No Country for Old Men

The Washington Post's Richard Cohen is the personification of the pompous windbag cliché. He always has been. And has he's gotten old, it's only gotten worse.

There was once a time when puffed-up jackasses like him strode across the media landscape like kings of the jungle, and to be honest it's difficult to describe to anyone below a certain age just how tedious this era was in journalism. But changing times and cultural shifts have taken a toll on the Richard Cohens of the world and now all you really hear from them is the forlorn cries off in the distance as they face down inevitable extinction. Sure, guys like Cohen, and Friedman, and Brooks still have jobs, but they're not the exalted voices from on-high they once were. The smart ones don't complain about it; they simply keep on keeping on, perfectly content in their gargantuan sense of self-importance and their continued big paychecks.

But Cohen can't do that. He needs the adulation of the masses. He needs things to be the way they were in the good old days, before independent women and a cultural distaste for people who believe that all black men should immediately be viewed as suspicious made things so confusing. That was the time when people actually cared what kind of wisdom an Interesting Man like Richard Cohen had to impart to the world. It's almost enough to make you cry.

Except that it shouldn't. Not ever. Because it's important to keep in mind that Richard Cohen is an asshole. A monumental asshole.

Only a monumental asshole could write an entire column on how it's not racism but "reality" to profile young black men immediately following the acquittal of the guy who profiled and ultimately killed Trayvon Martin. Only a monumental asshole would actually try to argue that it makes perfect sense that Zimmerman automatically assumed Martin was a threat just by the color of his skin and the clothes he wore.

Only a monumental asshole can write something like this:

"Where is the politician who will own up to the painful complexity of the problem and acknowledge the widespread fear of crime committed by young black males? This does not mean that raw racism has disappeared, and some judgments are not the product of invidious stereotyping. It does mean, though, that the public knows young black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime. In New York City, blacks make up a quarter of the population, yet they represent 78 percent of all shooting suspects — almost all of them young men. We know them from the nightly news...

There’s no doubt in my mind that Zimmerman profiled Martin and, braced by a gun, set off in quest of heroism. The result was a quintessentially American tragedy — the death of a young man understandably suspected because he was black and tragically dead for the same reason."

Richard Cohen is indeed a monumental asshole.

The Washington Post: "Racism vs. Reality" by Richard Cohen/7.16.13



In November of last year, I wrote a piece for Banter pegged off of something else shockingly ridiculous that Richard Cohen had written.

"The White Guy of a Certain Age's Lament" (Originally Published at the Daily Banter, 11.28.12)

I'm sure you probably already know this, but it's a really tough time to be a white guy of a certain age right now. Everything's just so upside-down and nothing's how it used to be, with white guys of a certain age lumbering across the face of the earth like mighty dinosaurs, perfectly, languorously content in their dominion over all creatures. There was the re-election of the weirdly named multi-cultural black man Barack Obama -- along with the denial of the whitest, most of-a-certain-age man alive, Mitt Romney -- and its heralding of the demographic shift that's wresting power from their hands and giving to welfare queens and leaf-blowers. At the same time, there was the backlash against the attempt by a popular and official collective of über-white men -- the GOP -- to restrict the reproductive freedom of women on the grounds that not having proper babies from white guys of a certain age constitutes indefensible promiscuity anyway.

But that's politics. The real battlefield for white guys of a certain age these days seems to be pop culture, which is telling them that they can't just "show up" and still be the subject of adoration, as they once were, while simultaneously reminding them at every turn that the various peoples of the globe have other interests besides their lengthy, fascinating tales of their own heroic exploits that involve the experience of just being white guys of a certain age.

Over the past 48-hours, we've been treated to two comically embarrassing screeds lamenting the changing face of American and world culture into one that devalues the traditional merits and interests of the white guy of a certain age. One is self-pitying and personally revelatory in ways I'm not sure the author fully intended; the other is bitter, pissy and amusingly detached from the times in a way that only a man who shouts at kids to get off his lawn can find civil.

The latter, of course, involves Bill O'Reilly, the recently self-knighted harbinger of doom for white-guys-of-a-certain-age culture and the official miserable, racist uncle to all of America. Last night, on his regular prime-time complaint box on Fox News, O'Reilly and hack shrink Keith Ablow attempted to dissect the immense popularity of Psy's Gangnam Style, which recently surpassed Baby, from the harmless and infinitely less confusing Justin Bieber, as YouTube's most-watched video ever and is on track to having over a billion hits. O'Reilly, as you might imagine, can't fathom the popularity of Gangnam Style, which he describes as "a little fat guy from Pyongyang or someplace... doing the pony."

