Post by goddessoflight on Jul 8, 2007 13:38:02 GMT -5
According to The Journal of Negro History:
"The pamphlet claimed that the goal of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party was the 'interbreeding' of 'White'and African-Americans in the United States. Many people thought the pamphlet, Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, was written by abolitionists who supported the idea. In February 17, 1864, a Democratic congressman denounced the pamphlet in a speech delivered to the House of Representatives. He claimed it represented the social philosophy of the Republican Party. The actual authors of the pamphlet were an editor and reporter from the New York World, a pro-Democratic Party newspaper. They wrote it to use stir up racist attitudes among White voters as part of the newspaper's opposition to Abraham Lincoln's reelection campaign."
Contrast McGuirk's reactionary bile with the views of Gerry Adams, leader of the political arm of Sinn Fein, who told a U. C. Berkeley audience about the alliance between the Irish and blacks, who worked on southern plantations, being rent by slave masters, who turned them against each other. When Gerry Adams visited the United States he stopped off to see the late Rosa Parks to thank her for inspiring the Irish movement. McGuirk is not the only one who is not in touch with his heritage. Imus admirer, Chris Matthews, another Irish-American who gets to comment on race more than African-Americans, confessed that he admires Rudy Giuliani because he brought " a little fascism" to New York. Of course it was black and Hispanic men who were the primary victims of this "little fascism."
Maybe Matthews has forgotten that it was the Irish who about a hundred years ago were targets of fascism, attacked by mobs for practicing their faith and rounded up and placed in "paddy" wagons. Yet, Matthews gets to comment and make judgments about blacks when he is apparently ignorant of Irish history.
Somebody ought to remind McGuirk and Matthews that the 19th century solution to the race problem was to have an Irishman kill a black man and get hanged for it. Another joke at the time was that an Irish-American is a Negro turned inside out.
But instead of criticizing McGuirk, the pro-Imus claque at MSNBC reserved their harshest treatment for Sharpton and Jackson. MSNBC reporter Lisa Daniels, who was assigned to interview students at Rutgers, followed this line by attempting to goad the students into attacking Sharpton and Jackson.
Tucker Carlson, whose show is a lite version of the Imus show (he attracts attention to his opinion product by picking fights with blacks under the cover of anti-political correctness), brought on a black sportswriter named Jason Whitlock to call Jackson and Sharpton "terrorists. " After this bizarre outburst, Tucker the Wiseass, in the old arrogant Colonial manner, nominated Whitlock to become a black leader. But Carlson was right about one thing. While the liberal Imus protectors stood by their man, the same crowd drove Senator George Allen, the Virginia Republican, from public life, even though his demeaning macaca crack was mild in comparison to Imus' daily portrayals of blacks.
Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, who pledged "solidarity" with Imus on one of his last shows, thought it clever to cite Neo-Confederate novelist Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire Vanities," in which a character named Rev. Bacon is crudely based upon Rev. Sharpton. Every time Oliphant popped up during the "National Dialogue on Race", which, given the segregated media, was dominated by talking heads, belonging to one race, he said, "You know, this whole thing reminds me of "The Bonfire Vanities." This is book in which, the author proposes, that as a result of Jewish leniency, blacks get away with hustling white guilt. At one point, Oliphant seemed to be sending out marching orders to the Imus legions, inviting a white backlash against Imus' firing.
Craig Crawford, of the Congressional Quarterly, another Imus regular, was given hours at a time to repeat his claim that he didn't know what was going on during the segments in which he was not a participant. Crawford said that Imus didn't make a racist comment while he was on the show. He didn't have a clue. This was the line closely followed by other Imus collaborators. Mary Matalin, another frequent guest, said that she didn't had no idea what was going on. Perhaps Matalin was spending all of her time keeping up with the career of Jesse Jackson, whom she attacks obsessively.
In a column appearing in the April 16 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, Eugene Robinson wrote:
"While we're in the business of blunt truth, do the big-time media luminaries who so often graced Imus' show have some explaining to do? You bet, and so do the parent news organizations, including my own, which allowed their journalists to go on a broadcast that routinely crossed the aforementioned line. All these trained observers couldn't have failed to notice Imus' well-practiced modus operandi. 'He never said anything bad while I was on' doesn't cut it as a defense."
