The main stream media continues to pursue its “Obama the victim” narrative, portrying him as the victim of hate in some unusual way, and consulting only left-leaning organizations and think-tanks to confirm its thesis. Of course, if they actually did due diligence and interviewed both sides equally, and compared actual research from both sides, they would discover that there is… no story! Can’t have that, and the election isn’t quite in the bag for Obama yet, and so:
An ugly line has been crossed in this presidential campaign, one in which some people don’t mind calling Barack Obama a dangerous Muslim, a terrorist and worse.
And this is somehow worse than the term Bushitler? Let’s just add up the Hitler references to Bush, and compare numbers. But, of course, that would require real research and reporting, and we can’t expect that, can we? Just count the lawyers and reporters parachuted into Alaska to defame Palin, and compare the numbers to those who have really investigated Obama’s past and alliances, and you’ll get the idea.
“To me, this all feels much worse than we’ve seen in some time,” said Kathryn Kolbert , the president of People for the American Way , which monitors political speech.
Well, yes, because this time it’s YOUR guy on the receiving end of the very kind of hatred that People for the American Way and its allies have stirred up against Bush and Republicans. Except that it isn’t, for the simple reason that no mainstream Republican organization, conservative outlet, commentator or website has used the kind of language being reported here. Rather, it’s a very small fringe of over-the-top extremists, and the Left would love to paint the entire Right as that extreme… but it just won’t wash.
Experts agree on the reasons: Obama, the Democratic nominee, is different from any other major presidential candidate in history in many ways, and people often don’t accept such change gracefully.
Come on, just say it. Obama is black, and we all know those wascally weepublicans are wacists. Oh, and by the way: which “experts”? This is journalism school mumbo-jumbo for “this is what I think, and if I phrase it this way I can pretend it’s straight news”.
That different background fuels many fears, said Penni Pier , who’s an expert on political rhetoric.
And just what are HER political leanings? Context, please?
People are still scared that terrorists are ready to strike and wonder about Obama’s background, she said, while the Internet and other outlets are endless sources of misinformation.
You can say that again, and it cuts both ways, which means it’s a meaningless comment to insert here.
Some think that Republican strategists are, as Kolbert put it, “orchestrating” the vitriol.
Sure, the Obama campaign and its major cooperative arms, the New York Times, NBC, etc.
“A great many people think they’re about to lose power. The world is changing around them, and they can’t stop that change. So their anger is boiling over,” said Mark Potok , the director of the intelligence project at the Southern Poverty Law Center , which tracks hate groups.
Oh, you mean like ACORN?
The nonstop bile flowing toward Obama has been expressed in many ways:
“Nonstop bile”? Now, that’s really neutral journalistic language, isn’t it? Of course, when the Obama campaign is writing the news articles, sometimes the editors forget to dress up the talking points they just got in the fax to make it look like actual news.
— Racism. People for the American Way has found that since the McCain campaign very publicly has accused ACORN, a grass-roots community group with strong ties to liberal politicians, of widespread voter-registration fraud, “ACORN offices across the nation have been subjected to an onslaught of racist and threatening voice mails and e-mails.”
How many? Where? Verified by whom? Does this mean ACORN is reporting them, and the media just takes its word for it, or does this mean the media has actually gone and verified that the threats are happening? Does anyone think ACORN is some kind of model for trust and respect, that we should take their word for it?
— Values. Rep. Michele Bachmann , R- Minn. , told MSNBC on Friday that Obama “may have anti-American views,” and that if one looks at “the collection of friends that Barack Obama has had over his life . . . it seems that it calls into question what Barack Obama’s true beliefs and values and thoughts are.”
What in the previous questions and comments is not true?
— Patriotism and religion. At Becky’s Cafe in Springfield, Ohio , Nicole Ratliff , a cable-television sales representatives, echoed last week what many voters have said: “Obama won’t salute the flag and he has said he was a Muslim.”
