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Opinion
The Daily Dispatch
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Saturday, September 19, 2009
A culture war, quite literally
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Editorial Board: James Edwards, Publisher Glenn Craven, Editor
jedwards@hendersondispatch.com gcraven@hendersondispatch.com
Don Dulin, News Editor ddulin@hendersondispatch.com
304 S. Chestnut St./P.O. Box 908 Henderson, N.C. 27536 PHONE: 436-2700/FAX: 430-0125
Daily Meditation O Lord my God, if I have done this; if there be iniquity in my hands; If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me; (yea, I have delivered him that without cause is mine enemy:) Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it; yea, let him tread down my life upon the earth, and lay mine honour in the dust. Psalm 7:3-5
Our Opinion
ABC’s needless apology revealing If you have a pulse, it would have been difficult this week for you to have missed the controversy surrounding rapper Kanye West’s upstaging of country and pop music phenom Taylor Swift, who was accepting an MTV Video Music Awards trophy when the mercurial hiphop star bolted on-stage, grabbed her mic, and in essence said that Beyonce Knowles should’ve won the “best female video” category instead. But we don’t care to kick West again while he’s down. There are footprints enough on the man’s behind. Even President Barack Obama, in a candid moment prior to a teleconference interview, called West a “jackass,” actually one of the kinder things we’ve heard said about him. Rather, our disdain is reserved for ABC’s apology for reporting what Obama said. ABC reporters apparently were listening in on a fiber optic line the network shares as a cost-cutting measure with competitor CNBC. Obama was about to be interviewed by CNBC’s John Harwood, but before the formal taping, casual conversation shifted — as it had over cubicle walls and around water coolers in workplaces across America — to West’s outburst. “I thought that was really inappropriate,” Obama is heard to say. “… The young lady seems like a perfectly nice person. She’s getting her award. What’s he doing up there?” When someone asks the president why he thought West might’ve interrupted Swift’s speech, Obama’s response was curt and on-point. “He’s a jackass,” the president said, to laughter on the line. Apparently Obama — who has apologized (also needlessly, we believe) to West — then thought better of the term, and asked, goodnaturedly, that it not be reported. “Come on guys,” Obama says. “Cut the president some slack.” Unfortunately, Mr. President, “off the record” really only counts before a statement is made. And this jackass was already out of the barn. No fewer than three ABC employees rushed to Twitter the comment to readers and followers. Twitter, for the techno-challenged, is an electronic communications service that lets senders and receivers share messages of no more than 140 characters in length, instantly, over computers, cell phones and the like. One of ABC’s “tweeters” was former White House correspondent Terry Moran, who typed: “Pres. Obama just called Kanye West a ‘jackass’ for his outburst at VMAs when Taylor Swift won. Now THAT’S presidential.” When ABC news found out about its employees’ “tweets,” it had them removed from the site, and apologies were issued to the president. If ABC owed Obama an apology, it might only be for Moran’s wisecrack at the end of his tweet. Many news organizations are yet to develop policies governing Twitter use, and the widespread informality of the Internet has caused some journalists — including those who should darned-well know better, like Terry Moran — to be a little loose with their personal commentary, diminishing the reporter’s credibility. But ABC owed no apology to Obama for reporting a very interesting comment made by our president on a timely pop-culture story. And surely Obama knew the minute the word “jackass” slipped from his mouth that, with today’s technology, the world would know what he had said about Kanye West before he could even finish the interview. “If you’re sitting there with a microphone on, you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy,” said Kelly McBride, an expert in journalism ethics for the Poynter Institute. “If you’re a governor or president, you know that.” Added McBride: “The president calling Kanye West a ‘jackass’ is perfect … for a tweet. In fact, that’s the ideal format. You can do it in 140 characters. There’s not much else to say.” So why would ABC apologize? Well ABC, you might recall, is the network that in June aired the Primetime special “Questions for the President: Prescription for America,” an opportunity for Democratic Party salesmanship poorly masquerading as news, during which Obama was free to pitch his plan for health care reform without Republican rebuttal. In fact, ABC even refused to sell the GOP any advertising during the time slot. So this was really an apology from ABC for its employees so carelessly risking their Official Obama-Backers decoder rings.