When Jesse Jackson, at one point, during MSNBC's "National Dialogue on Race," which included no Hispanics and no gays or lesbians, groups that had been routinely abused by the Imus show, challenged MSNBC to hire more black anchors and talk show hosts, Imus' buddy, Mike Barnicle said that it was not necessary--this from a man who referred a former Secretary of Defense's black wife as "a Mandingo." The Village Voice reported: "Talking about the marriage of former secretary of defense William Cohen (who is white) and his wife, Janet Langhart (who is black), Barnicle remarked, 'Yeah. I know them both. Bill Cohen. Janet Langhart. Kind of like Mandingo.'" Yet, incredibly, at one point, CBS considered appointing Barnicle (who was fired from the Boston Globe for plagiarizing columns) as Imus' successor on the radio!
For his part, Jesse Jackson has been a longtime NBC watcher. Jackson recalls the time when NBC Nightly News executive producer Jeff Gralnick referred to Somali military leader Mohammad Farah Aideed as an "educated jungle bunny," saying, "The rest of the jungle bunnies are not like this at all. They're illiterates." (Washington Post, 10/16/93). Jackson described Gralnick' racist outburst as part of a "mind set" at NBC.
When Jesse Jackson asked Keith Olbermann, one of the few white talking heads who had urged the firing of Imus, the same question about the networks hiring more black anchors, Olberman (another former sports reporter) said that he permits Alison Stewart, a black woman, to take his place when he's on vacation. Yet, Ms. Stewart's approach was no different from those of Don Imus' groupies. This poor child has no power at MSNBC. Another Colored Mind Double, she moderated a discussion between Paul Waldman from Media Matters, who supported the firing of Imus, and Imus' pal Craig Crawford. She reserved her toughest questions for Waldman and permitted Imus groupie Craig Crawford to interrogate Waldman.
By five o'clock on March 12, when David Gregory again substituted for Chris Matthews on Hardball, he'd learned that Imus had been fired from CBS. This gave Gregory an excuse to prolong his seventy-two hour marathon effort to garner sympathy for his leader. But by that time, like the man who was sent on a mission to sell Dracula some insurance, the teeth marks on Gregory's neck were apparent. The panel in this part of the "National Dialogue on Race" included only one black man, the mild mannered and soft spoken Eugene Robinson from The Washington Post, and what seemed like a Imus Alumni Reunion: Pat Buchanan, Gregory, Tom Oliphant and Senator Chris Dodd, all Imus regulars. On the 13th Gregory continued to blame his buddy's ordeal on Sharpton, Jackson, and Rap music--the line that by that time had begun to gain traction as the Imus collaborators began to fill hours of talk show time by blaming the victims of Imus' slurs for his ouster.
But as a result of the press conference held by the members of the Rutgers team, Imus was doomed like the pathetic cowboy in the film "Down in the Valley" to wandering around on horseback amidst condominiums and urban sprawl, an anachronism in an age that has left him behind. Imus vowed to his followers that he'd be back. And he probably will. Imus will survive as a result of the spite that many whites hold for African-Americans.
The same kind of spite led some of the white citizens of Memphis to respond to the Civil Rights Movement by erecting a statue of General Nathan Forest, whose massacre of black men women and children at Fort Pillow, even after they'd surrendered, was called "the atrocity" of the Civil War.
The white men and women in charge of "The National Dialogue," so conditioned by the television news' degrading images of black kids and grungy products like HBO's "The Wire," seemed shocked that there existed black students like the young women on the Rutgers team who were committed to scholastic excellence. African-Americans aren't shocked. All of my nieces and nephews either have degrees or are enrolled in college. Both my daughters have a college background.
In the end, Imus is a throwback, whose fans still cling to the lost cause of white supremacy. Like the old timers who show off their medals at reunions of Stalin's veterans; like those residents of Madrid who will tell you that Franco kept the streets clean; or these sad people who still write books that end with a Confederate victory. Imus' fans are people who get off by listening to bullies like Imus ridicule and humiliate people who don't have the media power to fight back.
