Just What Obama Warned Against

So I've spent several hours today listening to the media's commentary on Obama's speech.  CNN, MSNBC, even right wing radio to see how they would respond.  I've heard liberals and conservatives, Obama supporters and Clinton supporters, pastors and laypersons, whites and blacks.  Not one of them heard what Obama was saying.

What were they talking about?  Race, mostly, a little bit about religion, a good amount about the horse race and the effect of Obama's speech on the presidential campaign.  It's exactly what Obama was warning against.

Remember what Obama said?  That we should put aside the politics of division, conflict and cynicism, that we should avoid being distracted and talk about the problems we all need to solve and the goals we all want to achieve.  I listened very closely this evening and not one reporter or commentator even mentioned this part of Obama's speech*, which I would argue was the main point of the entire speech. Instead, it was all distraction, all calculation.

Perhaps some of you would like to join me in pointing this out to the media.

(* except for Stewart and Colbert, of course)

•  This theme deserves a Diary a day. n/t

  by Meteor Blades on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 10:54:09 PM PDT

  •  Well, there goes my daily diary allotment.

    This might as well serve as a belated tip jar.

    by kosophile on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:28:11 PM PDT

    •  Recruit some help. ;) n/t

      by Meteor Blades on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:29:27 PM PDT

•  The media doesn't care

  its about keeping David Broder and his circle happy, not Americans informed.

  There is no ratings upside to resolving controversies in the cable news world.

  The sooner the center left figures it out, and we get our Fox News to cancel out their echo and start shaping news narratives, the better off we will be.

  by LeftHandedMan on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 10:54:55 PM PDT

  •  Everything you write is correct

    I just think that its time we all admitted it, the GOP won the war on the "the media is liberal" front and neutered them into an extension of their echochamber at the very worst, and into a junior high school clique of catty kool kidz at best.

    Bill Moyers is fighting a lonely battle against time as he is getting older, and when he passes, I wonder if there will be anyone to take his place. Maybe PBS will be privatized by the next wingnut President by then.

    Things are only going to stay as they are in Wolf Blitzer's World, or get worse.

    Wait til Rupert Murdoch owns Yahoo! someday, or Google. And suddenly how the Internet gives the vast majority of Americans their homepages are like Fox News.

    It's not going to be pretty running for the Democratic party for President if we don't have a counter to that advantage, or block it from being gained now.

    We have to beat the GOP and the media to win.

    That means that the country has to be going to hell in a handbasket for Democrats to have a real advantage. Most of the time that isn't going to be the case because conservatives are masters at stringing out collapses so they happen in a way that can be blamed on somebody else. (Like us.)

    John McCain is proudly supported and supporting a pastor, Hagee, who is an vicious anti-semite and anti-Catholic bigot. He believes that after the battle of Armageddon the Jews will be forced onto their knees and given a choice: accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior... or die. Those who choose to remain Jews will be slaughtered, by their own God and his angels, in this school of Dispensationalism that Hagee adheres to.

    But the far right, and Hagee, get a "Friend of Israel" pass because McCain is a warhawk. People who hang out with people who have Jews being slaughtered wholesale by their own God for not thinking and believing as they do are not "Friends" of anybody. But being a warhawk means never having to say you are sorry in DC to NYC medialand these days. The whole issue of a second Holocaust being in the belief structure of one of his biggest evangelical boosters gets ignored.

    But it wouldn't be any different if Hillary was in the lead, we would have wall to wall stories about that Hsu character, rumors about Bill Clinton's fidelity, even if they come from Matt Drudges backside, and Fox News would be demanding that Hilary Clinton denounce Elton John for something he said years ago that is offensive to somebody.

    Obama gets wall to wall coverage of a man whose views he has rejected, and McCain gets a pass on a man who he proudly embraces as a net gain as a supporter.

    This is not a battlefield to be fighting information wars on.

    by LeftHandedMan on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:09:56 PM PDT

    •  yes: we are fighting two battles at once

      against the rightwing media and against the folks brainwashed by the rightwing media.

      by gnat on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:13:22 PM PDT

      •  How About It

        the line "liberal media" is such a joke I don't even have words to express how funny I think that statement is. I'm a good old fashion liberal and I can tell yeah I don't find the media to be anything close to liberal. I wish there was just one news show that came at things from my POV.

        by webranding on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:18:50 PM PDT

        •  Right

          but it was always spin, working the refs to get them to stop being journalists.

          And they won. The coverage of Obama/Wright vs McCain/Hagee is the fruits of that, and its so unfair its staggering.

          If Obama doesn't give the speech of his life, he gets crucified, and that's, in my opinion, a form of election rigging by the media.

          by LeftHandedMan on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:23:38 PM PDT

          •  MSNBC Right After Obama Spoke Today

            focused more on if it was a good speech rather than actually anything related to what he said.