His and Ablow's debate over the clip and desperate attempt to understand the viral phenomenon that's sprung from it -- which lasted more than five minutes -- truly has to be seen to be fully appreciated. Ablow decides to go all Kierkegaardian nihilism, saying that the song literally means and affirms nothing, which is why it's the perfect mirror for our current culture; he even argues that Psy is uttering gibberish instead of "intelligible words," which he believes confirms his theory. That the lyrics of the song are in Korean never even comes close to popping the provincial bubble Ablow, O'Reilly and Fox News's audience exist inside of; I guess they figure that if something is huge internationally it has to have come from America. Haven't those Asians heard how exceptional we are? Don't they watch The O'Reilly Factor? For his part, O'Reilly simply dismisses the whole thing as madness.

For the record, I couldn't care less about Psy or Gangnam Style -- like most internet fads, it's annoying as hell -- but I can appreciate that it was written by someone whose experience isn't mine and who was attempting to satirize a place I didn't even know existed and a lifestyle I've never seen for myself. K-Pop isn't my thing and neither is the often peculiar Asian appropriation of hip-hop, but I'd never argue that the song is about nothing just because I don't understand it. I'm also not an asshole to the nearly unsurpassable extent that O'Reilly and Ablow are.

But if you thought those two could turn a pop culture phenomenon into a full-on existential crisis, you haven't read Richard Cohen's recent and instantly legendary elegy to his fading place as an object of feminine desire. I wouldn't be surprised if Cohen really believed he was simply examining the changing face of masculinity during his write-up of the new James Bond movie in Monday's Washington Post, but let's be honest: He was lamenting the fact that he, 71-year-old Richard Cohen, can't score 20-something pussy anymore. In the column, Cohen mourns the death of what he calls the "sexual meritocracy" of years past, when guys like Cary Grant and Humphrey Bogart could nail women much younger than themselves by virtue of little more than their "experience and savoir-faire" and their ability to, preposterously, "send out a suit for swift hotel cleaning." He compares these qualities, ones you can easily imagine him ascribing to himself, to those Daniel Craig displays in Skyfall. The result is a piece of intellectual resentment almost impossible to truly describe without hearing the voice of Family Guy's "Buzz Killington" in your head.

"Nothing about him looks natural, relaxed -- a man in the prime of his life and enjoying it. Instead, I see a man chasing youth on a treadmill, performing sets and reps, a clean and press, a weighted knee raise, an incline pushup and, finally, something called an incline pec fly (don't ask) ... Every rippling muscle is a book not read, a movie not seen or a conversation not held."

While I'm sure you can sympathize with the ways in which Daniel Craig is crushing Richard Cohen's self-esteem and taking all the women who would otherwise be gushing over his droll tales of hours spent painstakingly crafting didactic, faux-erudite columns for The Washington Post, it's ludicrous to make the assumption that because someone is physically fit, that person must be neglecting other parts of him or herself -- as if bettering your mind and body is a zero-sum game. It's basically Cohen bemoaning his loss of entitlement and being petty, jealous and essentially the real-life equivalent of William H. Macy's Quiz Kid Donnie character in Magnolia, sitting at the end of the bar pondering aloud why nobody wants to be with him anymore. On the plus side, he couldn't have written a column that's stronger catnip for the girls over at Jezebel if he'd tried.

Years ago, the late William F. Buckley wrote a series of novels about a character with the hilariously improbable name Blackford Oakes. Oakes is a rakish CIA agent and man of mystery who travels the globe foiling cold war-era plots and sleeping with beautiful women, despite having a pretty little liberal-arts lady back home in the land of the free who cares for him dearly but whom he must constantly condescend to lovingly and lecture about the true nature of the world. He's sexy, lethal, Ivy League-educated, and always a gentleman. In other words, he's exactly how a pompous bore like William F. Buckley imagined himself; he's Buckley's alter-egomaniac. Buckley's bombastically high opinion of himself didn't manifest in self-pitying public requiems, as Cohen's did -- it was turned into really crappy dime-store spy novels. Cohen should take up fiction. It would be less humiliating to him.

It's worth mentioning that both O'Reilly and Cohen have been accused in the past of inappropriate sexual conduct with women much younger than them. O'Reilly's target, infamously, was producer Andrea Mackris, whom he offered to "falafel" in the shower because she supposedly had "nice boobs"; Cohen's was a 23-year-old editorial aide named Devon Spurgeon (he also had an affair with Peter Jennings's wife back in the late 80s). See, there was a time when white guys of a certain age like them, as lords of the sexual meritocracy, could expect to exert their privilege and not only get away with it but have women fall willingly and effortlessly into their powerful, interesting arms. All they had to do was show up. They were the kings of all they surveyed and everything went their way and made complete sense to them at all times.

Those days, though, may be coming to an end.

We now live in a changing world, one where a pudgy Korean guy can be an American and global phenomenon and James Bond isn't just the coolest man in the world, he's also one of the hottest.