Don Imus' defenders point to his charitable works. This reminds me of the defense that Stonewall Jackson's admirers make. They point to the Confederate general's donations to a black Sunday School as proof that the insurgent, who fought to defend the institution of slavery, loved black folks. The National Basketball Association and its players have contributed hundreds of millions more to charity, but instead of receiving praise in the media, the NBA is a constant source of the media's scorn. Knuckle draggers. Chest thumping pimps. Rapists.They don't like their style of dress. They diss their way of speaking.They envy their wealth. When Allen Iverson was late for a game, McGuirk quipped." His Bentley broke down?" McGuirk called Iverson's mother, " a crack ho."
Morever, the Wall Street Journal raised troubling questions about the charity spending practices of the Imus ranch. Imus' response to the article was to call the writer a "punk." The Journal stood by their story: "The managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Steiger, said that the article was accurate and fair and that Mr. Frank [the reporter] had had many detailed discussions with Mr. Imus' representatives during the two months he worked on the article. In addition, Mr. Steiger said, Mr. Frank spoke twice with Mr. Imus at length the day before the article was published."
It was Jeff Greenfield who, finally abandoning Imus (finally!), reminded the shock jock that the kind of black voice-overs that he and his colleagues engaged in harkened back to the minstrel shows, when Irish immigrants entertained audiences by getting up in blackface. McGuirk does his black face with his tongue.
Another ship-jumper was Harold Ford, Jr., the former congressman from Tennessee. For his disloyalty, Imus denounced him a coward.
Michael Eric Dyson exposed the problem that occurs when the media refuse to diversify. In terms of integration, the media are fifty years behind the South and resemble a Mississippi bus station of the 1940s with the "White Only" sign up. Both David Gregory and Ed Shultz, another putative "progressive," lashed out at Sharpton and Jackson for not holding Hip Hoppers to the same standards as they held Imus. In the sharpest exchange of what amounted to an Imus farewell victory lap, Dyson exposed their ignorance.
"You said earlier, Mr. Gregory that you didn't--that you weren't aware that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson--and you're pretty much on the news beat-- have been protesting this. That's part of the problem- a smart person like you, who is well informed, doesn't know that there has been a huge movement in African-American culture against this kind of vitriol that has been expressed--this almost hatred of women -yet it is not covered because it's not a black person killing somebody or cutting somebody." Good point.
"The pamphlet claimed that the goal of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party was the 'interbreeding' of 'White'and African-Americans in the United States. Many people thought the pamphlet, Miscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the Races, Applied to the American White Man and Negro, was written by abolitionists who supported the idea. In February 17, 1864, a Democratic congressman denounced the pamphlet in a speech delivered to the House of Representatives. He claimed it represented the social philosophy of the Republican Party. The actual authors of the pamphlet were an editor and reporter from the New York World, a pro-Democratic Party newspaper. They wrote it to use stir up racist attitudes among White voters as part of the newspaper's opposition to Abraham Lincoln's reelection campaign."
Contrast McGuirk's reactionary bile with the views of Gerry Adams, leader of the political arm of Sinn Fein, who told a U. C. Berkeley audience about the alliance between the Irish and blacks, who worked on southern plantations, being rent by slave masters, who turned them against each other. When Gerry Adams visited the United States he stopped off to see the late Rosa Parks to thank her for inspiring the Irish movement. McGuirk is not the only one who is not in touch with his heritage. Imus admirer, Chris Matthews, another Irish-American who gets to comment on race more than African-Americans, confessed that he admires Rudy Giuliani because he brought " a little fascism" to New York. Of course it was black and Hispanic men who were the primary victims of this "little fascism."
Maybe Matthews has forgotten that it was the Irish who about a hundred years ago were targets of fascism, attacked by mobs for practicing their faith and rounded up and placed in "paddy" wagons. Yet, Matthews gets to comment and make judgments about blacks when he is apparently ignorant of Irish history.
Somebody ought to remind McGuirk and Matthews that the 19th century solution to the race problem was to have an Irishman kill a black man and get hanged for it. Another joke at the time was that an Irish-American is a Negro turned inside out.
But instead of criticizing McGuirk, the pro-Imus claque at MSNBC reserved their harshest treatment for Sharpton and Jackson. MSNBC reporter Lisa Daniels, who was assigned to interview students at Rutgers, followed this line by attempting to goad the students into attacking Sharpton and Jackson.
