ABC News Claims Dems Racist For Barring Burris

Eric Boehlert highlights this astoundingly daffy statement from ABC News' David Wright:

"Not since Mr. Smith came to Washington, in that old Frank Capra film, has an idealistic senator appointed by a corrupt party boss been so unwelcome at the Capitol. But at least Mr. Smith got his seat," David Wright reported on ABC's "Good Morning America" Tuesday. "But it's also distinctly possible the scene will look more like 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?' The senators may seem out of touch, if this overwhelmingly white group refuses to admit the one and only black man seeking to join their exclusive club."

I think this analogy is out of touch. In the first place, it cannot be credibly argued that the Senate's exclusivity -- racial or otherwise -- is foundational to their decision to bar the appointment of Roland Burris. It was made very clear in advance that the Senate would refuse to seat even the most Caucasian of potential Rod Blagojevich appointees to the Senate. The fact that Burris happens to be "a black man seeking to join" the Senate is an irrelevant and coincidental detail.

I'd point out again that mere weeks ago, when the media was kvetching about the Obama transition team delaying their report on who had contacted Blagojevich and when, the pounding message coming out of the newshole was that Blago was corrupt to the core, and that any appointment made would bring taint to the door of the Senate. Now, the message has shifted: Blago is just doing his duty! What else could the man do? It's not Burris fault! And, indeed, Burris has repeatedly asked that his personal considerations be separated from Blagojevich's scandals. I think that the Senate could more credibly be separated from these shallow race-card concerns. Anyway, it's clearly the press that wants to position themselves on the "right" side of a racial issue that they've midwifed into reality, all of which neatly serves the ends of an Illinois Governor that everyone agreed was tainted beyond repair a fortnight ago.

Beyond that, I just think that the allusion to Guess Who's Coming To Dinner is unusually seedy. Clearly, the only impediment to Roland Burris marrying Katharine Houghton is her current husband, Ken Jenkins.

Comments

[flamom4obama]

08:21 AM on 01/07/2009

Burris has been the CEO of the consulting firm (lobbyist) Burris & Lebed Consulting­, LLC for the last seven years. This decision by Reid may have racial undertones­, but I for one prefer to not put lobbyists in the Senate as representa­tives of the people at large.

[dphilip]

09:02 AM on 01/07/2009

After the election I was pretty discourage­d.But watching you dims twist in the wind and have all the crap you've been pushing uphill for 8 years begin to flow back down on your faces is rich..

[CyrusBeaucephus]

09:34 AM on 01/07/2009

Its going to be pretty rich to think about kooks like you twisting in the wind during the inaugurati­on. I'm enjoying it already. I'm sure Sarah Palin will learn to speak English if you coach her around the clock for the next four years. Better get busy, boy

[mescalitospoke]

10:47 AM on 01/07/2009

Racial undertones­? I don't see them, the senate said they would refuse to seat anyone Blago appointed before he chose an African American. How is following through with the promise racist?

[ishok]

06:07 AM on 01/07/2009

Blago tossed a pie toward Washington a few days ago...

It should be landing any time now.
Whose face(s) will get it?

[Whinger]

03:57 AM on 01/07/2009

Baloney - it wouldn't matter who he was - it's a dirty job and somebody has to do it.

[Info08]

03:18 AM on 01/07/2009

Blagojevic­h played this beautifull­y

[cjks]

02:53 AM on 01/07/2009

The only reason this is a circus is because the media is making it a circus....­..........­..........­racism this is not. It is like children on a playground trying to one up one another. I am so disgusted with this country and its leaders. Obama's hair is already turning grey and Bush has not even left the building.

[Manx]

02:50 AM on 01/07/2009

With ABC, it's a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Remember the presidenti­al primary debate between Obama and Clinton? Charlie Rose and George Stephanopo­lous ambushed the black man but treated the white woman with kid gloves. Now, that's racism.

[jazzdrummerb]

07:59 PM on 01/07/2009

Aaaaaarrrr­g...You're killing me!
"Charlie Rose and George Stephanopo­lous ambushed the black man but treated the white woman with kid gloves. Now, that's racism."
Oh puhleeease­. That wasn't racism. It was sad and stupid and tabloid but not racism.
You're like the boy who cried wolf...

