TV Media's Willful Misunderstanding of Barack Obama's Race Speech

Cable TV and its various punditocracies don't want a more perfect union. Television news, like all theater, captures its audience through dramatizing conflict. It thrives on discord. Resolution and unity are fifth act business; news shows run in a continuous loop between acts three and four. This generalization is unfair to The NewsHour on PBS and to the occasionally thoughtful and well-researched pieces elsewhere but it applies to the majority of the video coverage of Barack Obama's race remarks three days out. Within hours of Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech in Philadelphia, commentators separately put forward the same narrative: Obama had done something historic. By the end of the day, coming down from the initial elation that almost everyone who heard the speech in its entirety experienced, pundits were skeptical, after all, that Obama had been able to call Americans to the better angels of their nature. These talking heads began to posit "the working class guy in Youngstown" as poster boy for everybody who hasn't been able to rise to the challenge of Obama's argument.

That guy in Youngstown (or Scranton or Greensboro) has become the media's other--a convenient distraction shifting commentators and news outlets away from having to face the fact that Barack Obama is calling them, as well, to the better angels of their nature. So far, TV news personalities are not meeting the challenge. The very first thing that the controversy over Barack Obama's association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright highlights is the failure of the national, and still largely white, media to interest themselves in the black church. Of course, many in media have known the spectrum of black churches, but they have allowed white America to dwell in a mythical and static past built on King-like spiritual uplift, even as black liberation theology and other forces were carrying African-American Christians down the river of history--just as everyone everywhere is carried by whatever forces down the course of time. Why would African-American churches remain the same, when nothing else does? The success of the Civil Rights Movement has given black Americans the freedom to express anger and resentments and to air beliefs that they had to bottle in the past; where they have chosen to exercise this freedom is Sunday morning. The Reverend Wright's remarks rose out of that process, which in turn has already given way to something different without which Barack Obama never could have traveled as far as he has. As Clarence Page of The Chicago-Tribune described that "something different" yesterday on MSNBC, "He [Obama] is not afflicted by P.T.S. D. Post-traumatic Slavery Disorder. My great-grandparents were born in slavery in Alabama. That gives you a lot of cultural baggage that Obama, whose father came from Kenya and his mom from Kansas, and grew up partly in South Asia, . . . doesn't have."

There are many reasons for this decades-long neglect of an important and ongoing story, and none of them reflect well on the fourth estate. It is reprehensible for media to understand something and not to report it, but that's been happening here. Black belief is one of the third rails of American politics and American reportage. Over the past few years, realizing that coverage of American religious life had languished, the media in general has been trying to catch up. Therefore, we've seen many stories on suburban mega-churches and recently, for example, on the ways Evangelicals have begun working on the problem of global warming. Journalists have covered the ongoing drama in the Episcopal Church over ordaining gay ministers as each new scene unfolds--and this is a particularly revealing comparison, for condemnation of homosexuality is endemic in the black church, and yet the national media has been the three monkeys on this story. Barack Obama speaks out frequently against this prejudice on the stump--and yet how many times has this been reported? (In answer to a question about gay rights, he admonished African-Americans in Beaumont, Texas, "I think that everybody in this country should be treated equally. Now I'm a Christian--I praise Jesus every Sunday--but I hear people saying things I don't think are very Christian." Half his audience applauded; half sat in silence.) As a 2004 Election observer, my husband and the other lawyers on his team were astonished at the African-Americans in their Cleveland precincts voting for Bush because they associated Kerry with gay marriage. The media has never examined the black vote in Ohio in depth. Turning a blind eye has also played a role in the current election. Just as religion is turning out to be a major theme of Election 2008, so the spent political capital and the moral corruption of some of the older generation of black clergy in America came together in a powerful way in the South Carolina Democratic Primary, and yet this element of the contest has only been glanced upon by journalists.