Tucker Carlson, whose show is a lite version of the Imus show (he attracts attention to his opinion product by picking fights with blacks under the cover of anti-political correctness), brought on a black sportswriter named Jason Whitlock to call Jackson and Sharpton "terrorists. " After this bizarre outburst, Tucker the Wiseass, in the old arrogant Colonial manner, nominated Whitlock to become a black leader. But Carlson was right about one thing. While the liberal Imus protectors stood by their man, the same crowd drove Senator George Allen, the Virginia Republican, from public life, even though his demeaning macaca crack was mild in comparison to Imus' daily portrayals of blacks.
Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant, who pledged "solidarity" with Imus on one of his last shows, thought it clever to cite Neo-Confederate novelist Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire Vanities," in which a character named Rev. Bacon is crudely based upon Rev. Sharpton. Every time Oliphant popped up during the "National Dialogue on Race", which, given the segregated media, was dominated by talking heads, belonging to one race, he said, "You know, this whole thing reminds me of "The Bonfire Vanities." This is book in which, the author proposes, that as a result of Jewish leniency, blacks get away with hustling white guilt. At one point, Oliphant seemed to be sending out marching orders to the Imus legions, inviting a white backlash against Imus' firing.
Craig Crawford, of the Congressional Quarterly, another Imus regular, was given hours at a time to repeat his claim that he didn't know what was going on during the segments in which he was not a participant. Crawford said that Imus didn't make a racist comment while he was on the show. He didn't have a clue. This was the line closely followed by other Imus collaborators. Mary Matalin, another frequent guest, said that she didn't had no idea what was going on. Perhaps Matalin was spending all of her time keeping up with the career of Jesse Jackson, whom she attacks obsessively.
In a column appearing in the April 16 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, Eugene Robinson wrote:
"While we're in the business of blunt truth, do the big-time media luminaries who so often graced Imus' show have some explaining to do? You bet, and so do the parent news organizations, including my own, which allowed their journalists to go on a broadcast that routinely crossed the aforementioned line. All these trained observers couldn't have failed to notice Imus' well-practiced modus operandi. 'He never said anything bad while I was on' doesn't cut it as a defense."
When Jesse Jackson, at one point, during MSNBC's "National Dialogue on Race," which included no Hispanics and no gays or lesbians, groups that had been routinely abused by the Imus show, challenged MSNBC to hire more black anchors and talk show hosts, Imus' buddy, Mike Barnicle said that it was not necessary--this from a man who referred a former Secretary of Defense's black wife as "a Mandingo." The Village Voice reported: "Talking about the marriage of former secretary of defense William Cohen (who is white) and his wife, Janet Langhart (who is black), Barnicle remarked, 'Yeah. I know them both. Bill Cohen. Janet Langhart. Kind of like Mandingo.'" Yet, incredibly, at one point, CBS considered appointing Barnicle (who was fired from the Boston Globe for plagiarizing columns) as Imus' successor on the radio!
For his part, Jesse Jackson has been a longtime NBC watcher. Jackson recalls the time when NBC Nightly News executive producer Jeff Gralnick referred to Somali military leader Mohammad Farah Aideed as an "educated jungle bunny," saying, "The rest of the jungle bunnies are not like this at all. They're illiterates." (Washington Post, 10/16/93). Jackson described Gralnick' racist outburst as part of a "mind set" at NBC.
When Jesse Jackson asked Keith Olbermann, one of the few white talking heads who had urged the firing of Imus, the same question about the networks hiring more black anchors, Olberman (another former sports reporter) said that he permits Alison Stewart, a black woman, to take his place when he's on vacation. Yet, Ms. Stewart's approach was no different from those of Don Imus' groupies. This poor child has no power at MSNBC. Another Colored Mind Double, she moderated a discussion between Paul Waldman from Media Matters, who supported the firing of Imus, and Imus' pal Craig Crawford. She reserved her toughest questions for Waldman and permitted Imus groupie Craig Crawford to interrogate Waldman.
