The Fox News Version of Obama Jamie Kilstein | Bio

It's 2009. I know this because of the many lists circulating around the internet: the best so-and-so of 2008 and the worst. In a Venn diagram version of these lists, I have one thing that falls directly in the middle, the Fox News version of Obama. 



I don't know what disappoints me more: that a popular news channel portrays our first African-American president to be a Socialist, a terrorist, and a black radical, or that liberal Barack Obama apologists refuse to call out the president-elect on his shit when there's shit that needs to be called out. I have a feeling that even if Obama made Cheney the Secretary of Water-Boarding he would still have a slew of ardent and irrational supporters screaming, "He said he was going to be bipartisan dude....YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!"  
But I digress. Remember when every cable news Republican was spewing their not so subtle racism about Obama's cabinet? 



"Who's going to be Secretary of State, Flava Flav?" one said. 



"He's going to bring domestic terrorists into the War Room!" said another.



"I hate black people," the least subtle of the group proclaimed. 



Well, Barack Obama has announced his cabinet and it's almost as bad:



• Bush's Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, confirming that liberals shouldn't be near guns. We would just scream and cry a lot. 


• Hillary Clinton as the Secretary of State, confirming that Progressives shouldn't be near foreign leaders. We would just scream and cry a lot. 


• Jim Jones, a national security adviser with ties to Boeing and Chevron, two corporations that only profit when our country is not secure. 


• Rahm Emanuel, a chief of staff who may arm himself to the teeth, and parachute into Israel himself if this war doesn't end, ready to claim Gaza in the name of his crazy, racist father. 



It's times like this Flav isn't looking so bad, although his better half, Chuck D, would be preferable. I would take a black, radical Socialist over another triangulating pseudo-Liberal any day. 


Now that the election is over and we have all had time to breath, can we be honest? About Bill Ayers? About Reverend Wright? About these figures who were used to demonize Barack? They are no worse than the advisers or cabinet of our president-elect. These are the people who have overseen assassinations, crippling sanctions, and war crimes. Yet, they are off the hook while Ayers' and Wright's views were mocked and beaten down in the media because conversations on civil disobedience and blowback to American imperialism can only find their way into the mainstream media if these topics are being ridiculed. 

Millions of people have protested this war, yet the only footage of protest you see on the news is the burnt-out hippy having a "weed-in" to protest the treatment of a wild hamster that doesn't receive enough hugs. It's just enough air time to make all passionate liberals look crazy but probably not even enough to get that hamster his well-deserved hamster love. But Ayers and Wright gave protest a name and a face, and then had the shit knocked out of them for daring to dissent. 

This time the media finally had the chance to paint an intellectual as a terrorist ("Facts make you dangerous!") and rehash every white man's fear with Reverend Wright. "Look, it's a black guy yelling! What's next? Jazz music and disappearing white women?!" It's shameful, and it was never examined to it's fullest. 

Those of us who watch as this illegal war continues, and another that is about to be escalated, are angry. We can empathize with the helplessness felt by Bill Ayers' anti-war group, the Weather Underground. After years of having to turn to the international press to see the results of our actions, years of being stabbed in the back by a Democratic Congress, we know what it's like to have exhausted all reasonable options. Mr. Ayres never killed anyone, which is more than can be said for the administration he was protesting and the new administration that we are not.  

Sometime, I wish Barack did "pal around" with more people that would risk their own lives to stop an unjust war. Maybe then he wouldn't be so trigger happy with Afghanistan or such an enabler to Israel. 

When it comes to the Reverend Wright, that man sounded more like Martin Luther King Jr. then any of our present day leaders. People dug King when he would talk about race, but history comes to a suspicious halt when he started to talk about the war, about America's war crimes, and about the need to recognize our own history to save the world's future. Once he started to speak on that, all of the politicians, all the editors, and all of the white folks that praised King's leadership on race, turned their backs on King. They turned their backs and said,  "Hey, black guy. Why don't you stick to talking about black guy stuff?" Wright and Ron Paul were the only ones who went on TV and held us responsible for our actions. If that's radical, then I wish Obama stuck by his brother, and stuck by Trinity Church, instead of pandering to the white, hateful, segregating, Rick Warren.  

And Socialism? These days, it seems like Socialism in America is more popular than it is in Venezuela! The Banks want it, the car companies want it, and even Sears wants it. Being that we live in a democracy, you would think the will of the people would be honored. If we can have it for Wall Street, we should be able to have it at the most basic level in regards to health care. But Obama said he wants to bring the insurance companies to the table, which only makes sense if it's part of an elaborate ruse to get them all in one place at the same time so he can lock the doors and imprison them for the millions of lives they've cost this country. There is zero reason to bring them in otherwise. Mr. Obama, you said you don't negotiate with terrorists. The same rules apply when dealing with corporations that are terrorizing a people's health care system. If Socialism is providing health care the same way we provide a police force and a post office then I say, all hail Chairman Obama!

So in 2009, it's time to embrace some of these "insults." There is a reason that the same corporations that profit from the sick, from war, from minority infighting, scream out that traits like "Radicalism" and "Socialism" are bad. To truly embrace change, we need to actually do something different. We must remember that words aren't loud enough to stop a war, and that sometimes a terrorist attack is nothing more than the culmination of fear from a people who are just as scared of us as we are of them. Sometimes, ways of life that would take care of our least fortunate impede on the profits of our most fortunate. Sometimes, to achieve actual change you need to get your hands a little dirty.