I participate on a debate board where we go at it over the various issues of the day. Someone started a thread about the latest attack by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch on objectivity, good journalism, and the character of Barack and Michelle Obama.
Here was the premise and the question poised by the board member:
FOX News anchor has been forced to backtrack quite a bit in stating that Barack and Michelle Obama’s “fist bump” was a “terrorist fist jab.” How such a comment is even remotely appropriate or relevant to a given policy position is left unstated. In a lame apology, E. D. Hill stated that it wasn’t her desire to link the word “terrorism” with the Obamas. Though it’s interesting that she fails to describe why she threw the word in there in the first place. Her apology is insincere as it is devoid of fact. In another story about the Obama’s, FOX News ran a tagline that featured the sobriquet of “Obama’s baby mama.” The phrase is a loaded one and implies that they are not married, also playing up the worst stereotypes about the African-American community.
The question for debate: Is FOX News political coverage latently racist?
It’s the right question but the wrong adverb. Fox News (which is the last time I will spell it correctly) is blatantly racist. Latent gives them the wiggle room to say, “We goofed. Sorry ’bout that.” I’m not buying it.
There is a deliberate, ongoing and systematic by the Faux Noise Network to treat Barack and Michelle Obama by a different and definitely racially biased standard.
Maybe it’s just that some fist bumps are more sinister than others.
Fox News calls Michelle Obama “Obama’s baby mama”
An alert reader wrote in just a little while ago to let us know about something he’d spotted on Fox News Wednesday afternoon. During a segment discussing conservative attacks against Michelle Obama, the wife of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama, the network described the former as “Obama’s baby mama.”
I checked, and sure enough, as you can see below, our e-mailer was right. In fact, that description was displayed on-screen several times during the segment, which featured anchor Megyn Kelly and conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, an FNC contributor. link
Three things to point out
1. The chryon reads “Outraged Liberals: Stop picking on Obama’s Baby Mama!” That is not an accident. Someone in Faux’s production staff made a conscious decision to put that up.
And as typical for the shallow, hopelessly dishonest hacks that work at Faux, they were all apologies after the fact.
“A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron during the segment,” Fox’s Senior Vice President of Programming Bill Shine said in a statement to Politico.
In addition to being insulting, the phrase “baby mama” is also inaccurate. The Urban Dictionary defines “baby mama” as”the mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved.”
Although Shine doesn’t name anyone responsible, the show’s producer is Jessica Herzberg. A Fox staffer said that others internally were bothered by describing the potential first lady and very accomplished women—- as the senator’s “baby mama.”
Unfortunately for the network, this comes just days after Fox’s E.D. Hill addressed her use of the phrase “terrorist fist jab” on-air in reference to the famous Michelle-Barack fist bump (or pound) made just before his celebratory speech in St. Paul. link
2. Before the Republicans and conservatives who yap like ticked-off poodles at the slightest suggestion that Faux is something other than “fair and balanced” get up on their hind legs, ask yourself this one question? What would happen if CNN or MSNBC characterized Cindy McCain as John’s “baby mama?.”
It’s a rhetorical question. I already know the answer. Y’all would lose your damn minds.
Wain Bennett who blogs as The Field Negro summed it up nicely:
Much to the delight of their millions of listeners [and watchers] in the heartlands who love to see the “pretty” blonds, the hunky anchor with the Ole Miss accent, the flashy graphics, and the A-merry-can flag front and center for all eyes to see. The same FOX NEWS who were cheerleaders for the Iraqi war, and for a president who will go down in history as probably the worst this country has ever had. But now, we are finally outraged. Now after one of their clueless anchors called the Obama’s playful fist bump a “terrorist jab” and the possible first lady of these divided states, a woman happily married to her husband, the father of her two children…..I still can’t believe this shit— is all of a sudden a “baby mama.”
Do you think Cindy McCain, a woman who slept with a married man while his wife lay paralyzed could have ever been vilified and disrespected that way? Not in your lifetime or mine. It would never happen, because Cindy McCain belongs to that class in A-merry-ca that you don’t fuck with. That kind of disrespect and ignorance even by so called main stream media folks is reserved for the black wife, not the white one. And yet, Bill Shine, who is a senior VP of programming over at FOX says that a producer showed “poor judgment” in showing the graphic seen round the world. “Poor Judgment?” Poor judgment is what I use when I forget to take my umbrella when it’s raining outside. This was not “poor judgment” by some lowly producer, this was a decision from the top. link
3. Where are all the feminists and champions against sexism-who were yelling, screaming and just generally making nuisances of themselves when some moron told Hillary Clinton “iron my shirt?” Where is Gloria Steinem and Geraldine Ferraro when it’s a sista taking the heat?
Or is it only sexism when the woman being objectified is White?