By five o'clock on March 12, when David Gregory again substituted for Chris Matthews on Hardball, he'd learned that Imus had been fired from CBS. This gave Gregory an excuse to prolong his seventy-two hour marathon effort to garner sympathy for his leader. But by that time, like the man who was sent on a mission to sell Dracula some insurance, the teeth marks on Gregory's neck were apparent. The panel in this part of the "National Dialogue on Race" included only one black man, the mild mannered and soft spoken Eugene Robinson from The Washington Post, and what seemed like a Imus Alumni Reunion: Pat Buchanan, Gregory, Tom Oliphant and Senator Chris Dodd, all Imus regulars. On the 13th Gregory continued to blame his buddy's ordeal on Sharpton, Jackson, and Rap music--the line that by that time had begun to gain traction as the Imus collaborators began to fill hours of talk show time by blaming the victims of Imus' slurs for his ouster.
But as a result of the press conference held by the members of the Rutgers team, Imus was doomed like the pathetic cowboy in the film "Down in the Valley" to wandering around on horseback amidst condominiums and urban sprawl, an anachronism in an age that has left him behind. Imus vowed to his followers that he'd be back. And he probably will. Imus will survive as a result of the spite that many whites hold for African-Americans.
The same kind of spite led some of the white citizens of Memphis to respond to the Civil Rights Movement by erecting a statue of General Nathan Forest, whose massacre of black men women and children at Fort Pillow, even after they'd surrendered, was called "the atrocity" of the Civil War.
The white men and women in charge of "The National Dialogue," so conditioned by the television news' degrading images of black kids and grungy products like HBO's "The Wire," seemed shocked that there existed black students like the young women on the Rutgers team who were committed to scholastic excellence. African-Americans aren't shocked. All of my nieces and nephews either have degrees or are enrolled in college. Both my daughters have a college background.
In the end, Imus is a throwback, whose fans still cling to the lost cause of white supremacy. Like the old timers who show off their medals at reunions of Stalin's veterans; like those residents of Madrid who will tell you that Franco kept the streets clean; or these sad people who still write books that end with a Confederate victory. Imus' fans are people who get off by listening to bullies like Imus ridicule and humiliate people who don't have the media power to fight back.
Don Imus' defenders point to his charitable works. This reminds me of the defense that Stonewall Jackson's admirers make. They point to the Confederate general's donations to a black Sunday School as proof that the insurgent, who fought to defend the institution of slavery, loved black folks. The National Basketball Association and its players have contributed hundreds of millions more to charity, but instead of receiving praise in the media, the NBA is a constant source of the media's scorn. Knuckle draggers. Chest thumping pimps. Rapists.They don't like their style of dress. They diss their way of speaking.They envy their wealth. When Allen Iverson was late for a game, McGuirk quipped." His Bentley broke down?" McGuirk called Iverson's mother, " a crack ho."
Morever, the Wall Street Journal raised troubling questions about the charity spending practices of the Imus ranch. Imus' response to the article was to call the writer a "punk." The Journal stood by their story: "The managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Steiger, said that the article was accurate and fair and that Mr. Frank [the reporter] had had many detailed discussions with Mr. Imus' representatives during the two months he worked on the article. In addition, Mr. Steiger said, Mr. Frank spoke twice with Mr. Imus at length the day before the article was published."
It was Jeff Greenfield who, finally abandoning Imus (finally!), reminded the shock jock that the kind of black voice-overs that he and his colleagues engaged in harkened back to the minstrel shows, when Irish immigrants entertained audiences by getting up in blackface. McGuirk does his black face with his tongue.
Another ship-jumper was Harold Ford, Jr., the former congressman from Tennessee. For his disloyalty, Imus denounced him a coward.
Michael Eric Dyson exposed the problem that occurs when the media refuse to diversify. In terms of integration, the media are fifty years behind the South and resemble a Mississippi bus station of the 1940s with the "White Only" sign up. Both David Gregory and Ed Shultz, another putative "progressive," lashed out at Sharpton and Jackson for not holding Hip Hoppers to the same standards as they held Imus. In the sharpest exchange of what amounted to an Imus farewell victory lap, Dyson exposed their ignorance.
"You said earlier, Mr. Gregory that you didn't--that you weren't aware that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson--and you're pretty much on the news beat-- have been protesting this. That's part of the problem- a smart person like you, who is well informed, doesn't know that there has been a huge movement in African-American culture against this kind of vitriol that has been expressed--this almost hatred of women -yet it is not covered because it's not a black person killing somebody or cutting somebody." Good point.