What could the media be doing now to make up the distance? They could be staging Act One and Act Two. Yesterday Clarence Page mentioned by-the-by that he knew black reporters in Chicago who went to Reverend Wright's Trinity Church. Why hasn't the TV media chased down those reporters? Why hasn't the media talked to other Trinity members? News interns could be getting hold of all Reverend Wright's sermons (most ministers keep written records) and putting the inflammatory YouTube clips in context. What is that context? What did Wright preach most often? That's the news Americans need the media to provide. When Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post interviewed Barack Obama right after the Philadelphia speech, Obama told Robinson that the questionable Wright rhetoric he had heard from the pew typically was rough language directed at fathers who didn't take responsibility. The fact that Robinson, who appears on MSNBC throughout any given day, has not been aggressive in putting this detail out there is also revealing, for in general African-Americans in TV media have not pushed hard against the misleading conclusions of their white peers on the story.

The media could be replaying Obama's speech in its entirety instead of just snippets. Despite the number of hits on YouTube (likely students who were asleep or in class Tuesday morning), few Americans have seen the speech--if the reaction to Barbara Walters's questioning of her View audience the day after is any indication. (And these were women who presumably didn't have to work on a weekday.) Instead, however, the speech coverage has grown increasingly reductive and polemic even as the TV media has indulged its obsession with it. Here, for example, is the devolution of Joe Scarborough, who has frequently said he likes Barack Obama, particularly because he doesn't demonize Republicans:

Monday morning on his MSNBC show Morning Joe , Joe Scarborough says, "Obama said all the right things [about Wright] on Friday [to Anderson Cooper]. That's the type of leader Americans want."

Tuesday afternoon, on David Gregory's Race for the White House only hours after Obama's "more perfect union" speech, Joe Scarborough comments, "Unlike a lot of people I've been hearing today, I'm not declaring him [Obama] the next President of the United States and throwing him a ticker tape parade." This is Scarborough's caveat to his general approval of the speech.

By Wednesday's Morning Joe, however, Scarborough is having second thoughts and playing the skeptic. "The commentariat say this [speech] will help him get elected." But Scarborough has decided that Obama "threw his grandmother under the bus" in the speech. And he's decided that "the guy in Youngstown" is not going to vote for Barack Obama. What he's basing this observation on is unclear, since he hasn't ventured from the studio to speak with any regular Joes in Ohio. Scarborough continues in the faux-confessional style that briefly afflicted several pundits in the immediate aftermath of Obama's speech. "As a guy who has been blessed in the most amazing ways by God and this country, I do not understand the point of view of that guy in Youngstown, Ohio because he has a life much tougher than mine and because I've been blessed and because I'm in Manhattan and I live on the waterfront in Florida--I can say thank God from the bottom of my heart--and I mean this, this is my experience--thank God Barack Obama made that speech because my children will grow up in a better country because of it." With the wryness that is often his saving grace, Scarborough adds, "I will grow up in a better country because of it."

Thursday's Morning Joe--two days after Obama's speech--begins with the now familiar photograph of Obama and Wright in younger days. Then Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson, the Uriah Heep of cable news, newly-unemployed and suddenly available for however long to Scarborough, who should know better, bat the race story back and forth for almost the entire show. Does anybody at MSNBC care that it's the anniversary of the Iraq War? That Barack Obama gave an Iraq speech Wednesday with another one coming up later in the day Thursday? That Wall Street has been corkscrewing in wild gyrations? No matter. Scarborough is eager to rant. "They don't give somebody a free pass for sitting in a pew for ten years listening to a pastor talk about the U-S-K-K-K-of-A, or saying we got what we deserved on September 11, or that the government invented AIDS, or that the government shipped drugs into inner cities--being black does not give anybody a free pass to say such sorts of things."

"That is exactly who we didn't think Obama was," Tucker Carlson says in a tone that suggests the opposite.

To be fair, I should mention that most of the cable TV pundits are now concluding that despite (or perhaps because of) Obama's nuanced explanation of his relationship with his pastor the Senator has not adequately addressed the situation. That they might do some actual reportage to flesh out that explanation and to try to comprehend it doesn't seem to occur to any of them. By Thursday, Joe Scarborough is reading Obama's decline in the new polls and letting that rather predictable development lead him by the nose. "I won't say it's a seismic shift in the polls," Scarborough says, "but Independents are bolting." He ends his discourse on the complexity of Obama's race remarks with the observation that "Idi Amin was a complex figure." Suddenly, rumination (however false) gives way to further rant and the hour gets more and more contentious, with Scarborough's weather newswoman, when Scarborough belatedly turns to her, snapping "Now I've just eight second to do it!"