Yes, it's a tough time for white guys of a certain age. The good news is that they'll grow out of it. And besides, white guys still have it pretty great all the way around. Just ask anyone else.

Fry a Little Tenderness

I just wanted to take a second to follow up on the whole Paula Deen miasma, which culminated yesterday in what had to be Deen's worst day ever. In a period of less than ten hours she bailed on the Today show, posted a bizarre, rambling apology on YouTube, took that apology down, put it back up, and lost her home at Food Network after executives there decided they weren't willing to take the heat of keeping her around. You have to have a lot to feel the excruciating pain of losing a lot, and yesterday Paula Deen lost a lot. I get the impression that she'd love to figure out a way to just make the whole day go away entirely.

There are a lot of people gloating right now over Deen's downfall and I fully admit to not being a fan of hers at all. I also admit to gleefully taking part in the hilarious Twitter pile-on both yesterday and Wednesday when this whole thing first broke. Having a somewhat good-natured laugh at pain, even someone else's pain, is what we human beings do; there's just no way around it, I guess. But believe it or not there truly is a part of me that feels a little sorry for Deen. Obviously, she's still got a giant bag of money she's sitting on and there's no way in hell this controversy is going to sink her entirely, so my sympathy is tempered quite a bit. Still, Paula Deen's brand of racism, while potentially far more insidious in the big picture, isn't the same as the brand that shows a true internal hatred for people of color.

Yes, an argument can easily be made that it's casual, inadvertent racism that allows for the more blatant, in-your-face kind, but as I often say when someone gets in deep shit for saying or doing something the masses find reprehensible -- rightly or wrongly -- you have to consider a person's intent before deciding what punishment to mete out. If Paula Deen truly didn't understand that what she was doing could be construed as incredibly hurtful and that it both enabled and perpetuated the problem of racism in America -- certainly in the South -- does she deserved to be publicly eviscerated and lose a substantial portion of that for which she obviously did work pretty hard? It's absolutely fair to refuse to tolerate racist behavior or language of any kind, but I'm genuinely not sure Paula Deen had any idea what the hell she was doing. If that's true, isn't it better to give her a hand to hold rather than one that beats her over the head?

It may be tough to see it as a legitimate excuse, but Deen's apparently blithe attitude toward racist language really is a product of her surroundings. That kind of crap still goes on all over the place in the South and I'm certainly not condoning or suggesting we let it slide. Far from it, in fact; I generally hate the fucking South. Deen is a hugely popular face of that region and its sometimes intransigent beliefs, though, and rather than trying to take several pounds of very fatty flesh, would it possibly be a better idea to reach out to her in the spirit of the understanding we all purport to crave and let a public conversation with her on race and racial issues perhaps be an example to those who look up to her? Of course we all know that there's a part of her that's crying more for herself than anything or anyone else when she pleads for forgiveness, but that doesn't mean her transgressions can't serve a useful purpose for everyone.

Maybe it's a bitter pill for all of us who seek to eradicate racism to swallow -- and maybe it's easy for me to say because I'm a white guy -- but if creating an open dialog by showing a little kindness and compassion to somebody like Paula Deen furthers that cause, maybe it's worth it.

Mama Don't Let Your Cowboys Grow Up To Be Babies

For today's Daily Banter column I actually sat through every second of Brad Paisley's hilariously self-pitying new song, Accidental Racist.

Here's the beginning of what I came up with in response to it:

"Let’s be honest: Country songs aren’t exactly written with repeated playings at Mensa meetings in mind. With a few very notable exceptions, country music 'artists' tend to eschew analogy and subtext in favor of just coming out and saying whatever the hell it is they’re trying to get across. When the guy who won this year’s Academy of Country Music Award for Entertainer of the Year sings 'Rain Is a Good Thing,' he’s not talking about a metaphoric rain that will wash away his pain so that a bright new day can dawn; he’s talking about rain. Rain that makes corn, which makes whiskey, which makes his baby feel frisky. And that’s, you know, a good thing. There’s not much depth to country music, and when a Hail Mary pass at profundity is attempted, it usually winds up sounding like the kind of thing you’d imagine coming from a frat boy who’s had too much to drink and is suddenly unleashing some of the sad poetry he secretly writes on you at 3am.

Which brings us to the new song by Brad Paisley. It’s called Accidental Racist and it’s about — get ready for the surprising wordplay — accidentally being viewed as a racist."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"Vote Rite could revolutionize the way Americans callously fuck over other Americans."

-- From the Onion News Network's story "Hot New App from the GOP Modernizes Minority Voter Suppression"

Desperation Row

Today's column for the Daily Banter deals with yesterday's big, booming bombshell -- hyped breathlessly by Drudge, Hannity and Tucker Carlson -- which revealed that the President of the United States is, in fact, black.

