Media glare

[babylonsister]

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/melissa_mcewan/2008/01/media_glare.html

Media glare

US elections 2008: Cable television pundits are shocked - shocked - that white Americans in the midwest would vote for a black man

Melissa McEwan

January 4, 2008 8:00 PM | Printable version


By now you know the big news out of Iowa is that the Democrats went for the black Muslim crackhead. What were they thinking?!

Probably that he is, in fact, neither a Muslim nor a crackhead, but that's a whole other post. This post happens to be about how "black" beats "vagina"!

Proving once again that they are a complete disgrace, the American cable news media embarrassed themselves beyond redemption last night by taking to new levels their deranged fascination with Vagina-Americans' and M-Fer Americans' respective alignment with "their" candidates. Hopefully no one will tell them about the existence of black women, or their heads might explode.

Ironically, I was tuned into CNN for most of the night, where 2000 Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile was among the panel of expert pundits. I can only speculate that the reflective shine from Anderson Cooper's famous silver locks refracted the studio light in such a manner as to render Brazile unrecognisable as a black woman to the white men surrounding her.

The professional punditry seemed positively gob-smacked that white people "voted" for a black man, which certainly reveals their own cynicism about the American electorate, quite possibly reveals their own internalised racism and underlines how desperately ignorant they are of basic facts that, if retained (or, perhaps, provided to them via teleprompter), would make them palatable to viewers with a minimally functional knowledge of the candidates.

Barack Obama is, after all, a senator from Illinois - a state that does not consist solely of Chicago, a city that itself does not consist solely of black people. (I can personally attest to this. I lived in Chicago for a decade, and I was not, in fact, the only white person. Not only that: I had Asian and Hispanic neighbours. But don't tell Wolf Blitzer, as per protection of his tiny wee head from aforementioned explosions.) Lots and lots of white people in a rural, midwestern state already voted for Obama to make him a senator.

The media's continual surprise that people don't mindlessly vote for whomever looks the most like them, in spite of their policies, is pathetic. It shouldn't be a shock that I don't axiomatically support Hillary Clinton (though I certainly will if she's the eventual nominee) just because we're both women. I vote with my brain, not my vagina. Nor my skin colour.

The ultimate stupidity of the night, however, as always goes to MSNBC's virulent and sexist Hillary hater Chris Matthews, who had early determined that Hillary should be considered "resoundingly rejected" if she only secured a third of the caucus-goers' support, and repeated this calculation ad infinitum throughout the night.

That is until Rachel Maddow finally and heroically pointed out to him: "Chris, if this winds up a three-way tie, which is what it looks like, two-thirds of the Democratic party voted against everyone."

Oof.

And I thought it was supposed to be the Vagina-Americans who are bad at math.

[PATRICK]

1. Insistent spinners

lousy handicappers. They prefer competent propagandists by destroying competent analysis..

[bemildred]

2. Watching TV will turn you brain to mush.

Watching political pundits will cook the mush so your brain becomes like a dish of lukewarm oatmeal.