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a kennedy

(29,658 posts)
Fri Aug 22, 2014, 08:20 AM Aug 2014

How Fox News silenced Obama on race

This article originally appeared on Media Matters.

The lament has spread all across the media spectrum this week, as the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri unfolds and people search for answers to the police killing of unarmed teen Michael Brown.

“Obama Should Go To Ferguson, Pronto,” urged a Businessweek headline, beseeching the president to fill a leadership vacuum on the ground in Missouri. “Obama, can’t you see black anger in Ferguson?” asked Marc Lamont Hill in a CNN essay. Writing at Daily Beast, Stuart Stevens lamented that Obama had “lost faith in his voice in Ferguson”; that he was “increasingly uncomfortable with the role of healer-in-chief,” while theWashington Post’s Joel Achenbach urged Obama to give another “national address” on race because that’s what the crisis demands.

Maureen Dowd’s New York Times column today’s mocks Obama as a “the most ordinary of men” with a “bored-bird-in-a-gilded-cage attitude” who is unwilling to engage with the issue of racial strife.

Most of the of the do-something commentary has adopted the same premise: Obama could help the Ferguson crisis by giving a speech about race or addressing the situation more forcefully, but he won’t. He won’t use his powers. (See: The Green Lantern theory that Obama could convince a recalcitrant GOP Congress to pass legislation if he only tried.)

That premise though, and most of the commentary, completely ignores the corrosive role of the right-wing media in America, how it has spent years trying to silence and intimidate Obama on the topic of race, and how it’s used some of the most offensive, guttural rhetoric and personal attacks to do so.

http://www.salon.com/2014/08/21/how_fox_news_silenced_obama_on_race_partner/

I do not understand how limballs can still be on the air.....he's just horrible with his attacks on POTUS

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How Fox News silenced Obama on race (Original Post) a kennedy Aug 2014 OP
why do we continue to excuse inaction based upon what these shitbags think? frylock Aug 2014 #1

frylock

(34,825 posts)
1. why do we continue to excuse inaction based upon what these shitbags think?
Fri Aug 22, 2014, 12:06 PM
Aug 2014

not that I'm in any way accusing Obama of inaction in this event. I believe his words on this matter have been fine, but c'mon! these fools are going to find an excuse to criticize the admin whether it's something they've done, or not done. just please stop strategizing around what these idiots think!

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