Here's an excerpt:

"It borders on tragic that four years into this man’s presidency — a presidency the right has sought over and over again to delegitimize in any and every way possible — this is all they’ve got, not an honest appraisal of his administration’s policies and what they have and haven’t done for the country but a desperate relitigating of the tired claim that Obama was never vetted properly, that he’s got something to hide, that Americans were duped back in 2008, that there are just too many questions surrounding his 'otherness' for him to be where he is right now, much less to be allowed to remain there for another four years."

Read the Rest Here

Black Marketing

I've said this before but it bears repeating: While the modern GOP enables racist thinking and willfully exploits racism among its ranks to its political advantage, it isn't necessarily racist as an organization. Here's the thing, though: Black Americans have an important role to play in the Republican narrative these days, assuming they're willing. That role is to provide absolution for the sins of a past steeped in racist rhetoric and action and a present in which safe haven is regularly provided for bigots and their repugnant views.

And how does a black man or woman do that, how does he or she adhere to the GOP's strict code of conduct? Simple -- by rarely mentioning that he or she actually is black, never bringing up the subject of racism and under no circumstances blaming white suppression for his or her problems or otherwise making any white person feel uncomfortable. This is what the GOP means when it says it's open to all races and ethnicities. Sure it is, as long as the people representing those races or ethnicities understand and accept who's in charge.

I bring this up because Mitt Romney, the Whitest Man in America, has put together what he's calling a "Black Leadership Council," presumably to help him reach out to a community he's currently polling zero with in contrast to Barack Obama. The leaders of that advisory board: Reps. Tim Scott and -- wait for it -- Allen West. Basically, the only two black guys in government Romney could find who support him -- with one, the latter, being a raving sociopath who manages to regularly disgust and offend as many white people as he does black.

The always-great Charles Pierce over at Esquire published a quick bit on this and it's my favorite thing of the day for three reasons: the fact that he refers to the average Romney supporter as looking like "a lump of mozzarella," his brilliant reference to a classic Bill Cosby album in the title, and his use of Barbara Billingsley in Airplane! to illustrate what Romney's outreach is probably going to look like.

The Silent Treatment

As promised overnight, today's column for the Daily Banter -- written before Wolf "Human Ambien" Blitzer and Erin "AmEx Black Card" Burnett decided that the factual errors in Paul Ryan's speech didn't matter -- takes aim at CNN just 24-hours after I uncharacteristically showed the network a little love.

Here's the opening shot:

"Well, it was nice while it lasted. I was allowed all of about 24-hours of magnanimity and good will toward CNN before something happened to kind of blow it all to hell. You’ll remember that when we last left your humble narrator, he was painting a mental picture of CNN functioning as a news operation that closely resembles the hyper-idealized and eminently ethical one depicted in Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom. I truly believed that CNN had the potential to stand tall and assume a mantle that no other network in the country has been willing to, one of a news organization wholly dedicated to fierce, adversarial journalism; committed to letting only the facts dictate the terms of a story and unwilling to allow anyone from any political stripe to get away with trying to dance around or flat out ignore those facts. I still think CNN is capable of becoming that kind of news network — in fact, I still think it’s uniquely positioned among its contemporaries to make that little dream come true for the news-hungry public.

But then it goes off and does something stupid — like what it did less than 48-hours ago in response to an incident at the Republican National Convention in Tampa..."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"The demographics race we’re losing badly. We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

-- Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina

Graham must be a recovering alcoholic because he just had what 12-steppers commonly refer to as a "moment of clarity."

In a couple of related items, this and this.

Quote of the Day

"I need to say that it has been pointed out that cataloging racism is a sight below the standards of this blog. I sort of agree. But over the course of the Obama presidency I have become convinced that no single force exerts a greater pull on his presidency than white racism. Not white resentment. Not white populism. White racism. I don't know how else to explain a health care denounced as reparations, the rather continuous disrespect, the sense that he is a Kenyan illegitimate or all of the attendant theories. I do not know how else to explain a state like West Virginia, arguably the most racist in the country, where delegates are now refusing to endorse the president. There will be more on this in the coming months. I don't want to scoop myself. But my point is I can only stop talking about racism, when it ceases to be a significant force in our politics. When the mere act of being white gives Obama's opponent 'a home-state advantage nationally,' I can't stop. It would be deeply wrong to stop."

-- The Atlantic's Ta-Nehisi Coates

I gave Coates the Quote of the Day honor because I'd rather have his thoughtful and passionate rebuttal put front, center and above the actual repugnant comment he was responding to, which was this -- from Arizona conservative talk radio asshole Barbara Espinosa:

"I don't believe in calling (Barack Obama) the first black president. I voted for the white guy myself. I call him a monkey."