I don’t know who coined the term “culture war” to describe our political divisions, but I’m reasonably sure he or she intended it only as a figure of speech. It feels like something else in light of a new report from the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremist groups. “Terror From the Right” is a listing of bombers, killers, would-be assassins and insurrectionists motivated by anger over abortion, gays, taxes, blacks, Muslims and illegal immigrants. Which raises an obvious fair and balanced question: What about terror from the left? The SPLC’s Mark Potok says left-wing terror essentially means eco-terrorists, e.g., animal rights extremists. The death toll from their work, he says, is zero. By contrast, Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people because he was angry at the government, brothers Matthew and Tyler Williams shot two men to death for being gay, James Kopp killed Dr. Barnett Slepian for being an abortion provider, and dozens of other men have been indicted for dozens of other plots to
kill thousands of other people with whom they had political disagreements. It’s one thing to read these stories in isolation and another to see them collected, and thereby connected, here, one extremist plot after another in the 14 years since Leonard Oklahoma Pitts City. It Distributed by gives you a Cagle Cartoons sense that — apologies to Buffalo Springfield — there’s something happening here and what it is is all too clear. The report provides troubling context for the outrageous behavior that has attended the election of our first African-American president. When you call them on that behavior, Barack Obama’s detractors love to accuse you of equating dissent with racism. It is a specious argument. I disagree with the president’s use of signing statements to avoid complying with laws he
doesn’t like, but it would never occur to me to carry a sign vowing death to him, his wife and their “two stupid kids” as a protester in Maryland did, or to pray that Obama dies of brain cancer as a “minister” in Arizona does, or to heckle him during a joint session of Congress as Rep. Joe Wilson infamously did. That’s not dissent. It is the howl of the unhinged and the entitled. The same folks who were complacent as President Bush spent surplus into deficit, wasted $600 billion dollars and 4,000 American lives on the wrong war, and watched a major American city drown are morally outraged because the new guy wants to reform health care? For many of them, I think — not all — that’s because they find it hard to accept that the new guy is liberal ... and black. As Potok sees it, some of us are angry over the dramatic changes underfoot in this nation. “People who want this country to remain a whitedominated country have lost. They have completely and utterly lost the battle and they can never win it. If they were to seal the borders tomorrow,
whites would still lose their majority in a matter of years, simply as a result of the difference in fertility rate.” As a result, many people “feel that this is no longer the country that their Christian white forefathers built, that they have been robbed, that this isn’t the world they grew up in and that they are very, very frightened” — a feeling stoked and exploited by political and media demagogues, who will loudly disclaim responsibility when that fear becomes violence. The president is black, the secretary of state is a woman, the new Supreme Court justice is Hispanic, the nation is changing, becoming vastly more inclusive. If some see that as a redemption of promise, the SPLC report reminds us that others regard it as an embodiment of threat. For the record, at least six of the plots it recounts were motivated by, or against, Obama. Take it as proof. “Culture war” is not a figure of speech. Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@ miamiherald.com.
