Monday, May 12, 2008

JOHN MCCAIN, BARACK OBAMA

Newsweek: It Is a 'Sure Bet' the GOP Will Try To Paint Obama as Muslim

Newsweek, this week:

The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968, when Richard Nixon built a Silent Majority out of lower- and middle-class folks frightened or disturbed by hippies and student radicals and blacks rioting in the inner cities.

The NAACP television ad, targeting George W. Bush, in 2000:

On June 7, 1998 in Texas my father was killed. He was beaten, chained, and then dragged 3 miles to his death, all because he was black.

So when Governor George W. Bush refused to support hate-crime legislation, it was like my father was killed all over again.

Call Governor George W. Bush and tell him to support hate-crime legislation.

We won’t be dragged away from our future.

The NAACP radio ad, targeting George W. Bush, in 2000:

Renee Mullins: I’m Renee Mullins. My father was James Byrd, Jr.

I still have nightmares thinking about him, the day three men chained him behind their pickup truck and dragged him three miles over pavement.

I can see skin being torn away from his body.

I can hear him gasping for air.

I can feel the tears in his eyes, the struggle of his brain as images of his life painfully bang through his head as the links of a heavy chain clinched around his ankles dragging him bump by bump until he was decapitated. [pause]

On June 7, 1998 this happened to my father, all because he was black. I went to Governor George W. Bush and begged him to help pass a hate crimes bill.

He just told me no.

I'm doing this commercial to ask you to call Governor Bush at 512-X and tell him to introduce a hate crimes bill in Texas.

Let him know that our community won't be dragged down by hate crimes.

Male Voice: Funded by Americans for Equality, a project of the NAACP National Voter Fund.

Newsweek also flatly asserts, "It is a sure bet that the GOP will try to paint Obama as "the other"—as a haughty black intellectual who has Muslim roots (Obama is a Christian) and hangs around with America-haters." The McCain campaign rightfully objects to Newsweek's assessment of what has contributed to Republican White House victories in 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004.

Not long ago, Newsweek editor Jon Meachum asked a class at Columbia Journalism School if any of the students read Time or Newsweek. The answer, from all of the 100 students, was “no.”

I don't know if the students didn't read it because they considered Newsweek's writing shoddy or its standards below par, but it's really revealing that a statement like, "The Republican Party has been successfully scaring voters since 1968" can get through multiple layers of fact checkers and either no one objects, or those who object are overruled.

05/12 09:19 AMShare