WNYC political director Andrea Bernstein and Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart analyze the latest scuffle between John McCain and Barack Obama: Obama's alleged playing of the 'race card'.
"And as far as the Obama's Muslim upbringing, the point was merely to show how dreaded a subject it is for the pro Obama media. It's a story that has never been aired by the MSM..."
"No one is accusing him of being a Muslim!"
There is no defense against the inconsistencies you reserve as privilege to make.
QUOTE-----When Obama goes overseas and Disney Birds deliver diplomacy cred to his hands -- it's news because McCain dared him to do so. Understanding this does not require a degree in Rocket Surgery.-----UNQUOTE
No Mike, I think Obama's Great Adventure abroad would have made a newspaper story even if McCain didn't encourage him to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, to my point on news balance, does anyone remember the huge crowds in Eastern Europe that showed up to hear Bush's speech? And they weren't drawn there to watch a concert as with Obama.
QUOTE------Obama has only practiced Christianity. To call someone an Muslim Christian or a Christian Muslim is an oxymoron.-----UNQUOTE
Again Mike, you missed the point. No one is accusing him of being a Muslim! Rather, having once been a Muslim raises some salient issues. For example, mainstream Muslim jurisprudence specifically forbids apostasy. Several of our allies make it a capital crime for their svereigns to leave the Muslim religion. How would that affect their populations to see an American President in that light? Instead of any sorts of questions like that (nor a peep on the entire issue), we get debates over whether McCain is a citizen!
QUOTE-----Heaven forbid "everyone seems to know" something that's actually true.------QUOTE
'Mike, I wasn't referring to "political inexperience" and ability to spin.'
I'm not saying Bush/Cheney 2004 was absence any spin.
Nothing I said depended on political experience and "ability to spin" being terms with overlapping applications in the least.
"Obama's supposed mastery of the laundry list of your examples are all examples in which the media aided him with favorable spin."
When Obama goes overseas and Disney Birds deliver diplomacy cred to his hands -- it's news because McCain dared him to do so. Understanding this does not require a degree in Rocket Surgery.
"And as far as the Obama's Muslim upbringing, the point was merely to show how dreaded a subject it is for the pro Obama media."
Obama has only practiced Christianity. To call someone an Muslim Christian or a Christian Muslim is an oxymoron.
"It's a story that has never been aired by the MSM, yet everyone seems to know the far mor essoteric tidbit about McCain being born in the Panama canal zone!"
Heaven forbid "everyone seems to know" something that's actually true.
And as far as the Obama's Muslim upbringing, the point was merely to show how dreaded a subject it is for the pro Obama media. It's a story that has never been aired by the MSM, yet everyone seems to know the far mor essoteric tidbit about McCain being born in the Panama canal zone!
Mike, I wasn't referring to "political inexperience" and ability to spin. Bush was extraordinarily inarticulate and disinterested in details. Anyone, including Obama was better in that dept. But rather the important aspect of governing experience. Bush had little, and Obama even less. Obama is severly untested in that area, as even Hilary was able to show with his willingness to confer the legitimacy of the US Presidency to a host of pariah regimes without preconditions.
Obama's supposed mastery of the laundry list of your examples are all examples in which the media aided him with favorable spin. All of which are recounted in the op-eds:
QUOTE his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech -- designed to rationalize why "I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother" -- then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. Three months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great "race speech" now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes. UNQUOTE
27] Posted by: Mike Leung August 01, 2008 - 10:46AM Brooklyn "I, for one, look forward to selecting "looks like a dude on a dollar bill" as an ethnicity on the next census."
"...try reading some of the books critical of Bush. The consensus was that he was NOT "too intellectually deficient". Rather, he was too inexperienced. And Obama has even less experience than Bush had."
Bush and his handlers didn't beat the "inevitable" candidate for his party's nomination. Obama did. Hillary wasn't on top of his campaign, but Obama's personal touch in handling the Wright controversy demonstrated he is on top of his.