Touching the subject of race, as the unwinding of Joe Scarborough's reaction to Obama's speech dramatizes, continues to be poison and goes to the heart of the reason the media has never been able to find the courage to look forthrightly at the black church. Someday perhaps "A More Perfect Union" will be a handhold for Americans. But that speech could be Barack Obama's contribution, in sum, to the nation. His bid for the Democratic nomination is now less sure. Not addressing every aspect of the friendship with Reverend Wright a year ago, when Obama dis-invited the pastor from giving the invocation in Springfield, turns out to have been a huge error on the part of the Obama Campaign. This decision (or lack thereof) is ironic and sad because Iowa, the first state in line to meet Obama, had the time to digest the Obama-Wright relationship and come to terms with it. Iowans, as we now know, were more than up to the more perfect union challenge. They could have laid the groundwork for larger acceptance. Instead that tactical mistake adds to the continuing questions about the Senator's judgment in friendship. If more white Christians and more black Christians had grown up visiting one another's churches, there would be more cross-cultural understanding that also could lay to rest the questions; for now, however, that more perfect union-at-large is yet to be.

Comments

[RG986xx]

Thank you. I couldn't have said it better.

Roland Martin has tried many times to try to put things in context only to be cut off.

Mika on Morning Joe has tried to get Joe to see another side and he either cuts her off or tells her she needs to get out more. I think Joe needs to get out more and realize that his views sound like he's never been out of the South.

I loved it when Chris Matthews was on the show and told Joe that he had grown up not seeing a Black person until he joined the Peace Corps and went to Alabama to live with a Black family for training. Joe almost fell off his chair (wish he had!).

Lou Dobbs even joined the "why did he stay in that church?" crowd and I thought he was more open minded and researched things before he made his commentaries ... obviously not.

Maybe it's time to reread all those old books and turn the tube off until the election is over?

[Mariel]

Roland Martin is a really great addition to the Fourth Estate. Always the best analysis on CNN.
I don't watch "Morning Joe", because we dropped MSNBC to save money, but I saw the Huffpo video of Mike Huckabee on Morning Joe, in which Mike put this entire Wright story in its proper place. If only the right wing media had seen fit to support Mike, although we all know they are not supporting "real" conservatives, but, to use your word "oligarchs." And they know abysmally little about the black churches, as you say.

My husband and I, white, belonged to a mostly black church in Seattle, and we have some knowledge of black people as individual human beings whom we liked. We wish we were back there. We're stuck in Bill Richardson's state.

[earnesttruthseeker]

It is sad. Instead of commenting on the ENTIRETY of the speech - and how Obama spoke to BOTH sides of the issue...pundits are parsing and picking out soundbytes from the speech to serve their own interests. Their commentary on it proves that many still aren't ready to see the big picture Obama was attempting to paint. And in commenting the way they have - they've missed Obama's point entirely. Sad indeed.

[anywho]

Hatred and racisim on a loop. Isn't our white male dominated MSM elegant and inspirational!

[MariaHopeful]

Thank you for one of the more insightful pieces we have seen thus far. Thank you for especially chronicling the inconsistencies and pandering of Joe Scarborough who, God help us, is just the most moderate of the hate-mongering rightwing who now senses a chance to add a big notch in their belt. They did get Bill Clinton impeached but he wasn't run out of office. To derail the campaign of Obama would be a huge coup.

My problem with your piece is that you didn't flesh out your commentary a bit to include the investigation of the white church. We have the "black church" precisely because black people were not welcome, were not deemed fit to interact on a social (or any) level with whites in church on Sunday mornings. To suddenly view black churches as being racists, unpatriotic, hateful and white churches just the opposite is to further the big lie. The church, which became known as the "black church" was the only place an oppressed, terrorized, silent people could go to express themselves. The only place they had a voice. The only place available to them to remind themselves that they were human beings and equally worthy of God's love. Joe Scarborough in his most faux-sincere voice asked: Is this what we are to expect of black churches? Have you heard what goes on in white churches? Granted, for the most parted it is not passionately screamed at the congregation but rather stated calmly and softly but no less devastating. In fact I would argue that it is even more so.