Are all Republicans racist? No, of course not.

But make no mistake: The GOP as an institution has fomented, tolerated, enabled or exploited racism within its ranks for far too long, and it's never been more blatant and sickening than during the past three-and-a-half years of the Obama presidency.

If you deny it at this point, you're either lying to yourself or you're an idiot.

Racial Gray (Complete)

The Full Text of the Piece That Appeared Yesterday at the Daily Banter

I didn’t want this to turn into a public back-and-forth, but when I wrote a piece last week for this site on the double-standard when it comes to how news outlets cover crimes which are racially motivated or have the potential to be racially motivated, I knew I might be opening a Pandora’s Box. So with that in mind, and after my good friend and podcast partner Bob Cesca penned a response to my original column here a few days ago, I feel like I want to clarify and expand on my views a little.

First of all, I really do hate the fact that even though my motives are much different and I have to believe more noble than theirs, my opinion gets to be lumped in with the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg. I don’t like that it looks like I’m defending them when I’m simply defending a point they’ve made — again, regardless of why they made that point. It should also go without saying that I hope I’m not labeled some kind of racist — or a latent racist, unaware of my own racist feelings, a charge that’s almost impossible to defend against — by those who disagree with me on this. I want to make it clear that while O’Reilly and Goldberg seemed to suggest an equivalence between the incident in Virginia and the Trayvon Martin shooting, I did nothing of the sort; they’re completely different cases and they should have been treated differently by the press.

The issue, though, is larger than an unfair comparison between two separate and distinctive events.

I’m not saying that the media don’t report black-on-white crime. Of course they do. Jesus, in a lot of places — mostly local news markets — it’s almost all they do. The difference — the double-standard — occurs when it comes time to tag a crime as racially motivated or to acknowledge a racial component within a crime. When there’s a possibility of labeling a crime racially motivated, the burden of proof is much higher in a black-on-white crime than it is in one that’s white-on-black. I understand completely the history involved — which Bob outlined nicely — and how and why that can come into play, but I’m still not sure that makes it right from the standpoint of journalistic ethics. From what I’ve seen, it would take a person or a group literally shouting “I hate white people” while kicking somebody’s ass for many in the media to report that a black-on-white crime had racial overtones — and if it didn’t appear at first glance to have overt racial overtones they almost certainly wouldn’t go looking any deeper for them.

Again, I do understand the lengthy and incontrovertible history that deserves consideration, but a group of white people beating up on a black person is automatically very suspicious — as it damn well should be — while a group of black people beating up on someone of another race or ethnicity is deemed, what? Business as usual? Just the way things are? Doesn’t the refusal to even acknowledge the racial element in a story like that — particularly when the coverage would be far different were the roles reversed — speak to Goldberg’s claim that the media may be trying to play a paternal role in protecting a minority community from the bigots who’d automatically label them savages or criminals? If so, is it the media’s job to play that paternal role?

There’s no denying that a news organization can often be influenced, sometimes very quietly, by factors not related to the goal of practicing journalism. On my site I’ve written often about the subtle pressure exerted on news producers to be cognizant of any possible liberal bias within their work — a product of years of accusations and strong-arming by the right — and how that can often lead a news department to overcompensate. True objectivity goes out the window in an effort to ensure that conservative critics are appeased — in other words, in the pursuit of the appearance of objectivity. Likewise, there’s an interesting guideline in place in many newsrooms — occasionally unspoken but often discussed openly — that tips its cards to the incredibly delicate way the press handles the subject of race and minority crime. It works like this: If a crime has been committed and the only description you have of the suspect is, say, a black male, 5’11″, wearing a white t-shirt, you don’t air or publish the description. Why? Well, because obviously that would mean police are currently on the lookout for six thousand people; the description is worthless. But its vagueness and consequent lack of value isn’t really the reason the description wouldn’t be run; there have been quite a few times throughout my career where it’s been acknowledged in my presence, and admittedly even affirmed by me, that a non-specific description of an African-American suspect is unfair to the black community.

True, a sketch of a suspect that ambiguous would likely be left out of a story regardless of that suspect’s race or ethnicity, but special attention was always paid to those who were wanted by the police and who happened to be black, often in an effort to avoid inflaming racial tensions or giving fuel to bigots. Of course, again, there’s a history to be considered here, a history of black people being unfairly targeted as suspicious due to nothing more than the color of their skin — see, yes, Trayvon Martin — and maybe it does in fact show journalistic responsibility and an acquiescence to the realities of the world to take that into consideration when publishing or airing a news item. I think this is the argument Bob was making in his piece and he could very well be right. But from a perspective that I hope is as dispassionate as it can be, the question of fairness and paternalism again comes up: Is it the job of a journalistic organization to favor one group over another or to treat one group differently in their coverage — to show it special dispensation or handle it with kid gloves not applied when dealing with anyone else?