McCain challenged Obama on his diplomacy experience. Obama responded by flying overseas, and it was like Disney Birds flew to him and dropped Diplomacy Cred™ from their beaks to his hand.
The difference between Bush's political inexperience and Obama's is that Obama is still masterful in spite of the experience he has yet to accrue.
"Let's talk race, and lets be really clear that this country is full of people who won't vote for a black man."
"There's an even greater segment of the population that wants to vote for Obama solely because he's black. It makes them feel good about themselves. That's not exactly how they put it. Rather, they claim that the world would love the US for putting aside our racism!!"
Which counts for =what= against the insistence of many that Obama is Muslim? Heaven forbid the recipient of chickensh*t should enjoy any justifiable relief from it.
Paul, let's be totally honest, OK? There's an even greater segment of the population that wants to vote for Obama solely because he's black. It makes them feel good about themselves. That's not exactly how they put it. Rather, they claim that the world would love the US for putting aside our racism!!
I don't recall any nation commending New Yorkers for electing David Dinkins. And as it turned out, following 8 years of Dinkins in office, not even New Yorkers commended New Yorkers for electing him!!!
Elaine, try reading some of the books critical of Bush. The consensus was that he was NOT "too intellectually deficient". Rather, he was too inexperienced. And Obama has even less experience than Bush had.
ALSO, you seem ignorant of the fact that Obama reads all his speeches from a teleprompter. ALL OF THEM. That's why he speaks smoothly in a set speech, but VERY haltingly when speaking off the cuff without a script.
Obama's teleprompter is far off to his right all the time. He has 2020 eye sight, which enables him to see it acutely and not strain. That's his only talent----reading a speech!
Okay, guys, let's be clear, there is no free speech on this board per se, and we don't make people register because we're lazy, but we will beg for their money and take their cc number, which we DO have the time to do, so keep on posting and we'll keep on deleting! Thanks guys! 1st Ammendment rocks!! Woo hoo!
Let's not play the "race card", lets bust out the whole deck.
This country's history of racism is almost as thorough as it's history of hiding racism. Let's talk race, and lets be really clear that this country is full of people who won't vote for a black man.
Privileged classes shelter their privileges by establishing taboos to deny their privileges even exist. It's like when people from wealthy families tell you it's rude to talk about money. Poor people have no reservation against talking about money. Now the McCain camp is trying to raise a flag that the taboo against talking about race is endangered simply from the most casual remarks by a black candidate running for president.
The rebuttal that one is "playing a card" -- when referencing an unfaithfulness to reality -- refers to tapping into an agenda that's easy currency in the culture, whether the person you're accusing of playing a card is indulging in a red scare, public-photography scare, etc. I read a recent news report you can't even photograph your own kid in a park in England without the other mothers openly challenging you as a pedophile.
The rebuttal that one is "playing a card" -- with no reference to an unfaithfulness to reality -- seems to literally refer to a taboo against accuracy, to shelter a privilege, whether the taboo is ethnicity, money, sex, liberalism, etc. It can be very annoying.
I think that Obama's surrogates need to start playing the age card. McCain seems to be "confused." McCain now needs to read his statements b/c he can't be trusted not to get tangled in his message when speking off the cuff. McCain seems to be straining to keep his wits together when he's speaking. For 8 years, we have had puppet president b/c GWB was too intellectually deficient to govern. W/McCain, we will have another puppet president b/c, while McCain may have once been intellectually fit to govern, he very obviously has lost that ability significantly. Obama needs to start suggesting that, with subtlity, of course.
McCain is trying to distract with this ignorance. Most Black people do not use the term "playing the race card" What are the other cards? This phrase irritates me as much as gays likening being Black to be gay.
Another well ballanced panel of pundits!!! Good Lord! To say that your opponent ran for president with a mere 100 weeks experience as senator is using the race card is incredible. Same with claiming a vote for Obama is risky (somthing that DEMOCRAT Bill Clinton said.) Where's the logic to all this?! And then Jonathan claims "this is all that McCain has"?!! Jonathan, read Krauthammer for the last 3 weeks. Obama has changed positions on every issue he's taken in his short tenure as senator.
