Don't be Duped by a Media Seeking Sensation and False "Balance" by Attacks on Northam

The media has engaged in an orgiastic frenzy over images from a 35 year old yearbook that outwardly depict Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a personal friend, in an unflattering way and designed to suggest that Northam is somehow a closet racist. These are my reflections based on the Ralph Northam I know and the knee jerk reactions of some “progressives” and members of the LGBT community who trash their strongest advocates in an apparent quest for perfection that Christ himself could not satisfy.  Meanwhile, why isn't anyone asking why Eastern Virginia Medical School allowed such content in the school's yearbook in the first place?

Sadly, it is part and parcel with the media’s desire to stir sensationalism – which sells publications and prompts page views on online sites –and an obsession for “balance” that is employed time and time again to support a false equivalency between the Republican Party –which IS a racist party – and the Democrat Party. The truth and surrounding circumstances truly do not matter as long as publications are sold and page views are generated.

Governor Northam has apologized for a “racist and offensive” costume seen on his 1984 medical school yearbook page (the photo shows a person in blackface and another in full Ku Klux Klan robes). The governor did not say which costume (if any) he was wearing. Northam, in a statement said the behavior was not in keeping with his values and he will work to heal the damage he has caused. I have known Northam since 2007 when he ran for the Virginia Senate.  We first met at a fundraiser at the home a mutual friend.  In that successful campaign, Northam defeated Nick Rerras who I had known since my days on the City Committee for the Republican Party of the City of Virginia Beach.  In that election, Northam’s opponent, Rerras was a religious extremist and, in my view, like most “Christian conservatives” in Virginia, basically a racist. Northam’s lack of prejudice and religious extremism is what helped him secure victory.

I note Northam’s history from 2007, because locally, one of the publications engaging in the effort to trash Northam - and no doubt boost its own flagging revenues is the Virginian Pilot. I know from firsthand experience from my own run for political office a quarter century ago, that the Pilot cares absolutely nothing about the truth if it interferes with sensationalism that might sell newspapers or, nowadays, generate page views.  In that campaign despite have been provided with information that my opponent had a fraudulent PhD, the Pilot sat on that information.  The Pilot also went on to label me “Christian Right” – time has shown what a lie that was.

But, back to the immediate controversy involving Governor Northam.  For regular blog readers, it is no secret that the mindless effort to present “balance” on the part of the media drives me to distraction. Here we have a yearbook page from 35 years ago that is seemingly being used to equate Northam with the overt racists of the GOP base and the occupant of the White House who described white supremacists in Charlottesville who rioted and murdered one woman as “very fine people” in 2017.  Then, of course, we had the racist GOP rhetoric in the 2018 midterm elections and the ongoing GOP effort across the nation to disenfranchise black voters, something Northam adamantly opposes.  There is NO equivalence between incidents 35 years ago and those that are happening today. Shame on the media by a slight of hand for trying to make the two equivalent.

The last things I want to say are my first hand knowledge of Ralph Northam and his wife Pam. Unlike most people, my husband and I know them well and have shared private moments most will never have the opportunity to experience. During the 2017 Democrat primary, our home was the Northam headquarters for the Northam campaign.  We were able to see Ralph interact with the campaign volunteers, many of whom were black.  Ralph was gracious, kind and displayed zero prejudice. Indeed, I have never seen him treat anyone as less than his equal or take himself too seriously.  When not in campaign mode, we have spent time with the Northams, spent the night in their home and talked and laughed over drinks and dinner and seen them as their true selves. Never, ever, did we see even a hint of racial prejudice.  

I sincerely hope that past Northam supporters will take a deep breath and NOT fall for the sensation that the media – and behind the scenes, the GOP – must be enjoying.  It is sad to see a very fine man being trashed for events from 35 years ago while the modern day racists all too often get a free pass. I stand by Northam without hesitation. 

In closing, I pose a question someone posted on Facebook: It’s also funny the same Republicans that want him {Northam] to step down are the ones that celebrated Confederate generals during the current legislative session. Why didn’t these Republicans get asked to step down?

Is The Mainstream Media Normalizing Neo-Nazis?

The media can either be a bulwark of democracy and can protect the public at large from would be tyrants and ugly demagogues or it can be the downfall of democracy and decency.  Sadly, much of the media, especially cable news outlets, now seems to  be falling into the latter category through both laziness, the idiocy of many anchors who are selected based on physical looks rather than intelligence and analytical skills.  Add to this, the false equivalency that is so often given to candidates and their positions, not to mention the constant repetition of lies without challenging them and those who promote them.  Hitler and the Nazi regime and dictators like Vladimir Putin always seek to control the media because it is a key to furthering their anti-democratic agenda and often frightening policies. Here in America, we now see much of the media seemingly voluntarily doing the work of propagandists as they proceed with normalizing Neo-Nazis and other extremists by describing them as "conservatives" and "conservative Christians."  These hate merchants are not conservative nor are they Christian, yet through sickening deference and the unquestioning parroting of their lies and propaganda, the mainstream media is helping to kill America.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this disturbing phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

When the Los Angeles Times’s social media team tweeted a link to a storyabout last Saturday’s celebratory post-election gathering in Washington of racists, anti-Semites, and white nationalists, the reaction—at least by some—was collective outrage.

