I've already documented how conservatives, picking up on poor reporting from the AP have accused Barack Obama of "inciting" or "justifying" violence in a speech where he explicitly denounces violence, but now the MSM is picking up on the idea that Obama is somehow threatening violent protests over conditions in urban communities. It is exclusively the racist shorthand about black people and violence that makes the coverage possible.
From Paula Zahn Now, on CNN:
ZAHN: Is major violence really a threat in our cities, or is this just a scare tactic to win votes, particularly from black voters? We are bringing this controversy out in the open before it gets even bigger.
[...]
ZAHN: Tonight, conservative blogs are buzzing with outrage at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. It's because the senator said yesterday that there are quiet riots all over the country waiting to burst out in the opening. Have you ever heard him say that before?
Well, before we discuss whether this is a serious warning or just shameless fear-mongering to win votes, I want to take a minute to let you hear exactly what he's talking about.
Zahn shows several excerpts from the speech, deliberately avoiding Obama's definition of "quiet riot". This is what Obama says.
Those "quiet riots" that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths. They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better. You tell yourself, my school will always be second rate. You tell yourself, there will never be a good job waiting for me to excel at. You tell yourself, I will never be able to afford a place that I can be proud of and call my home. That despair quietly simmers and makes it impossible to build strong communities and neighborhoods. And then one afternoon a jury says, "Not guilty" -- or a hurricane hits New Orleans -- and that despair is revealed for the world to see.
And here is what Zahn says, rather than allow Obama to define "quiet riot" as he does in the speech, she stops the clip in middle so she can give her own interpretation of the term.
ZAHN (voice-over): Barack Obama was trying to make a point to a conference of ministers in Virginia. And, so, he took them back to Los Angeles in 1992 and days of bloody rioting that killed more than 50 people and injured thousands. It started when a jury acquitted police officers in a brutal assault case in which the victim was a black motorist named Rodney King. But Obama says the unrest was growing long before that.
OBAMA: Those riots didn't erupt overnight. There had been a quiet riot building up in Los Angeles and across this country for years.
ZAHN: And Obama told the ministers, these quiet riots are still happening today all over the country, fueled by poverty, hopelessness and despair.
OBAMA: That despair quietly simmers and makes it impossible to build strong communities and neighborhoods. And then one afternoon a jury says, "Not guilty," or a hurricane hits New Orleans, and that despair is revealed for the world to see.
ZAHN: Now, nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Obama insists, our country still ignores communities that are impoverished and without hope.
See how Zahn deliberately crops the speech to foster the misunderstanding that when Obama says "quiet riot", he is referring to actual violence rather than internalized emotional devastation of urban hopelessness?
This allows Republican "babe of the week" Amy Holmes to compare Obama to Pat Buchanan and accuse him of using the "language of violent protest".
HOLMES: But, you know, I have to disagree with Roland, that, as a presidential candidate, somebody who is going to be sitting in the Oval Office as president of all of us, potentially -- that's his -- that's his goal and his ambition -- that he has to be careful about using the language of violent protest.
Let's go back to those L.A. riots. Who were hurt most by them? The African-American community. They didn't go to Beverly Hills to burn down the shops. They were destroying the African-American community.
[...]
If you remember, Pat Buchanan, in 1992, talking about culture wars and people with pitchforks, was roundly criticized by using that aggressive language.
Does that condemnation of violence sound familiar? maybe it's because Obama made it in his speech.
Much of what we saw on our television screens 15 years ago was Los Angeles expressing a lingering, ongoing, pervasive legacy—a tragic legacy out of the tragic history this country has never fully come to terms with. This is not to excuse the violence of bashing in a man's head or destroying someone's store and their life's work. That kind of violence is inexcusable and self-defeating. It does, however, describe the reality of many communities around this country.
To his credit, Roland Martin points out that no one there knows what they're talking about.
And let me make this point, and, Amy, which you probably didn't understand. He said in the actual speech that the violence that was committed after the riots was absolutely wrong. And what he also said is, guys who are coming out of prison, they should be educated. We should pull them back in our society.
But what's significant is that the MSM has clearly picked up on the conservative distortion of its originally flawed narrative regarding Barack Obama's "quiet riot" speech in order to exploit white fears about black violence.
Also worth noting is that Paula Zahn's roundtable consists of two black conservatives, Amy Holmes and Niger Innis of the now ironically named Congress of Racial Equality, and one liberal, Roland Martin.
This hardly provides a realistic representation of black political leanings, since we vote overwhelmingly Democratic, but it does prioritize conservative misinformation.
Prometheus 6 notes that Roland penned a column on the distortions made by the original AP article, but it is unlikely to garner significant attention.
UPDATE: In a shameless plug, if anyone is interested in my blog you can find it here.