To show "balance", Jonathan says in Obama's defense is that raising race (where nothing racial was even said) was MERELY to preempt what the Republicans are PLANNING to do!! What Republicans? Obama is the one with all the 527s gearing up to smear McCain!
Let's get the dirt out now. Obama was raised as a Muslim as a young man. He was attended a Muslim school. A FACT. Where is the media asking him what was that like? Yet they discuss all the time that McCain was born outrside the US. That's balance?
Obama is cashing in on his celeb status. That makes it a legit target. IT IS NOT A RACIAL SMEAR! And it worries me that people of other nations love this fellow. They have separate agendas than Americans. All nations advance their own interests. Not ours. OOPS . . . I just made a racial attack!!!!
The fact that McCain would accuse anyone of playing the "race card" when he spent 27 years using a racial slur in reference to Asians, is actually pretty funny.
Pundits note that campaigns "talk in code", a picture= 1,000 words. The true "race card" issue is that the McCain commercial flashed unflattering images of Obama's face between images of two young blond scantily clad celebrity girls. This reaches the deep fear Id of the racist segment of America. For McCain to take offence at Obama's response is as disingenuous as if he were to defend mouthing " I respect Senator Obama" while dispalying his middle finger to the camera!
This is just like the white man! It's okay for you all to lump every other ethnic group together (you're all the same- same color, same name,same religon). But when someone puts the shoe on the other foot, they must be playing the 'race card'. Race is not a game for us!
I don’t think what the McCain campaign is doing is any different than what NPR has already done. In a commentary on Weekend Edition Sunday, a senior reporter (sorry, the name escapes me) weeks ago chided Senator Obama for directly painting Senator McCain as racist by criticizing code words on race coming from the McCain campaign. The person on NPR even brought Senator McCain’s adopted children into the commentary with a “how dare Obama attack a man who has opened his home to non-white children” attitude. So, I guess everyone thinks Obama is racist. John McCain and NPR. Glass houses?
Honestly what are McCains plans. He lays out no policy proposal for anything. All we hear about is offshore drilling and "the surge". When does the media ask him about his policies.
The only entity making a big deal of all this BS is the media. You are devoting far too much energy and time into this. With some exceptions, the majority of the voting public could not give a flying fig.
The McCain campaign is getting nasty because of the infusion of Rove proteges into the organization. The desperate negativity will not end until/unless McCain SUPPORTERS demand that it stop. Since they want him to win, they won't say anything.
The nastiness also shows how empty McCain's platform really is.
Campaign coverage in this country is so pathetic, even tragicomic, that I have to tune out now. These little meaningless mini-controversies are what drives everything, it is very very very wrong.
The Race card is what usually unites white people. So all Mccain had to do is bring it up and now it will be a ralying cry for conservatives since its not PC for blacks to acknowledge their skin color.
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Comments [46]
With no sense of irony:
"And as far as the Obama's Muslim upbringing, the point was merely to show how dreaded a subject it is for the pro Obama media. It's a story that has never been aired by the MSM..."
"No one is accusing him of being a Muslim!"
There is no defense against the inconsistencies you reserve as privilege to make.
QUOTE-----When Obama goes overseas and Disney Birds deliver diplomacy cred to his hands -- it's news because McCain dared him to do so. Understanding this does not require a degree in Rocket Surgery.-----UNQUOTE
No Mike, I think Obama's Great Adventure abroad would have made a newspaper story even if McCain didn't encourage him to go to Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, to my point on news balance, does anyone remember the huge crowds in Eastern Europe that showed up to hear Bush's speech? And they weren't drawn there to watch a concert as with Obama.
QUOTE------Obama has only practiced Christianity. To call someone an Muslim Christian or a Christian Muslim is an oxymoron.-----UNQUOTE
Again Mike, you missed the point. No one is accusing him of being a Muslim! Rather, having once been a Muslim raises some salient issues. For example, mainstream Muslim jurisprudence specifically forbids apostasy. Several of our allies make it a capital crime for their svereigns to leave the Muslim religion. How would that affect their populations to see an American President in that light? Instead of any sorts of questions like that (nor a peep on the entire issue), we get debates over whether McCain is a citizen!