One final thing before we hopefully put what I think has been a healthy debate to rest: By talking about this issue I want to make it clear that I’m not at all personally outraged about the double-standard in black-vs.-white press coverage nor am I crying that I’m being racially persecuted, as O’Reilly and Goldberg most certainly were. I’m a white guy living in the United States of America — I’ve got it fucking great. I’m merely pointing out that the double-standard exists and that there’s a very strong argument to be made that it does actually defy the rules of a responsible and unbiased press. Am I hedging a little because of the sensitive nature of this subject — wearing those kid gloves, as it were? Sure am. Is it somewhat cowardly to allow any kind of potential pressure or backlash to influence what I say or the way I say it? Perhaps.

But that was sort of the point I was initially making. Or at the very least, the question I was asking.

Racial Gray

My latest piece for the Daily Banter is up and it continues the debate over the double-standard in how the media covers crime stories that may or may not feature a racial component.

Here's the opening shot:

"I didn’t want this to turn into a public back-and-forth, but when I wrote a piece last week for this site on the double-standard when it comes to how news outlets cover crimes which are racially motivated or have the potential to be racially motivated, I knew I might be opening a Pandora’s Box. So with that in mind, and after my good friend and podcast partner Bob Cesca penned a response to my original column here a few days ago, I feel like I want to clarify and expand on my views a little."

Read the Rest Here

When the Right Is (Not Necessarily) Right

So if you're a regular reader you know that last week I posted a piece here and over at the Daily Banter mothership that defended Bill O'Reilly and Bernie Goldberg's position -- though not O'Reilly and Goldberg themselves -- on a possible double-standard when it comes to the media's reporting on crimes in which there may be a racial component. Chances are you also know that it started a minor debate in the comment section of the full post here between myself and Bob Cesca -- as well as a couple of other people.

Well, Bob's now posted a lengthy response to my piece over at Banter -- one that takes a different view than mine, which is of course fine as we don't agree on everything, nor should we.

Give it a read.

The Daily Banter: Black-on-White Crime and the Reasons for a Double-Standard/5.15.12

When the Right Is Right (Complete)

The Full Piece That Ran Yesterday at the Daily Banter

Every once in a while I apparently like to see to it that my progressive street cred takes a huge hit and, well, I guess it’s that time again. The line to angrily show me the error of my ways forms to the left — just, please, not the face, eh?

In case you haven’t been watching Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox recently — and I can’t in good conscience suggest that you do — his latest indignant crusade involves the search for answers in the beating of a pair of Virginia newspaper reporters by an angry mob a few weeks back. The two reporters were white; the people who attacked them, throwing rocks at their car and eventually sending both of them to the hospital, were reportedly all black. What got O’Reilly’s dander up was the fact that the paper the victims work for — the Virginian-Pilot — ran the story not as a news item but as an opinion piece two weeks after the attack. It never bothered to report the initial story; it only chose to comment on it well after the fact and when it did, it stated only that the reporters were beaten by a mob, with no mention of what seemed to be a glaringly obvious racial component. O’Reilly even sent his little Renfield, intrepid professional asshole producer Jesse Watters, down to the Pilot’s offices to confront the paper’s management about what he sees as an intentional oversight and ran an interview with at least one man in the neighborhood where the attack happened who claimed that anger over the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida might have played a role in the beating.

To top it all off, a couple of nights ago O’Reilly brought on Bernard Goldberg — who by the way is probably the most impressive surrogate for Fox’s audience of embittered old white people from among its stable of regular guests — to discuss how liberal media bias contributed to the unwillingness to broach the subject of race in the story. From Mediaite, here’s what Goldberg had to say:

“Here is what it is really about. It goes beyond journalism, it’s a much bigger issue. It’s about white, usually white liberal paternalism where they say, ‘Well, we really can’t hold black people up to the same standards as we hold white people up to. That’s why we are not putting it in the paper. They are different.’ So two things happen after that. One, the newspaper, the media, they don’t want to air that kind of dirty laundry because it’s kind of embarrassing for the black community. And two, they don’t want to give ammunition to the bigots who probably would say, you see, that’s how they all behave. Now look, we hate, we detest the bigots. But a newspaper has a responsibility to cover legitimate news.”

O’Reilly himself then went on to bring up what he calls an undeniable double standard when it comes to the coverage of the Virginia attack: “You can’t tell me that MSNBC, if it were reversed, wouldn’t be every show, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, on and on and on,” he said.

Now make no mistake: Bill O’Reilly isn’t the least bit concerned with justice, fairness or, most assuredly, journalistic integrity — he’s just throwing red meat to his viewers to feed their white resentment, persecution complexes and the overall delusion that they’re the victims of “reverse racism.” Here’s the thing, though: He’s right about this. And so is Bernie Goldberg. Intentions be damned, almost across the board they’re both right.

