Mike Allen isn’t a racist – but he’s willing to appeal to racist sentiments to get what he wants – which is the privilege of the corporate media front men, who call themselves journalists, to define the terms of political debate in Qmerica and to identify who may properly participate in the debate.
Via Atrios and the Poorman we learn that Mike Allen has penned an article about Barak Obama, who announced that he’s running for presidenct today, for The Politico. The piece concentrates not on Obama’s programs and policies, which might interest the voters, but on the nature of the press coverage that Obama has received.
We know Mike Allen doesn’t like that coverage because he calls it hagiography (greek for “life of a saint”).
The charismatic illinois senator has enjoyed a lifetime of hagiography, starting with an 800-word story in the new york times the day after his election as the first black president of the harvard law review.
It’s not clear whether Mike Allen thinks that the election of the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review is unworthy of news coverage, but surely to characterize the coverage of Obama in his political career as hagiography is simply wrong. You know, as in didn’t check the facts wrong. Indeed, on February 12, 1996, the Chicago Sun Times ran an article about obama with the headline “candidate not what he seems, foes insist” which included the following graph:
Adolph reed jr., a progressive Northwestern University Professor of political science, condemns obama as a politician with "impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics." Robert T. Starks, another academic-activist who serves as chairman of the task force for black political empowerment, says obama is the tool of forces outside the black community.
Ouch. We obtained this evidence of the absence of hagiography in the media coverage of Obama by doing a lexis-nexis search on illinois news sources for the year 1995-1996 using the search term “Obama.” we teach latin. Mike Allen, a real live trained professional journalist either neglected to do this research or he chose to ignore the evidence because it didn’t comport with what he wanted to say – and what Mike Allen wants to say, by definition, is more important than what the facts are.
Allen is not concerned with legislation that Obama has offered or policies he has proposed. He concludes that obama’s policy record is “aenemic” even as he ignores obama’s legislation on U.S. policy in Iraq and notes without discussion proposals he has made about health care and energy policy. Iraq, health care and energy policy – what has Obama proposed? Are his proposals sensible? What do critics of his proposals say about them. Gentle reader Mike Allen doesn’t tell you this information – obtaining it would require him to, what’s the word, work.
Instead Mike Allen is going to write an article about how the media is going to cover Obama. The burning question:
Why has he sometimes said his first name is arabic, and other times swahili?
As Brad DeLong has pointed out, Arabic profoundly influenced the development of Swahili because there were a lot of Arabic traders in the part of Africa where the language Swahili developed for a very long time. Could you discover this information by using the google? Yes.
The google entry "arabic swahili" returns the web site "list of swahili words of arabic orgin" with the following text:
Swahili is a language that fuses african bantu with arabic. Arab sailors and traders have established links and ties with East Africa for centuries, their language strongly merged with the local language to produce a creole derivative.
And wow, when you google "arabic swahili barak" you come to a web site of a guy who's obsessed with language origin, who notes,
I said to myself I wasn’t going to quit studying the Hebrew words until I find one I could relate to. And there it jumped out at me: baruch. I suppose the Arabic word is barak, and I know the Swahili word is baraka, meaning blessing. It’s like six degrees of separation."
Now a few google's might suffice for the dirty f'ing hippies like us, but being a big time journalist and all, Mike Allen might have thought to call up somebody in an arabic or african languages department at a local university and ask them if it was true. Georgetown, is a university in Washington, D.C. You may have heard of it. It has such a department. For Mike Allen, it’s a local call.
But remember gentle reader, journalism as Mike Allen practices it, is not about facts. It is not about providing readers information about issues that affect their daily lives. It is not about testing the assertions and rhetoric of those who vie for political power. Journalism, as Mike Allen practices it, is the privilege of the corporate media front men, who call themselves journalists, to define the terms of political debate in America and to identify who may properly participate in the debate
And Matt Stoeller tells us what Mike Allen’s problem with obama is. Last week, writing on obama, Mike Allen gives us this little, personal, anecdote:
As Obama left the hotel reception, smiling and saying, "thank you again," I introduced myself and said, "Good evening, Senator, may I walk with you?" he replied, "You can walk with me. That doesn't mean you can ask questions." I chuckled, thinking he was kidding. "But you can certainly walk with me," he added. The senator then underscored, "I'm sorry. I'm not answering questions."
If Obama won’t talk to Mike Allen, when Mike Allen wants to talk, then Obama is contesting the privilege of Mike Allen to define the terms of political debate in America and to identify who may properly participate in the debate. And that is an unforgiveable sin.
Obama’s sin transcends the realm of fact checking Gentle Reader, and it must be punished. And Mike Allen, while the cinders of the faux madrassa hit piece pushed by the republican propagandists, Insight Magazine and Fox News, still glows, gently fans the, “don’t forget, Obama, black, Islam” racist thread that run through media coverage of Obama. Now Mike Allen may not believe that the fact that Obama is black or that his father was a Muslim should disqualify Obama from pursuit of the presidency – to believe so, would, after all, be racist.
But Mike Allen’s little process story here works because it pushes the same racist buttons that the madrassa story pushed and the “Barak Hussein Obama” meme before it pushed. Evidence? Here are two comments (from the same poster) from those responding to the story:
And you can even deny this person is a muslim. But calling a fish a duck doesn't make him a duck. The man was born to a muslim family, went to a muslim "school", and his middle name is (and he has never tried to deny it) hussein. No, i am sorry, but he is a muslim. Just like i was raised catholic, but i don't go to mass anymore...for all intents and purposes i would be called a catholic.
His very obvious, if not very public muslim background is troubling to me. We are in a time when the single biggest threat to our safety and security as a nation is radical islam. No, i am not saying that obama is a radical, or even a practicing muslim, but its simply inconceivable to me that we would elect him at a time like this.
Now pulling wacky comments from the thread doesn’t prove that Mike Allen is a racist. But is it plausible to assume that Mike Allen doesn’t think that the arabic/swahili bs won’t push the same buttons that the madrassa and “barak hussein obama” memes did? We think not.
We think that Mike Allen knows full well the racists buttons he’s pushing, and he’s pushing them either because he wants to, or because he doesn’t care if rousing racist sentiment is simply the cost that Mike Allen must pay in order to get what he wants - the privilege of the corporate media front men, who call themselves journalists, to define the terms of political debate in america and to identify who may properly participate in the debate. Too bad for Obama. Too bad for America.
Which makes Mike Allen a scumbag.