QUOTE-----Heaven forbid "everyone seems to know" something that's actually true.------QUOTE
Indeed!! My exact point!
'Mike, I wasn't referring to "political inexperience" and ability to spin.'
I'm not saying Bush/Cheney 2004 was absence any spin.
Nothing I said depended on political experience and "ability to spin" being terms with overlapping applications in the least.
"Obama's supposed mastery of the laundry list of your examples are all examples in which the media aided him with favorable spin."
When Obama goes overseas and Disney Birds deliver diplomacy cred to his hands -- it's news because McCain dared him to do so. Understanding this does not require a degree in Rocket Surgery.
"And as far as the Obama's Muslim upbringing, the point was merely to show how dreaded a subject it is for the pro Obama media."
Obama has only practiced Christianity. To call someone an Muslim Christian or a Christian Muslim is an oxymoron.
"It's a story that has never been aired by the MSM, yet everyone seems to know the far mor essoteric tidbit about McCain being born in the Panama canal zone!"
Heaven forbid "everyone seems to know" something that's actually true.
And as far as the Obama's Muslim upbringing, the point was merely to show how dreaded a subject it is for the pro Obama media. It's a story that has never been aired by the MSM, yet everyone seems to know the far mor essoteric tidbit about McCain being born in the Panama canal zone!
Mike, I wasn't referring to "political inexperience" and ability to spin. Bush was extraordinarily inarticulate and disinterested in details. Anyone, including Obama was better in that dept. But rather the important aspect of governing experience. Bush had little, and Obama even less. Obama is severly untested in that area, as even Hilary was able to show with his willingness to confer the legitimacy of the US Presidency to a host of pariah regimes without preconditions.
Obama's supposed mastery of the laundry list of your examples are all examples in which the media aided him with favorable spin. All of which are recounted in the op-eds:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/06/27/obamas_long_march
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/07/04/obama_flips_and_flops?page=1
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2008/07/18/who_does_he_think_he_is
As Krauthammer writes:
QUOTE
his grandiloquent Philadelphia speech -- designed to rationalize why "I can no more disown (Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown my white grandmother" -- then wiped away a tear and hailed him as the second coming of Abraham Lincoln. Three months later, with Wright disowned, grandma embraced and the great "race speech" now inoperative, not a word of reconsideration is heard from his media acolytes.
UNQUOTE
Journalists don't need to be free speech absolutists. If they were, news organizations would fire their editors. There is no inconsistency here.
The fact that you deleted my comment this late in the day and did not delete #32 answers my question on #36. Cowards your people.
LOL whatever moderator! Happy deleting!
27]
Posted by: Mike Leung
August 01, 2008 - 10:46AM
Brooklyn
"I, for one, look forward to selecting "looks like a dude on a dollar bill" as an ethnicity on the next census."
LOL!
"...try reading some of the books critical of Bush. The consensus was that he was NOT "too intellectually deficient". Rather, he was too inexperienced. And Obama has even less experience than Bush had."
Bush and his handlers didn't beat the "inevitable" candidate for his party's nomination. Obama did. Hillary wasn't on top of his campaign, but Obama's personal touch in handling the Wright controversy demonstrated he is on top of his.
McCain challenged Obama on his diplomacy experience. Obama responded by flying overseas, and it was like Disney Birds flew to him and dropped Diplomacy Cred™ from their beaks to his hand.
The difference between Bush's political inexperience and Obama's is that Obama is still masterful in spite of the experience he has yet to accrue.
"Let's talk race, and lets be really clear that this country is full of people who won't vote for a black man."
"There's an even greater segment of the population that wants to vote for Obama solely because he's black. It makes them feel good about themselves. That's not exactly how they put it. Rather, they claim that the world would love the US for putting aside our racism!!"
Which counts for =what= against the insistence of many that Obama is Muslim? Heaven forbid the recipient of chickensh*t should enjoy any justifiable relief from it.