Letters to the Editor Say ‘no’ to business as usual To the editor: One of the old EDC members told me “The state will supply leads for development” and “business comes to government officials it is not a good practice to pursue them (business).” I hope this is not the plan of the new EDC, as we know the state is unable to take care of itself much less represent the interests of Henderson Vance and if you don’t put the product in the window it won’t sell. We must start showing an interest in supporting and keeping the business we have. You religious, civic and political leaders need to let these business people know we are a community that of the Carter Center, flee wants to help if there is a your enabling entourage of problem or just to let them sycophants and canvass some know they are important to neighborhoods yourself? How many people told you they don’t us. We are all ambassadors at large and should take think a black man should be president? One? Two? Zero? Or every opportunity to tout the good in our hometown are you simply reading minds and if we have treated the again? present businesses fairly The good news is that the race peddlers have undermined and made them part of our EDC effort, they more than themselves. The notion that anyone else well get the opposing skyrocketing deficits word out. and socialized medicine is racPlease don’t make it ist is met with eye rolls by the “business as usual.” Learn vast majority of Americans, who do not need Sharpton and from the past 20 years and don’t repeat history. Carter to tell them what is — or is not — in their own hearts. Bob Campbell, And, in fairness, when it Henderson became clear that Carter had turned this “debate” from mere fraud to farce, it suddenly dawned on some Democrats, including those in the White House, that smearing millions of constituents and swing voters (many of whom voted for Obama) as racists isn’t the best The Daily Dispatch welpolitics. So one cheer for those comes letters to the editor. who objected to this idiocy too Letters must be signed, little and far too late. include the author’s city But others just won’t let go. of residence, and should Maureen Dowd of The New York Times hears Rep. Joe be limited to 300 words. Wilson shout, “You lie!” And Please include a telephone her instinctive response is: “fair number for verification. or not, what I heard was an We reserve the right to unspoken word in the air: You edit comments for length, lie, boy!” clarity, libelous material, It’s the “fair or not” that personal attacks and poor gives Dowd away. She admits taste. We do not publish to hearing racism whether or anonymous letters, form not it’s warranted. That’s called letters, letters with names prejudice. And unlike Wilson’s foolish outburst, Dowd’s was withheld or letters where carefully considered. Dowd, we cannot verify the Carter and Sharpton can’t writer’s identity. grasp that conservatives are Writers should limit less hung up on race than they themselves to one letter are and that we can get past every 30 days. Obama’s skin color. “Some Letters can be acpeople just can’t believe a black cepted by e-mail, but city man is president and will never of residence and a phone accept it,” writes Dowd. She’s number for verification right. She’s one of them. purposes still must be You can write to Jonah Goldberg by included. e-mail at JonahsColumn@aol.com.
A tackle box full of race bait Of all the poisonous, ugly and intellectually vapid controversies ginned up in my lifetime, the current breakout of St. Vitus’ Dance over the “racist” opposition to Barack Obama may be the most egregious. Al Sharpton tells CNN’s Larry King that decent and racially sensitive Americans shouldn’t let a small minority make health care into a “racial issue.” Someone in the control room surely yelled, “Cue the laugh track!” In case you don’t get the joke, this entire “debate” over whether opposition to Obama’s health care reform is racist is totally, completely and in every way conceivable an invention of the left. Oh, sure, there are some racists who oppose Obama. Shocking news, that. And, yes, a tiny, tiny fraction of the signs at the Tea Party protests last weekend were racially insensitive. But if that’s how we’re going to score, then opposition to the Iraq war is anti-Semitic. After all, I saw a bunch of signs at antiwar protests that said bigoted things about Jews. Meanwhile, no significant conservative politician, pundit or intellectual has said that they object to Obama’s agenda because he’s black. Rather, they’ve said they oppose his agenda for precisely the same reasons they oppose Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s and Barney Frank’s agendas. They stand athwart Obama yelling “Stop!” just as they did with Clinton and Democratic presidents before him. Magically, the alchemic powers of Obama’s black skin transmogrify the same arguments and the same rhetoric into racism. Saying “you’re wrong” to a white politician is a disagreement; saying it to a black politician is like shouting
through Bull Connor’s megaphone. It’s been said that a grand jury can indict a ham sandwich. Well, these people can indict a ham sandwich for being racist. There is not an issue, topic or flavor of ice cream that Al Sharpton won’t inject racism into. But suddenly Larry King needs to ask him whether opposition Jonah to socialized Goldberg medicine is racist — as Tribune Media if Sharpton’s Services response was ever in doubt. Why not just ask the host of an infomercial whether you really need a ShamWow? Left-wing writers spent the week droning on about how it’s now racist to say “I want my country back.” These amnesiacs are blissfully unaware that “taking back” America was the rallying cry of the Democratic Party for eight years under George W. Bush. Anti-white racists all? Jimmy Carter sighs, “It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply.” Well, ditto. Except I think the abominable circumstance is the Vesuvian eruption of nonsense belched forth from distempered liberals frustrated by their inability to win a public policy debate. An “overwhelming proportion” of the vocal opposition to Obama stems from the “inherent feeling” that “an African-American should not be president,” testifies the de facto voice of Southern self-loathing and pharisaical pomposity. Really, President Carter? Based on what? Polls you’ve studied? Which ones? Or did you descend from the temple
What’s your opinion?