Was flat-out racism really a factor in the decision by a large group of black people to attack the Virginian-Pilot’s two white reporters as they sat in their car at a red light? I don’t know, and neither does anyone else at the moment. But to not acknowledge at all the racial component of a story like this requires powers of self-deception — or at the very least the ability to twist yourself into a pretzel of rationalization — that border on superhuman. Again, no one should be claiming that race played a role in the attack, but it’s entirely fair to ask the question why so few in the media are willing to question whether it did — and to do it seemingly as part of a general rule about bringing up race when it’s a black-on-white crime. O’Reilly may be a pompous buffoon, but I dare anyone to challenge his assertion that were the races reversed in the case in Virginia — had it been a group of white people who attacked an African-American man and woman in their car — it would’ve been the lead on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show every night since the day it happened.

I want to stress one more time, because it’s that important: I have no idea whether race played a role in this recent attack and I won’t immediately jump to the conclusion that it did. But it’s a news outlet’s job to dispassionately report the facts, even if it’s to impress upon the public that not enough is known about a news item to make a judgment call. But the press generally doesn’t do that when it comes to issues of race and violence, not when the victim is white and the assailant is black. As Goldberg says, they’re holding the two groups to different standards when it comes to what they’re willing to say about them without unequivocal evidence. When a power-drunk white guy in Florida shoots an unarmed black teen, it’s asked whether the attack was racially motivated. And it should be. When an angry mob of young black men and women attack a couple of white reporters, trashing their car and sending them to the hospital, the possibility that the attack was racially motivated isn’t even discussed, out of fear of offending anyone or fueling an ugly stereotype. And, again, it should be.

Why? Because that’s a news outlet’s job.

When the Right Is Right

My new piece for the Daily Banter is up and it deals with Bill O'Reilly's latest bit of faux-indignant theater.

But my take on it doesn't necessarily go where you'd think it might.

Here's the opening shot:

"Every once in a while I apparently like to see to it that my progressive street cred takes a huge hit and, well, I guess it’s that time again. The line to angrily show me the error of my ways forms to the left — just, please, not the face, eh?

In case you haven’t been watching Bill O’Reilly’s show on Fox recently — and I can’t in good conscience suggest that you do — his latest indignant crusade involves the search for answers in the beating of a pair of Virginia newspaper reporters by an angry mob a few weeks back. The two reporters were white; the people who attacked them, throwing rocks at their car and eventually sending both of them to the hospital, were reportedly all black."

Read the Rest Here

Language Barrier

My latest piece for the Daily Banter is up. This one deals with CNN's idiotic response to the use of profanity and the word "nigger" by a correspondent, just a couple of week's after its not-at-all-idiotic response.

Here's the opening shot:

"Well, it was good while it lasted.

A couple of weeks ago, CNN correspondent Drew Griffin — who’s an old friend of mine going back to our time together at KCBS in the mid-90s — caused a minor stir by saying the word 'nigger' live on the air during a report he was doing. Aside from that minor stir, though — the instinctive gasping and clutching of pearls by outside media outlets always vigilantly on the lookout for the next non-controversy to create out of thin air — what’s significant is what happened on CNN in the immediate aftermath of the comment.

Nothing. Nothing at all. No sudden gasping for air followed by a harried apology. No public self-flagellation. No immediate scheduling of summit meetings with the NAACP followed by the commission of ten-part series on race relations in America hosted by Soledad O’Brien and Toure. Not a damn thing."

Read the Rest at the Daily Banter

Censor-y Overload

I'll make this quick because, as you can probably tell by the lack of output here over the past couple of days, I'm still pretty busy at the moment.

Bravo to CNN.

No, really.

Earlier today, investigative correspondent Drew Griffin -- who's an old friend of mine, going back to our time together at KCBS here in Los Angeles in the 90s -- was having a conversation on-air about a horrific hate crimes case in Mississippi when he said the word "nigger," unbleeped. The case involves a guilty plea entered by three young white men who purposely beat up then ran down a black man in June of last year. Drew was talking about the sickening facts of the case and quoted one of the killers, 19-year-old Deryl Dedmon, as having thrown out a racial slur while admitting to the crime not long after the attack.

Drew's exact words: "Deryl Dedmond backs up and gets a good aim and just plows him over on the way out. To be absolutely factual, at the end of this, Deryl Dedmond is laughing with his friends and actually called on his cell phone and, pardon my language but there's no other way to say this, and said, 'I just ran over that f'ing nigger'"

While it's unfortunate that he even felt that he had to edit out the word "fucking," thereby also diminishing the awful heft of what came out of Dedmon's mouth on that night, it's good that he was willing to at least not cop out and "protect" the audience from a little bit of much-needed shock when it came to the epithet that was used. It should go without saying that Drew was reporting a story and had every right to deliver that story without resorting to childish -- yet inexplicably widely tolerated and even expected -- euphemisms.