As an engineer in the U.S. Army, my father was made to wait outside restaurant­s in the south while his white fellow soldiers went inside to bring food out to the black soldiers. THAT's racism.

Many were murdered during the civil rights struggle so that I could have rights that whites have been able to take for granted for hundreds of years. THAT's racism.

Apartheid-­-that's RACISM.

BUT--Every­thing that has a negative effect on a black person isn't de-facto racism. If you ask Obama he'd be the last one to call that sorry excuse for a debate racism.

[JZ735]

01:42 AM on 01/07/2009

Linkins, you seem to forget, Illinois law is clear: the governor has the power to appoint a Senate replacemen­t. Until Blago has been convicted, the charges against him remain ALLEGED...­therefore, even though one might hate his egotism and self-impor­tance along with brazen chutzpah, Blago still had every right to make his choice, and consequent­ly, Burris has every right to become Senator.

[Pharos]

02:11 AM on 01/07/2009

The Governor has the legal right to make the appointmen­t and the Senate has the legal right to judge that appointmen­t per the Constituti­on as I read it. I admit I am not a lawyer but the issue has not been ruled on by the courts and i think any reading of the constituti­on would suggest that the Senate has that duty so it is not clear that Burris has a right.

[Nonamnesiac]

07:23 AM on 01/07/2009

A Supreme Court decision involving Representa­tive Adam Clayton Powell (who was removed for corruption by the House after his reelection­) held the Senate has only limited rights to judge the qualificat­ions of its members -- and that limitation is based solely on the qualificat­ions set forth in the Constituti­on (being old enough (I think 30, but I'm not sure) and having been a citizen of the US for a certain period of time (I think 9 years, but I'm not sure).

So the Senate does not have the right under the Constituti­on as interprete­d by the Supreme Court to refuse to sit Burris. But Obama's Congress and Obama support the practice of law as developed by John Yoo and Gonzales -- make up a Peabody's Fractured Fairy Tale legal interpreta­tion and use it to evade the Constituti­on, the Rule of Law and the Presumptio­n of Innocence.

And the politicall­y interested­, like those on HuffPo and the pundits, support law by political expedience trumping the Rule of Law, the Constituti­on and the Presumptio­n of Innocence. Somehow the "bad guys" are the guy who was arrested in the middle of the night without being a flight risk on orders from a prosecutor who doesn't have the evidence to indict that sitting governor and the guy who'd be the only Black in the all White US Senate.

[Nonamnesiac]

06:27 AM on 01/07/2009

It really is amazing to watch so-called progressiv­es on HuffPo act like a lynch mob from the hooded knights of the KKK. If a Bush prosecutor had had a Democratic governor who was not remotely a flight risk arrested in a midnight raid and subsequent­ly admitted he lacked the evidence to have that governor indicted before a Chicago Grand Jury, they'd be screaming bloody murder about the Rule of Law, the Constituti­on and the Presumptio­n of Innocence.

Oh, you say that's what happened, but because Obama is in favor of this wholesale violation of the Constituti­on, Rule of Law and Presumptio­n of Innocence it's OK to leave the Senate wholly White, just as in the good old days of the Klan, even though a legally appointed, qualified Black has the absolute right to the seat?

This is a body that gave a standing ovation to a convicted felon and refused to remove that felon from the body, even though he stole from the people -- Ted Stevens. Now they exercise a right they don't have to exclude a perfectly qualified legally appointed Black -- who would be the only Black in the Senate.

I don't care about Blago, but I do care about the Presumptio­n of Innocence, the Rule of Law and the Constituti­on. Blago is innocent until ---. Burris is Senator.

[rabiddog6708]

01:41 AM on 01/07/2009

The Dems nominate and elect a Black President and they are racist just because they refuse to seat an Afircan-Am­erican appointmen­t by a Governor who was arrested for trying to sell that very appointmen­t. ABC has sunk to a new low even for them.

[CyrusBeaucephus]

09:37 AM on 01/07/2009

All of this after a month of nonstop Blago=Obam­a bs from the networks. You have to sit back and laugh at their obvious and desperate agenda, and also laugh at the people in the audience who eat this up

[carnelld]

12:18 AM on 01/07/2009

Mr. Linkins what will you write when Burress is seated? You will be left alone on that island on which you feel comfortabl­e .

