(This was posted Saturday)
In AP covers up for Jesse Jackson I noted some significant omissions and misstatements in an AP story which referenced Jesse Jackson’s “caught on tape” remarks that Sen. Barack Obama talked down to black people, something Jackson said made him so mad he wanted to rip Obama’s testicles off.
There’s much more covering up and/or spinning in that AP story, just as there was a great deal of both by most MSM at the time Fox news broke the story of Jackson/testicles remarks.
Example: Civil rights leader Jackson didn’t say Obama talked down to “black people;” he used the plural form of the n-word. There’s more on that with links at this LA Times blog.
Some MSM stories at the time of Jackson’s remarks noted what had precipitated Jackson’s anger at Obama was the Senator’s Fathers Day sermon in which he talked about the failure of many black men to adequately meet their responsibilities as fathers. Among other things, Obama said:
But if we are honest with ourselves, we'll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing - missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. . . .But what percent of the stories reporting Jackson’s admission Obama’s sermon made him so angry mentioned why it very likely did?
Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn't have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities.
But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child - it's the courage to raise one.
Jackson fathered an out-of-wedlock child in 1998. The mother was a member of Jackson’s Operation Push.
At the time of the child’s birth and for almost two years thereafter, Jackson and his aides covered-up what he did. A la John Edwards, another man was said to be the child’s father.
Again a la John Edwards, the National Enquirer got confirmation of the Reverend’s “love child” and was about to break the story.
It was then that Jackson and his aides decided unEdwards-like to get out front on the story with a damage control press release acknowledging Jackson's paternity and dealing with some of the questions it raised.
You can read more in this CNN story and this BBC story. The CNN story reads like Jackson wrote it. You catch that right away from CNN’s headlines:
Jesse Jackson admits to fathering child out of wedlockObama delivered his Fathers Day sermon before a large, mostly black congregation at a prominent church on Chicago’s South Side.
Family is offered prayers, seeks privacy
That’s right in the area where Jesse Jackson used to be the best known and most powerful black political leader.
While most Americans have never known or have forgotten Jackson fathered a child out of wedlock, most blacks that I know are well aware of it.
It’s easy to understand why Jackson would have been hypersensitive to what Obama was saying about absentee fathers.
Jackson's "love child," a girl now about10, at last report lives in California.
The Rev's work takes him to so many places he doesn’t have much time to spend with her, especially as he’s busy spending what family time he has with his wife and his children by her.
I’m planning a major post on MSM coverage/non-coverage of Jackson’s remarks.
One approach I’m thinking to take is to compare how MSM treated Jackson and his remarks with how they treated Gov. Sarah Palin on any number of issues.
Another approach is to compare press treatment of Jackson’s and Edwards’ extra marital affairs.
Still another approach I’ll post on tomorrow is to use MSM cover-up and minimizing for Jackson to raise questions about how such covering up and minimizing has enabled Jackson to pursue a career in which he’s damaged the fabric of America’s civil life.
I'd appreciate any suggestions you have about how best to post on MSM coverage/noncoverage of Jackson's angry, threatening remarks directed at Sen. Obama.
3 comments:
What I'd find interesting is to see the unexpurgated version of the good Rev.'s statements, followed by, in brackets, each time the MSM dished up a sanitized version, the more polite but false version.
I recall the reporting of Dick Cheney's exhortation that Harry Reid perform an anatomically impossible act upon himself. In that case, asterisks were used so that gentle persons would not be offended by seeing the word in print, yet, MSM hoped we would conclude that Cheney was a foul-mouthed lout.
I expect the differing treatments were because MSM hoped that VP Cheney would be shamed by the revealing of of his utterance of a four-letter word, which I'm sure he wasn't, and their desire not to let us know that Rev. Jackson was the foul-mouthed hypocrite we all know he is.
My two cents' worth:
The very basis of the race hustlers' strength is that they have succeeded in establishing white guilt about something for which no living white person is responsible. Leftwing politicians have joined the race hustlers in keeping the black population in a modern-day version of slavery. Any person, any publication, any author who dares to question Jackson, Sharpton, Wright, Maxine Waters, et. al. is immediately accused of being racist and is effectively silenced; thus it is foolhardy to try to debate on their terms. Even St. Barack found himself on the receiving end of Jackson's viciousness when he attempted to discuss one of the biggest problems of the black community--just as Bill Cosby found when he wanted to talk about civic responsibility.
Until reasonable people can discuss such things openly and honestly, the race hustlers will continue to win and the black community will never rise above itself. And Jesse Jackson will continue to threaten castration of any black man who thinks differently.
Tarheel Hawkeye
Unfortunately, Jackson's behavior is just another example of the inequality that exists regarding parenting issues - I would posit that this inequality exists beyond the US borders. The media felt jsutified in questioning Palin's mothering because her teenage daughter engaged in pre-marital sex. Yet look at the treatment accorded Al Gore's parenting in so far as his only son was (is?) a drug addict who has been in and out of trouble over the years. There were also problems with one of the Biden children as well - yet no commentary on that. It seems that men are given a pass in the area of child reading (or in Jackson's case the lack thereof) while a women politicain is held to a higher standard....but then that reflects the overall attitude that child rearing (and becomming pregnant) is the domain of the female and the male is of little merit - I will agree that the feminist creed has only made this more of the case than less.
Men like Jackson and Edwards who father children and then discard them as collateral damage yet ask for forgiveness and prayers/privacy for their families as they "heal" are hypocrites of the first order. If Obama does anything at all, I hope that he keeps both of these men away from any part of his administration and sets the example that men have a responsibility towards their wives and children. This responsibility first and formost is fidelity. With so many African-American households headed by females who have either been abandoned by their spouses (boyfriends) or who choose to engage in sexual relations with men who have little regard for the possible outcome of such encounters, Obama has the bully pulpit to speak out against such behaviors and to point out that poverty, lack of education, social misbehavior all are a part of the failure of men to take their responsibilities as fathers seriously. Society will not change as long as such beheaviors are allowed to be the norm rather than the exception.
I will grant that no mother or father (who is present) looks upon their newborn and wishes tha they will grow up in poverty, be a drug addict, and a burden to society. However, the lack of good examples and consistent parenting by two parents more often than not produces such a person. Parenting is hard work. It means not being your child's friend (though hopefully, when they reach adulthood there will be that relationship as well), it means being strong enough to tell your children no, set boundaries, remain strong when those boundaries are challenged, and to learn which battles are important to fight and which are not (from experience I have learned that the battles one chooses to fight change as one's children get older). It is difficult enough raising children when there are two adults in the household - when one is single, the children feel abandoned, or see the absent parent as the proverbial "grass is greener" option then the result is not what we as a society need or desire.
cks
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