This whole debate re the "black church" preaching hate reminds me of the OJ Simpson trial. White people believed even before the evidence was presented that OJ was guilty and ought to be found guilty post haste. Black people who had no great love for OJ but wondered why white people and the white media was so emotionally involved in this case when history is replete with atrocities committed by white people against black people, took offense. An all-black jury declared him not guilty and the media immediately said that was jury nullification, that was black people acquitting him because he was black. Come the civil trial and an all-white jury found him liable and it was OK. No talk of an all-white jury finding him liable because they were white and he was black. And whites have yet to understand that blacks could care less about OJ Simpson. What they saw was how the media chooses what is big and what is not. The importance placed on a white life as opposed to the black life. The OJ Simpson case was a bigger case than Tim McVeigh's. OJ Simpson is more hated that Tim McVeigh, probably second only to Bin Laden. Understand the OJ Simpson case and we go along way to understanding racism in America and then we can begin to heal.

[editrix66]

This was an excellent essay. I stopped watching Scarborough this week after I couldn't stomach it anymore. Instead of discussing real issues, Scarborough, Buchanan, and Tucker tried to pick apart Obama's words, criticize him for his relationship with Trinity, and refused to look at broader issues. And I feel bad for the "working-class white guy" in Pennsylvania, who is being portrayed as a stupid, knucklehead racist, who could never understand complexity. The media are ridiculous in this country. Good for you for this analysis.

[GwenElle]

HuffPost's Pick

Thanks Mayhill for this great article.

I have watched in near horror as the MSM has wasted and undermined this excellent opportunity to elevant the discussion of race and race relations in this country. Without shame the pund-idiots have failed the nation once again, are serving themselves rather than what is in the best interest of the nation’s future.

joe scarborough and pat buchanan have been the worst among the panderering pundits. It has sickened me to listen to their willful justification of their own narrow point of view; sickened me more that they are given a free platform and paid handsomely to do so.

In truth, I am not one who believed that the speech would make much difference in the public discourse; the forces of entrenchment and political self interest have been in place to long. Barack’s speech as great as it was not without flaw. I listened to the speech live and knew just the moment when the likes of scarborough and buchanan would have all the ammunition they needed to re-enforce their own points of view. My stomach literally knotted as Barack made the rightful recognition that there was no point in listing the history of racial injustice, but then went right on to do so. I am African American, born and raised in the south. I sensed and believed that the recitation of, true as it was of America’s injustices would serve to rile the unexpressed rage that whites feel towards any who dares to raise the specter of national responsibility for the sins of our (their) fathers. To closed minds, responsibility and atonement register only as guilt. It was a big miscue on Barack's part that he could not or did not recognize this most likeliest of reactions.

It is also regrettable that Barack did not address the more personal reasons for his relationship with Wright and the church. In this regard, I fear that his intellectual gifts overwhelmed his emotional truths: a mixed race boy with an absent father, in search for his place in the world, a sense of belonging and connection to community found both through Wright and his church. Psychological and emotional need for connection is human and as such imperfect.

Barack’s willingness to see and believe the best in us may win out in the end, and I submit that it must if this nation is to survive, but it is going to take a lot more and better than what we have gotten so far from the MSM to help make "a more perfect union".

Again, thanks for your great article!

[PKSSK]

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you...I watched Scarborough this week as well and was appalled at how ignorant and divisive his interpretaion of the speech became as the week went on. Today, I became ill as he continued to draw on his personal view of a reference Obama made about his grandmother and proceeded to apply it as the majority view. I watched as Mika, who aptly tried to correct the interpretation, was interrupted and rebuffed as wrong.

Here is a thought for MSNBC, remove Joe Scarborough and replace the lead with Mika and add John Ridley and then MSNBC would see a lift in ratings or better yet, try speaking honestly without condemming the innocent. Joe has either been mandated to destroy the image of Obama or his republican ideology has overcome the show and turned off many in the process, including me.