“Worthless @latimes covers resurgent neo-Nazi movement as if it was a new boy band,” one of dozens of aggrieved readers tweeted after the paper touted the story on the benignly yet deceptively named National Policy Institute with the cheeky tweet, “Meet the new think tank in town: The ‘alt-right’ comes to Washington.”

Another critic, actor Adam Shapiro, who was in the cast of Aaron Sorkin’s Steve Jobsbiopic, objected to the respectful attention the Times’s coverage of the conference accorded National Policy Institute president Richard Spencer, who is credited with coining the term “alt-right” for his fellow twenty- and thirty-something clean-cut millennials who would rather not be tagged as xenophobic thugs.

“WTF?! Why are you glamorizing this guy, @latimes? This is not a think tank. It’s a hate group,” Shapiro tweeted in response not only to Lisa Mascaro’s story—which quoted Spencer as hailing “the alt-right as an intellectual vanguard”—but also to an accompanying video in which the telegenic and articulate white nationalist was given four unchallenged minutes to reasonably explain his dream “to influence politics and influence culture” to restore white people of European descent to unquestioned power and social dominance, adding, “I think we have an amazing opportunity to do that with Donald Trump.”

In fairness, Mascaro’s story—which eventually carried an altered headline, dropping the “think tank” idea in favor of “White nationalists dress up and come to Washington in hopes of influencing Trump”—did point out that “the formally dressed men more resembled Washington lobbyists than the robed Ku Klux Klansmen or skinhead toughs that often represent white supremacists, though they share many familiar views.”

But unlike more unsympathetic accounts of the gathering in The New York Times and The Daily Beast, it made no mention of partygoers, including former MTV host Tila Tequila, jubilantly giving the Nazi salute and engaging in other less than democracy-friendly behavior.

Still, the LA Times story also quoted Heidi Beirich, of the anti-hate group nonprofit, the Southern Poverty Law Center, as warning against the “mainstreaming” of pernicious ideologies that the National Policy Institute represents.

Beirich, while calling the LA Times’s Mascaro “thoughtful,” cautioned news outlets not to legitimize such groups with apparently balanced, if not credulous, coverage.

“I don’t want anything to normalize the National Policy Institute,” she told The Daily Beast. “I think there has been a tendency in the press to not understand what the alt-right is—which is white supremacy. And I think we’re letting haters basically rebrand themselves to sound less threatening—and that is very disappointing. I worry about that.”

The LA Times’s spokesperson didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.

Democracy doesn't die without either the willing or forced complicity of the press and news media.  I truly wish some of these "journalists" would take a history course on the rise of Hitler and the Nazi regime and then take a good look at themselves in the mirror. If they are not relentlessly exposing the hate and evilness of these Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, then they are part of the problem. 

President Obama to Media: Stop the False Equivalence

Today President Obama took on a topic that has been driving me to distraction, namely the lameness of the mainstream media and the false equivalence afforded to Donald Trump and his ugly, retrograde campaign.  A video of Obama's remarks is set out above.  A piece in Salon looks at Obama's remarks and the manner in which the irresponsible media is endangering the nation.  Here are excerpts:

With less than four weeks to go until voting registration closes in Pennsylvania, President Obama hit the campaign trail in Philadelphia for his first solo rally on behalf of Hillary Clinton on Tuesday.

In front of the steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum made famous in the film “Rocky,” the president came out swinging strongly against Clinton’s Republican rival Donald Trump, explicitly naming the Birther turned White House aspirant for the first time while chiding the media for giving him a pass for his inflammatory rhetoric.

“You want to debate who’s more fit to be our president? One candidate who’s traveled to more countries than any secretary of state ever has, has more qualifications than pretty much anyone who’s ever run for this job and the other who isn’t fit in any way, shape, or form to represent this country abroad and be its commander-in-chief,” Obama said. “So somehow as things go on because we’ve become so partisan, our standards for what’s normal have changed. And Donald Trump says stuff everyday that used to be considered as disqualifying for being president. And yet because he says it over and over and over again the press just gives up and they just say, well, yeah, OK.”