@#33 then how did #32 get past ya?
Paul, let's be totally honest, OK? There's an even greater segment of the population that wants to vote for Obama solely because he's black. It makes them feel good about themselves. That's not exactly how they put it. Rather, they claim that the world would love the US for putting aside our racism!!
I don't recall any nation commending New Yorkers for electing David Dinkins. And as it turned out, following 8 years of Dinkins in office, not even New Yorkers commended New Yorkers for electing him!!!
Elaine, try reading some of the books critical of Bush. The consensus was that he was NOT "too intellectually deficient". Rather, he was too inexperienced. And Obama has even less experience than Bush had.
ALSO, you seem ignorant of the fact that Obama reads all his speeches from a teleprompter. ALL OF THEM. That's why he speaks smoothly in a set speech, but VERY haltingly when speaking off the cuff without a script.
Obama's teleprompter is far off to his right all the time. He has 2020 eye sight, which enables him to see it acutely and not strain. That's his only talent----reading a speech!
Okay, guys, let's be clear, there is no free speech on this board per se, and we don't make people register because we're lazy, but we will beg for their money and take their cc number, which we DO have the time to do, so keep on posting and we'll keep on deleting! Thanks guys! 1st Ammendment rocks!! Woo hoo!
By the time John McCain is done, Obama will be "the nigger."
Let's not play the "race card", lets bust out the whole deck.
This country's history of racism is almost as thorough as it's history of hiding racism. Let's talk race, and lets be really clear that this country is full of people who won't vote for a black man.
"What are the other cards?"
Privileged classes shelter their privileges by establishing taboos to deny their privileges even exist. It's like when people from wealthy families tell you it's rude to talk about money. Poor people have no reservation against talking about money. Now the McCain camp is trying to raise a flag that the taboo against talking about race is endangered simply from the most casual remarks by a black candidate running for president.
The rebuttal that one is "playing a card" -- when referencing an unfaithfulness to reality -- refers to tapping into an agenda that's easy currency in the culture, whether the person you're accusing of playing a card is indulging in a red scare, public-photography scare, etc. I read a recent news report you can't even photograph your own kid in a park in England without the other mothers openly challenging you as a pedophile.
The rebuttal that one is "playing a card" -- with no reference to an unfaithfulness to reality -- seems to literally refer to a taboo against accuracy, to shelter a privilege, whether the taboo is ethnicity, money, sex, liberalism, etc. It can be very annoying.
I think that Obama's surrogates need to start playing the age card. McCain seems to be "confused." McCain now needs to read his statements b/c he can't be trusted not to get tangled in his message when speking off the cuff. McCain seems to be straining to keep his wits together when he's speaking. For 8 years, we have had puppet president b/c GWB was too intellectually deficient to govern. W/McCain, we will have another puppet president b/c, while McCain may have once been intellectually fit to govern, he very obviously has lost that ability significantly. Obama needs to start suggesting that, with subtlity, of course.
McCain is trying to distract with this ignorance. Most Black people do not use the term "playing the race card" What are the other cards? This phrase irritates me as much as gays likening being Black to be gay.
I, for one, look forward to selecting "looks like a dude on a dollar bill" as an ethnicity on the next census.
Another well ballanced panel of pundits!!! Good Lord! To say that your opponent ran for president with a mere 100 weeks experience as senator is using the race card is incredible. Same with claiming a vote for Obama is risky (somthing that DEMOCRAT Bill Clinton said.) Where's the logic to all this?! And then Jonathan claims "this is all that McCain has"?!! Jonathan, read Krauthammer for the last 3 weeks. Obama has changed positions on every issue he's taken in his short tenure as senator.
To show "balance", Jonathan says in Obama's defense is that raising race (where nothing racial was even said) was MERELY to preempt what the Republicans are PLANNING to do!! What Republicans? Obama is the one with all the 527s gearing up to smear McCain!
Let's get the dirt out now. Obama was raised as a Muslim as a young man. He was attended a Muslim school. A FACT. Where is the media asking him what was that like? Yet they discuss all the time that McCain was born outrside the US. That's balance?
