nominated, who is elected and what we think of them.

An Associated Press article from this past week not only contributes to the long history of media bias and absurd focus on non-issues, but also injects a creepy racism into its portrait, however unintentional.

The article’s title, “Obama Had Multi-Ethnic Existence in Hawaii,” reveals the type of media coverage the junior senator from Illinois has received thus far. Barack Hussein (yes, get over it) Obama (no, not Osama!), in case you haven’t heard, is half-black and half-white. Before officially declaring his candidacy this weekend, Obama has already had his middle name repeatedly disparaged by “respectable” pundits; his first name misspelled to link him to Osama bin Laden and his image placed alongside stories about  Bin Laden by major news outlets, including CNN and Yahoo News; and was accused by many in the media of having attended an extremist Muslim school as a child (the story turned out to be untrue, though we all know how effectively an accusation alone can linger and fester in voters’ minds).

So right from the start, the article’s title begs the question: How much progress have we made since Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of a day when we’ll live in a country where Americans “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”?  Judging from this article, not enough.

If the level of ethnic diversity, or lack thereof, in the background of all presidential candidates were a common topic of media coverage, that would be one thing. But I don’t recall any articles pointing out George W. Bush’s decidedly homogeneous, privileged and socially cloistered upbringing. Do you? Bush and many people brought up in his conservative circles, for example, don’t tend to favor throwing the poor a life preserver, unless it’s connected to an anchor. It makes sense, then, that a presidential candidate who shows a distinct inability to empathize with all Americans, first as human beings and then as countrymen with different beliefs and cultures and ethnicities, may not be capable of representing this diverse nation.

So if that’s what the mainstream media wants, I say bring it on. But I don’t think that’s the case, which is why we get this:

“He was known as Barry Obama, and with his dark complexion and mini-Afro, he was one of the few blacks at the privileged Hawaiian school overlooking the Pacific…. As he pursues the presidency, the chapters of Obama's unfamiliar biography are drawing greater scrutiny. The Democratic senator from Illinois was born in Honolulu 45 years ago and lived in one the country's most diverse metropolitan areas for the better part of 18 years. He spent four childhood years in Indonesia.”

But it is not his general biography that is “drawing greater scrutiny” – president of the Harvard Law Review, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, professor of constitutional law at University of Chicago Law School, elected to Illinois State Senate in 1996, opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq - rather, it is his specific ethnicity within the biography. It’s one thing to touch on this but quite another to make it the sole focus.

In his 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father," Obama recalls experiencing some discrimination growing up in the islands, such as when other kids laughed at his name.

“I tried to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant," he wrote. But Obama acknowledges he wasn't growing up in the Jim Crow South or the housing projects of Harlem - he was in Hawaii, where his peers mostly treated him the same as others.

Since the strands of this ethnography are presented in such fragmented bits, where no connection is made until the very last line of the story that these events might have led Obama to more easily embrace all Americans, this article, inadvertently or not, plays right into the hands of racists on both sides: he’s black, but he’s really white; he’s half-white, but he’s really black. Rather than a man who sees all sides, this disjointed background material presents him as a man with no country, i.e., a candidate who might be incapable of drawing enough votes from either side. Twenty paragraphs later, in that last line, Obama is quoted as saying, “The opportunity that Hawaii offered - to experience a variety of cultures in a climate of mutual respect - became an integral part of my world view, and a basis for the values that I hold most dear.”

Editorially speaking, that’s twenty paragraphs too late. 

Then there are the numerous allusions to his basketball prowess, as though this defines him:

• At Punahou, Barack Obama was known primarily for his appealing personality, his honesty and his aggressive play on the basketball court.

• "He always had a basketball in his hands and was always looking for a pickup game," said teammate Larry Tavares, 46, now an estate planner at First Hawaiian Bank.

• A lanky, left-handed forward, Obama became known for his elusive moves on the basketball court.

• By his senior year, Obama was part of a talented team with at least three college-bound players. As a backup forward, Obama helped Punahou win the state championship in 1979.

And then this:

As a teenager, Obama went to parties and sometimes sought out gatherings on military bases or at the University of Hawaii that were mostly attended by blacks. He wrote in his book that he tried drugs and let his grades slip in his final years of high school.”

I almost don’t know where to begin with this paragraph. It is a journalistic abomination. “As a teenager, Obama went to parties…”? Really? You mean like 99.9% of other Americans. He attended “gatherings at military bases or at the University of Hawaii that were mostly attended by blacks”? I’m sorry but what could possibly be a reason for pointing this out other than to call into question his decision to attend allegedly predominant black parties? The words alone, “mostly attended by blacks,” has an accusatory tone, as if this were the case it would be a crime. In context of how little we heard of Bush’s coke use and alcoholism during the 2000 election, that Obama “…tried drugs and let his grades slip in his final years of high school” seems all the more inconsequential, even gratuitous here. Especially for a guy who then went on graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

To be fair, the article does note some of Obama’s positive traits, but on the whole is such a tone deaf hash of reporting that it's reminiscent of the kind of cluelessness Senator Joseph Biden displayed when he attempted to compliment Obama by calling him “clean.”

It’s not just that Barack Hussein Obama deserves better. We all do.

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[MediaBloodhound]

Same As It Ever Was