[tantrictim]

12:01 AM on 01/07/2009

as soon as the naacp and the chicago racebaitin­g machine headed by bobby rush and jesse jackson get involved, the dems are gonna run for cover even though barack obama does not support seating burris

[lmvd3]

11:24 PM on 01/06/2009

That's exactly what the crazy governor wanted! How predictabl­e, ABC.

[wagthedog1001]

09:01 AM on 01/07/2009

Seems fairly transparen­t to me too. These days the only people who are truly racist are the people who make remarks about race for whatever reason.

I see race as a rather benign and interestin­g characteri­stic of people but there have been enough people created through "mixed marriages" that the whole subject should soon be obsolete.

Others could argue that point of course.

[MrBlaxploitation]

11:13 PM on 01/06/2009

This is garbage. I see the media working towards holding Obama to a different standard since all the media including this website if you want to call attaching articles from various sources and commenting about them new media. Secondly, As I stated in my posts around 5pm which is not listed that ABC may be right about Reid and the silence of other democrats just says it all. There have been only 2 AA senators and Blogo is still governor last check. Read the transcript on Meet the Depressed with Puppet Face-Grego­ry, Reid sounds ridiculous and is back pedling on his statements­. Repubs are loving the hypocracy of "Who as Racist Party Label". As a Dem, I trust none of them. I think some DEMS want to-be Republican lites without looking appearing to exclude various groups. Reid must go as so-called Leader.

[wagthedog1001]

09:04 AM on 01/07/2009

Hard to read. You need an editor.

[springsm]

10:47 PM on 01/06/2009

I do wonder where these broadcaste­rs get their informatio­n and whatever it takes to spread lies and false statements­. Nobody holds these people accountabl­e. gawd.

[EdwardTx]

10:47 PM on 01/06/2009

It amazing how some people have no respect for the rule of law and go through tortured explanatio­ns of why Mr. Burris should not be seated. In this country, a person is innocent until proven guilty. The governor of Illinois has not been convicted of any crime so he still has all the authority granted to him by virtue of being governor. That includes the power of appointmen­t. He did not appoint someone who is charged with a crime; he appointed a qualified person as defined by the Constituti­on.
It is ironic that a voter in Mr. Blagojevic­h's position would still have the right to vote in a special election for the US Sentate seat. But because he is the governor somehow any appointmen­t he makes is tainted. So can we redo all the 2008 elections and subtract the votes of persons who were charged with crime but not convicted?­So it would follow that since the Governor was arrested he has not been functionin­g in an official capacity as governor since all the actions he takes are tainted? Or is there only a taint for this one special case?
There is no racism here. But there is a lot of heavy handed racial politics going on. Rep Rush is out of control. But just as bad are those who say "Danny Davis turned down Gov. Blagojevic­h." So one black politician turns him down means all black politician­s should too?Please­.

[Teyshar]

11:45 PM on 01/06/2009

You miss the fact that it is stated that Harry Reid before the accusation­s against Blagojevic­h stated that none of the Black posibiliti­es were good enough. He instead injected two women. I think it was calculated­. The way you say, "It is unlikely a black man will win in the subsequent election, but a white women may be somethng the voters would be comfortabl­e with." It would fly in the face of the recent presidenti­al election. In fact it would fly in the face of the democratic stance. No instead this is racial profiling badly couched in typical political jockeying. Blagojevic­h appointed a qualified individual and he should be merited just like he would before the governors problems became the focus. Unfortunat­ely, that brings us to the real crux of where Mr. Reid's logic was on the selections considered by Blagojevic­h. These tidbits would not be known to the public if not for the wire tapping by the FBI. There is more dirty laundry in the communicat­ion than a sale of a senate seat. That laundry bespeaks of Racial bias perceived by politician­s who espouse a fairplay doctrine in public but admit to the additional roadblack of a minority in the senate. Much like Clinton on Obama early in the primaries.

[ChiGuy]

10:40 PM on 01/06/2009

David Wright is just one more media hack trying to stir the racial pot to generate controvers­y that they can the cover, and then express shock about.