Race card
Journo-List
The JournoList was a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists who privately discussed ways to assist Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign in the mainstream media.[1] Employees of news organizations including Time magazine, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, the Nation, Salon and the New Republic participated.
Spencer Ackerman, who worked for the Washington Independent (a branch of the American Independent News Network) proposed a strategy to defend Barack Obama during the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Church of Liberation Theology revelations (note the Marxist terminology):
| “ | I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It's not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright's defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger's [pejorative reference] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. ...And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them--Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares--and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.[2] | ” |
Immigration reform
The Washington Post reported,
| “ | [T]he president's call for legislation that acknowledges the role of immigrants and goes beyond punishing undocumented workers will help cement a permanent political relationship between Democrats and Hispanics -- much as civil rights and voting rights legislation did for the party and African Americans in the 1960s. As a result, although the president is unlikely to press for comprehensive immigration reform this year, he has urged his allies to keep up the pressure on Republican lawmakers. | ” |
James Taranto writing in the Wall Street Journal noted, "In the Post's telling, Obama is merely giving lip service to comprehensive immigration reform in order to win votes."
See also
Notes
External links
- JournoList: Is 'call them racists' a liberal media tactic?, Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor, July 20, 2010.
