Race Issues

Bob Shrum has made an addition to the growing list of things you can't say about Obama, because it's racist: don't you dare suggest Obama's never done anything hard.Dem Shrum issued his diktat while debating Ed Rogers, a veteran of the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses, on today's Hardball. Shrum seized on and distorted Rogers' statement, manifestly made in the political sense, that Obama had "…

B.C. and A.D?  Get with it, old man.  History is henceforth divided into the eras of B.B. and A.B.—Before and After Barack. And George W. might have been "misunderestimated" as he engaged in "strategery."  But that's so, like, yesterday.  Barack Obama is "pre-deortained."  By whom?  Spike Lee stopped short of saying God's hand is at work.  But he was clearly speaking in quasi-religious terms in…

There's a new potential excuse out there for Obama backers fearing a racial tinge to the election results next Tuesday. As NewsBuster's Tim Graham noted, Newsweek has been proactive enough to suggest that only racism can launch McCain into the White House at this point. The Hartford Courant offers a different rationale, however (As if there is anything rational about calling someone who doesn't…

At National Review Online today, Bill Whittle does a tremendous job dissecting the content of Barack Obama's 2001 interview at Chicago public radio station WBEZ. But he also has some insight into the source of the audio and some choice words for a media elite that has spent nearly two years failing to do even the most basic digging into the Democratic candidate's background and associations. Here…

Wendi C. Thomas, a black journalist that has written for such media outlets as the Charlotte Observer, the Indianapolis Star and the Nashville Tennessean, was recently asked by what she called a "white man in Memphis" if blacks would riot if Barack Obama should lose the upcoming general election. The question made her angry, and I can't blame her for that anger. But, after a brief flash of sanity…

In an October 22 article, Los Angeles Times staffer Jessica Garrison found "Black clergy both for and against gay marriage speak[ing] out" on the matter of California Proposition 8. The ballot initiative would enshrine in the Golden State's constitution the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman.By the close of her article, Garrison found space not only to suggest that black…

Surprisingly, the October 21 "View" mentioned Congressman John Murtha’s "my constituents are racist" comments. Though Joy Behar called it a "stupid thing to say," they were much gentler on Murtha than on Michele Bachmann, who stated that Obama has associated with anti-American individuals.Joy Behar labeled Bachmann a "red baiter" and alluded to the McCarthy era. Whoopi Goldberg asked "it okay for…

CNN contributor Roland Martin used an unoriginal line to attack Rush Limbaugh on Monday’s Election Center program. Host Campbell Brown wanted Martin, a Barack Obama supporter, to comment on something the talk radio host had said about Colin Powell’s endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate: "Rush Limbaugh said today, this is about race. That's all it's about." Martin’s response: "I…

In her October 21 article, "White supremacists target middle America," USA Today's Marisol Bello took a look at how hate groups are trying to go more "mainstream" by ditching Nazi armbands, brown shirts and white sheets and going for a more "middle class" look. While there is merit in covering such a story, Bello and/or her editors unfortunately chose to color the piece in a way that reflected…

With Sen. Barack Obama's present lead in the polls, there's been hand-wringing in the media that he could possibly lose the race due to the so-called Bradley Effect, wherein racist white voters lie to pollsters on the telephone about their voting preferences in order to, well, not sound racist.But as a former Bradley campaign staffer writes in an October 19 op-ed for the New York Times, it was…

The Associated Press has once again called Governor Sarah Palin a racist. This time Rachel D’Oro for the AP bases her claim on the fact that Palin appointed minorities to her Alaska administration -- but not enough of them to suit the AP -- and because at an Alaska rally when she was running for governor one attendee once spoke to a black cameraman in an unkind manner. Yep, that's a mountain of…

Taxpayer-subsidized journalist Ray Suarez (pictured at right) thinks concerns over Barack Obama's liberalism are transparent proxies for something more sinister: racism. What's more, the PBS "NewsHour" reporter suggested that McCain running mate Gov. Sarah Palin is the campaign's point woman charged with "pil[ing] on the doubt" about Obama's fitness for office. So reported Grand Rapids Press…

At the top of CNN.com’s most popular stories at midday Wednesday was a commentary by CNN contributor Roland Martin, a relentless unpaid Obama spin controller and host of a series of weekend specials. Martin's commentary argued that the Bill Ayers issue is a "smokescreen" and that if Barack Obama is tarred by working with Ayers, McCain is just as tarred by working with....Strom Thurmond, Jesse…

In a rapid fire display of flip-flopping that would make even the staunchest of liberals proud, Newsweek's Howard Fineman manages to change his opinion on the justification of an Obama-Lincoln connection three times in just under 900 words. The random logic is hard to see through all the gooeyness behind the concept of such a ridiculous comparison in the first place, but once you wipe the screen…