Years ago, in response to the reporting on Michael Richards's now infamous rant, I said this about our PC-beholden culture's unwillingness to utter the word "nigger" in any context:

"Despite whatever heft, whatever power to destroy or dehumanize, that we've unwisely granted a single word -- any word -- in the end it is still just a word, and nothing more.

Except that in the most advanced and preeminent culture to ever exist upon this Earth, in the early days of the 21st century, it isn't just a word. On the contrary, the word 'nigger' holds an unparalleled level of ascendancy in our society. There's no better testament to the truth of this statement than the fact that otherwise educated, intelligent people -- the type who normally would rather step on a live land mine than be taken for an idiot -- will gladly allow themselves to be reduced to spouting the vernacular of a four-year-old to avoid speaking it.

No matter the alternative's power to offend and instigate, is there anything -- anything -- more painfully ridiculous than a grown man or woman saying, 'The N-word?' It's an absurd verbal tip-toe that not only proves that there is apparently no safe context in which the actual word can be uttered, but also that there exists an unspoken implication that those whom one would expect to be angered by the use of such a word are so stupid that they can't discern between the desire to dehumanize and subjugate and the need to openly discuss, and therefore should be protected from hearing the word altogether -- for the good of everyone. This latter possibility -- an indictment of an entire culture, whether out of condescension or outright fear -- is infinitely more offensive than the utterance of any one word."

So as much as this shouldn't be a big deal -- that a person reporting a news story on a guy who uttered a vicious racial slur actually says that slur and doesn't sugar-coat reality -- it is actually a very big deal.

By the way, this follows a debate over the Zimmerman 911 tape on Anderson Cooper 360 last night in which CNN actually did allow the word "fucking" -- said by Zimmerman -- to be aired uncut with the knowledge that bleeping it would prevent viewers from making up their own minds about what he said immediately after that word.

That's two for CNN.

Quote of the Day

"After ten years, we’ve parted ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well."

-- MSNBC's official announcement that it's firing America's most prominent avuncular neo-Nazi

I was gonna go with Buchanan's pissy response to MS's decision, which of course blames everybody in the world you'd expect and casts him as the victim of a liberal witch-hunt, but, well, fuck him -- we've heard from him enough over the past several decades.

You can go ahead and start the clock now counting down how long until Fox News announces the hiring of its latest resentful, aging white guy contributor. It would only make sense to hire a marquee racist grandfather since it's the network everyone's racist grandfather watches.

Quote of the Day

"Folks, the Republican Party has been in a mad rush to its extreme white wing, and Rick Santorum has been there waiting the whole time."

-- Al Sharpton on MSNBC

A lot of hay is already being made of this comment, with people asking whether he actually meant to say "white" or if it was simply a gaffe. And by people I mean the three households nationwide who watch Al Sharpton's show and the internet media who make money and score page views by blowing up any dumb thing anyone says on television into an earth-shattering controversy.

Did Sharpton really mean to say "white wing?" Well, on the one hand he's conditioned himself to see blatant racism everywhere he looks, so it wouldn't be a surprise if he naturally ran his views on Santorum through that prism -- nor would it be a shock if the racism center of his brain simply misfired, Tourettes-like, because it had been a while since he'd said anything racially incendiary or just plain blamed whitey for something. On the other hand, I don't get the idea that Sharpton's mind is stratified enough to be capable of dynamic repression, so I'm not sure a Freudian Slip is even possible. Chances are he just fucked up the word "right" because he's a buffoon who can't go two minutes without tripping over his own tongue.

Winning the Race

Jon Stewart and the Best F#%!ing Roundtable dissect Ann Coulter's comment that conservative blacks are better than liberal blacks -- and take the debate to its logical conclusion.

For the record, when Coulter uses the term "our blacks," she means it literally -- as in the ones she and Sean Hannity actually bought at an auction and now own.

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Assistant To the Quote of the Day

"It's just a name... Like those are vertical blinds. It's just what it was called."

-- Judge David Davis of Haskell County, Texas explaining why giving a hunting camp the name "Niggerhead" isn't a big deal

I swear, there's nothing that's simultaneously more hilarious and depressing than watching an ignorant redneck justify and defend his blatant racism (typically followed, by the way, by an expression of indignation that you'd dare call him a racist and an accusation that you're the racist for picking on white people) but this reaches a whole new level of stupid.

I'll help bankroll the first guy to make a t-shirt that reads: "Nigger Is the New Vertical Blinds."