“You can’t grade the presidency on a curve,” the president proclaimed, critiquing the coverage Trump has received in comparison to Clinton. “This is serious business. And when we see folks talking about transparency — you want to debate transparency? You’ve got one candidate in this debate who’s released decades worth of her tax returns. The other candidate is the first in decades who refuses to release any at all,”

“You want to debate foundations and charities? One candidate’s family foundation has saved countless lives around the world. The other candidate’s foundation took money other people gave to his charity and then bought a six-foot-tall painting of himself.”

“America’s got a lot of businessmen and women who have succeeded without hiding their taxes returns, or leaving a trail of lawsuits, workers who didn’t get paid, people feeling like they got cheated,” Obama said.

Pointing to Trump’s repeated assertion that he was opposed to the war in Iraq despite having supported an invasion in 2002 in an interview with Howard Stern, Obama provided the fact-check that had often been missing from prominent media figures: “Well, actually, he wasn’t.”

“But they just accept it,” the president said of the media. “So the bottom line is, is that we can not afford suddenly to treat this like a reality show. We can’t afford to act as if there’s some equivalence here.

Amen to what Obama said.  Will journalists get their heads out of their asses and be responsible and do their jobs?  I am not holding my breath. 

Will Myopic Journalist "Balance" Empower Donald Trump?

One of the things that drives me to distraction about much of the mainstream media is the lunatic notion that there reporting must be "balanced" - namely that they need to treat each candidate to comparable coverage even as they fail to identify the lies and misogyny that one side may be furthering.  Had journalist done their jobs the disastrous Iraq War could have been avoided.  Now we are faced with a narcissistic demagogue as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.  A man who has no qualms about lying and fantastic exaggeration.  The question at hand is whether the media through its laziness and reticence  to call out liars.  A column in the New York Times challenges the media to do its job - including exposing lies (the main stock in trade of today's GOP and Trump in particular).  Here are excerpts:

How will the news media handle the battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? I suspect I know the answer — and it’s going to be deeply frustrating. But maybe, just maybe, flagging some common journalistic sins in advance can limit the damage. So let’s talk about what can and probably will go wrong in coverage — but doesn’t have to.

First, and least harmful, will be the urge to make the election seem closer than it is, if only because a close race makes a better story.

A more important vice in political coverage, which we’ve seen all too often in previous elections — but will be far more damaging if it happens this time — is false equivalence.

You might think that this would be impossible on substantive policy issues, where the asymmetry between the candidates is almost ridiculously obvious. To take the most striking comparison, Mr. Trump has proposed huge tax cuts with no plausible offsetting spending cuts, yet has also promised to pay down U.S. debt; meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton has proposed modest spending increases paid for by specific tax hikes. That is, one candidate is engaged in wildly irresponsible fantasy while the other is being quite careful with her numbers.

But beware of news analyses that, in the name of “balance,” downplay this contrast. This isn’t a new phenomenon: Many years ago, when George W. Bush was obviously lying about his budget arithmetic but nobody would report it, I suggested that if a candidate declared that the earth was flat, headlines would read, “Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.”

But this year it could be much, much worse. And what about less quantifiable questions about behavior? I’ve already seen pundits suggest that both presumptive nominees fight dirty, that both have taken the “low road” in their campaigns. For the record, Mr. Trump has impugned his rivals’ manhood, called them liars and suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was associated with J.F.K.’s killer. On her side, Mrs. Clinton has suggested that Bernie Sanders hasn’t done his homework on some policy issues. These things are not the same.

Finally, I can almost guarantee that we’ll see attempts to sanitize the positions and motives of Trump supporters, to downplay the racism that is at the heart of the movement and pretend that what voters really care about are the priorities of D.C. insiders — a process I think of as “centrification.”

That is, after all, what happened after the rise of the Tea Party. I’ve seen claims that Tea Partiers were motivated by Wall Street bailouts, or even that the movement was largely about fiscal responsibility, driven by voters upset about budget deficits. In fact, there was never a hint that any of these things mattered; if you followed the actual progress of the movement, it was always about white voters angry at the thought that their taxes might be used to help Those People, whether via mortgage relief for distressed minority homeowners or health care for low-income families.

Now I’m seeing suggestions that Trumpism is driven by concerns about political gridlock. No, it isn’t. It isn’t even mainly about “economic anxiety.” Trump support in the primaries was strongly correlated with racial resentment: We’re looking at a movement of white men angry that they no longer dominate American society the way they used to. And to pretend otherwise is to give both the movement and the man who leads it a free pass.

In the end, bad reporting probably won’t change the election’s outcome, because the truth is that those angry white men are right about their declining role. America is increasingly becoming a racially diverse, socially tolerant society, not at all like the Republican base, let alone the plurality of that base that chose Donald Trump.

Still, the public has a right to be properly informed. The news media should do all it can to resist false equivalence and centrification, and report what’s really going on.