[lovethesinner]

You are so right on. I've been emailing both Hardball and countdown for weeks. Joe Scarborough, and especially Pat Buchanan aren't fit for television.

Here's their emails: countdown@msnbc, and hardball@msnbc.

I thought Tiki Barbour was great this morning, but my favorite combo was Andrea Mitchell, and Wille Geist. I think they really like each other. I caught Willie blushing for real, at the end of the week they substituted for the most dysfunctional family in cable. (not Mika's fault, Joe is a misogynist, for real. I mean, he's actually verbally abusive, like the time Buchanan told that woman to "shut up". You can see it in their faces... the snarl of contempt.)

Obama-Webb in '08

[anywho]

Just turn the tube off. It's gong to be like this to the GE. No need to get all excited. They are on orders from corporate headquarters to do EVERYTHING they can to bring this wonderful man down. It has worked for 20 years but as the saying goes " you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time but you cannot fool all the people all the time". This is where we are at now. Their verbiage won't work this time. SO JUST DO YOURSELF A FAVOR< TURN THE TV OFF AND R-E-L-A-X!!!! We'll celebrate on November 6, 2008. Meantime just read the blogs, they are without doubt more intellectual, informative and interesting than ANYTHING on TV anyway. GOBAMA.

[Rule Of Law]

And just one more--this one shows the Corporate interrelationships between Media and those they Should be reporting On!

The following are but a few of the corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the US:

New York Times: Caryle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, Hallmark,
Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi

Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette,
G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody's

Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block, Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels
The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft,
McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo

News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments

GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM,
Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter & Gamble,

Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette,
Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo,

Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge North America
Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target,
Pepsi,

AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton

Can we trust the news editors at the Washington Post to be fair and objective regarding news stories about Lockheed-Martin defense contract over-runs? Or can we assuredly believe that ABC will conduct critical investigative reporting on Halliburton's sole-source contracts in Iraq? I think we know the answer!

http://www.projectcensored.org/newsflash/big_media_interlocks.html

[Rule Of Law]

Bill Clinton championed the disastrous Telecom Act of 1996 and otherwise did almost nothing to impede the drift toward oligopoly. (As Newsweek reported in 2000, Al Gore was Rupert Murdoch's personal choice for President.

AOL Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann, AT&T and Liberty Media are the companies that continue to tell us all the news we need to know! What is forgotten, is that they use what is called the "Public Airwaves" to do so, and purchase that from the Federal Government, to which they gave last year alone, over 1 Billion dollars in political donations!

http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html

Click on the icons to see who owns what!

And the full story is here:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020107/miller

[sd4peace]

I believe that the MSM has done thins country a tremendous disservice (what else is new) in their reporting after the speech. Instead of reporting his true words, they are echoing their own twisted interpretations, and reporting their absurd speculations as FACT.

There was a real chance to have a constructive meaningful discussion about race and how it affects all sides in this debate. Instead it has been twisted and spun in order to keep the discussion in a more confrontational tone, which is EXACTLY how the MSM had planned it.

As long as the discussion and rhetoric are not based in the reality of the situation, the American People will not benefit from this enormous opportunity to move forward toards a more fundamental understanding of each other.

[irishamerican]

The MSM Giveth, and the MSM taketh away.

In as much as they are capable of destroying someone, they are also JUST as capable of resurrecting them.

I predict before this weekend is over, the "context" will emerge, and they will ressurect Obama.

It serves them not to totaly destroy him at this point, that attempt will come in October.

[rojo7449]

The context of all of them, I would hope. Some were easier to see as less "violent" if surrounded by a whole thought, but some weren't.

[2008andbeyond]

Damn you're good.

[nazardesign]

On a positive note, Roland Martin has posted a heartening analysis of the 9/11 sermon given by Rev. Wright on the AC360 blog. It is, in fact, complete reporting. Interestingly, it seems that watching the entire sermon hasn't been standard fare for the reporters and talking heads who are talking this to death. Even for Mr. Martin until yesterday. I'm not sure that the actual outcome will be as dire as you predict, but it certainly is more complicated now. Especially since Bill Richardson is on board as an Obama supporter.