I have heard countless mainstream conservative talk show hosts refuse to even let people continue on the air when they assert Obama is a Muslim. This isn’t coming from any mainstream conservative group or outlet, but only from a few nuts on the fringe. The difference here: the Right actually denounces its nuts, while the the Left embraces them and gives them candy, particularly when they are black congress-members. In any case, more people believe in alien abductions than believe Obama is actually a practicing Muslim, regardless of what small childhood exposure he may have had… so this is news? The nuts will always be with us. At least on the Right, we don’t make a fruitcake with them, and serve it on holidays.
Obama is and has always been a Christian.
Demonstrably false, and this undercuts their credibility. But since his small amount of childhood Islamic training, he has been a Christian since he was making his own choices. The truth is good enough, here, so why lie about it?
The flag controversy erupted in September 2007 , when then-fellow Democratic presidential candidates Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton had their hands over their hearts during the playing of the National Anthem in Iowa , while Obama stood with his hands clasped. An Obama spokesman said at the time that the candidate sometimes put his hand over his heart and had no substantive reason for not doing so.
The venom endures largely because not only is the Illinois senator the first African-American who’s ever come this close to the presidency, but his background, biracial, lived in Indonesia for a time, grew up in Hawaii , has the middle name Hussein, also isn’t the stuff of past presidential resumes.
Yes, the Right is just chock full of racists. Or at least it’s always safe to imply that in any mainstream news story.
That rouses suspicion among some voters, said Pier, an associate professor of communication arts at Iowa’s Wartburg College , because “People are still reeling from the 9-11 attacks, and some still have a tendency to see Muslims with fear.”
Gee, I wonder why? This is the media attempt to portray 9/11 as an isolated event, when the truth is that it is part of a general war being conducted by Islamic fascists against the West, with the frequent acquiescence of “moderate” Muslims. It gets very hard to tell which are which, sometimes. In any case, Obama’s very minor Muslim background isn’t the problem, and if he was a Republican with traditional American values, he’d be embraced with open arms by the Right. It’s his values and policies that are the problem, not his color or religious pedigree.
In addition, Pier said, many older voters grew up when racial segregation was still legal, haven’t necessarily accepted blacks in positions of power and are afraid of having a black president.
In addition, many black voters grew up being completely indoctrinated by and to the Democratic Party, and will never accept a candidate from the Republican party, black or white, because they are taught by their leaders that Republicans are racists, and black Republicans are Uncle Toms (or Uncle Colins), right up until they switch and endorse Democrats, of course. Who are the racists here? The Right has embraced Justice Thomas, and did so from the beginning, more proof that it’s values and policies, not skin color, that matters to the Right.
“Everything these people have stood for is sort of being questioned and to some degree eliminated by Obama,” said David Bositis , a senior research associate at Washington’s Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies , which studies African-American voting trends.
The angry voters have a 21st-century way to come together instantly and share misinformation. No longer do most people get news from newspapers or major television networks; instead they can access talk shows or Internet sites that are sympathetic to their own views.
This is pure calumny with no predicate in fact. To repeat, mainstream Right leaning talk shows do NOT encourage any of the behavior this article discusses, and actually fight against the more ridiculous charges that Obama is a secret Muslim, etc. Of course, to the Left, reporting accurately on Obama’s political alliances in the past, which the mainstream media should be doing but does not, is proof of bigotry. Any objective reader reading the blogs linked on this site will have to conclude that the sheer hatred on Daily Kos is a couple of orders of magnitude beyond anything in any mainstream Right leaning site.
What makes these charges different from the standard campaign tit for tat is that “I can’t recall a campaign where so many people held beliefs about a candidate that were demonstrably false,” said Adam Schiffer , an expert on American political behavior and media at Texas Christian University .
I’m trying not to laugh out loud, but it’s hard. Remember, oh, 2004, and the sheer hatred thrown at Bush by the Left, including those who now are Obama’s loudest supporters?
Last week, a McCain supporter told the Arizona senator, “I don’t trust Obama. . . . He’s an Arab.”
“No, ma’am,” McCain replied, “He’s a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with.”
I don’t recall Obama saying that America “is in no danger” if McCain is elected, something McCain said about Obama in response to what McCain saw as an extreme statement from one of his supporters. As usual, this article is exactly 180 degrees off center, ascribing the bad behavior of a small fringe of Obama opponents to the Right, while being blind to similar behavior from the CENTER of the Left, which is not corrected by Obama.