Obama is cashing in on his celeb status. That makes it a legit target. IT IS NOT A RACIAL SMEAR! And it worries me that people of other nations love this fellow. They have separate agendas than Americans. All nations advance their own interests. Not ours. OOPS . . . I just made a racial attack!!!!
Ahh, thank you #15, I thought it was Scott Simon, but wasn't 100% sure.
The fact that McCain would accuse anyone of playing the "race card" when he spent 27 years using a racial slur in reference to Asians, is actually pretty funny.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/02/18/MN32194.DTL
And no, having been a POW in Vietnam, is not a good excuse. Especially for someone who is running for president.
Hey Guys,
We've deleted some comments that were either off-topic, or not within the WNYC comment posting guidelines.
Please remember to keep your conversations subject appropriate and civil (no name calling).
Thanks.
Pundits note that campaigns "talk in code", a picture= 1,000 words. The true "race card" issue is that the McCain commercial flashed unflattering images of Obama's face between images of two young blond scantily clad celebrity girls. This reaches the deep fear Id of the racist segment of America. For McCain to take offence at Obama's response is as disingenuous as if he were to defend mouthing " I respect Senator Obama" while dispalying his middle finger to the camera!
This is just like the white man! It's okay for you all to lump every other ethnic group together (you're all the same- same color, same name,same religon). But when someone puts the shoe on the other foot, they must be playing the 'race card'. Race is not a game for us!
Notice did you just hear how this caller just skated around answering the question, when asked what is meant by "playing the race card"?
I don’t think what the McCain campaign is doing is any different than what NPR has already done. In a commentary on Weekend Edition Sunday, a senior reporter (sorry, the name escapes me) weeks ago chided Senator Obama for directly painting Senator McCain as racist by criticizing code words on race coming from the McCain campaign. The person on NPR even brought Senator McCain’s adopted children into the commentary with a “how dare Obama attack a man who has opened his home to non-white children” attitude. So, I guess everyone thinks Obama is racist. John McCain and NPR. Glass houses?
You said Obama had not served out a full "year" as Senator. You mean a full "term". Let's not spread lies so easily.
I agree w/#10
FYI - there is no "race card"
Hear Scott Simon on this from a month ago
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91769883
Why are comments being deleted? Why the censorship by the BL show?
Honestly what are McCains plans. He lays out no policy proposal for anything. All we hear about is offshore drilling and "the surge". When does the media ask him about his policies.
The Polls cannot be trusted.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/kpete/6752
typical= characteristic, representative, archetypal
McCain's campaign is furiously trying to distract from how lousy a candidate he is and how bad his ideas are.
Obama wasn't playing the race card, he was playing the AGE card. He doesn't look like the other presidents on the dollar bills because he isn't OLD!
Andrea Bernstein's 'analysis' is about as fair and balanced as Fox News.
The only entity making a big deal of all this BS is the media. You are devoting far too much energy and time into this. With some exceptions, the majority of the voting public could not give a flying fig.
Confusing lineage?? not happy with that comment
The McCain campaign is getting nasty because of the infusion of Rove proteges into the organization. The desperate negativity will not end until/unless McCain SUPPORTERS demand that it stop. Since they want him to win, they won't say anything.
The nastiness also shows how empty McCain's platform really is.
Senator Barack Hussein Obama is also the candidate who called his grandmother a 'typical white person'.
What exactly is a 'typical white person'?
What exactly is a 'typical black person'?
Which is more racist? (What if McCain had said it?)
Why is it ok for Senator Obama to classify someone from another race as 'typical' of that race?
Campaign coverage in this country is so pathetic, even tragicomic, that I have to tune out now. These little meaningless mini-controversies are what drives everything, it is very very very wrong.
It is time to change the format, we need new blood on this station. People that reflects modern America.
The Race card is what usually unites white people. So all Mccain had to do is bring it up and now it will be a ralying cry for conservatives since its not PC for blacks to acknowledge their skin color.
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