            A few years ago I had an idea for a screen play. I bought a couple books on the topic. They all said the same thing. You have to have conflict, conflict, and more conflict as you work towards the climax.

            Our media outlets long ago stop reporting news and started telling an ongoing narrative/story. And as you might expect conflict has to be a part of it to work.

            As somebody with a masters in journalism that decided to do something else for a living it is sad, very sad to watch. I was taught stuff in JOUR101 in the late 80s that would get you an F in a second or two ..... but is just the norm for people that call themselves journalist today.

            by webranding on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:30:59 PM PDT

    •  I don't think so...

      Maybe PBS will be privatized by the next wingnut President by then.

      My husband has worked for PBS for almost 25 years. The people he works with would run themselves upon their swords before they would become "yes" men to any political wingnut.

      Other than that, you are right.

      by Purple Priestess on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:21:42 PM PDT

      •  But my point is

        that the GOP Jihad on PBS has never ceased. Not for a moment. Not that good people in PBS would accept it and be their stooges.  

        They haven't won. But they never quit. Because they understand that once something is Privatized, its out of government forever. That's why they never quit. I'm not saying your husband or his peers would ever be stooges for the right, I'm saying that its a tactic that never stops because they only have to win that fight once to kill PBS.  

        If PBS gets privatized someday, and I'm not saying it will happen, it won't be because of anything other than the right blackmails the wimpy centrists into horsetrading away something for something else.

        It's something that I wish more liberals understood about the GOP and the Institutional rigthwing, they are at war with us. They can't win a fair fight, or a civil debate, so everything is an existential crisis. Everything is life and death.

        And they understand that there are some battles that cannot be undone once they are won. Privatization is such a thing.  

        by LeftHandedMan on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:29:08 PM PDT

        •  Yes, you are correct.

          They don't quit. And I honestly think they'd burn the station down before they'd allow it to be privatized.

          by Purple Priestess on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:31:41 PM PDT

  •  The Media is pretending they don't understand,

    They got away with it for so long, that they don’t know how to proceed.

    They do not except that the Country is awake and aware.

    by MadAsHellMaddie on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:47:36 PM PDT

•  I Am Sitting Here Trying To Craft A Post

  I know what I want to say, but having a hard time finding the right words. One paragraph I've written, read, and then rewritten about 20 times is:

  Race as an issue only came to me after close to 20 years on this planet. As a military brat people of all colors were just a part of my day-to-day life. All equal. I didn't even understand the concept they were not equal. Heck, in the place I went to school the smartest people, best jocks, most popular people were NOT white.

  Multi-racial couples were just couples, not something outside the norm. Heck I'll never forget the first time people told a Jewish joke at college and I didn't get the punch line. I had to be told it was funny cause "jews" are cheap. That was a new concept to me.

  Later in life, for many reasons, like being a Yankee in grad school in Louisiana or living in a not so "nice" place in NE DC I learned race was kind of something that cut to the bone.

  I think Obama (and I am not a raving fan BTW) gave a speech of importance I am not sure we'll understand for years to come.

  That our media can't get past the shit and focus on what he actually said is sad. Very freaking sad.

  by webranding on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:02:32 PM PDT

  •  I think you found exactly the right words.

    Thank you for them.

    by llbear on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:13:34 PM PDT

•  Not a shock. America isn't going into the crapper

  on accident. It has turned into a petty and vindictive place. If it wasn't before that  is.

  by JayGR on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:06:27 PM PDT

•  watch this and you'll understand the problem

  this is a 1 hr C-SPAN interview with Jon Stewart on his observations and complaints of the media in 2004 in front of a room packed with journalists.

  Watch

  it's enlightening, funny, and just shows nothing has changed

  by arechevski on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:07:05 PM PDT

•  Sen. Obama essentially called out the media

  when he noted that you can stay glued to the divisions, which will lead to . . . nothing changing.

  Of course, the media is mostly about revenue, profit and marketshare leading to such, so they pump up anything which seems black/white whenever possible.

  I can't see them accepting change, per his criteria.

  Which would mean rejecting the current segmentations of race, gender, age, parties, income, etc. and actually reporting with shared context and interpretations of events beyond their purposefully focused consideration.

  I once was told that a frog's eyes see everything, but its brain only processes potential food (e.g., a fly) or a threat.

  The TradMed seems stuck in the frog stage of cultural evolution, artificially placed there by money goals.

  by wader on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:09:54 PM PDT

•  well if Obama's speech today

  can't cahnge the discourse nothing can. I refuse to worry anymore about this kind of thing: we need to just keep plugging away, doing what's right, and eventually (it may take 100 years) the wall will fall.

  by gnat on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:10:55 PM PDT

  •  It Can't If You Mean Right Now

    The discourse is the Constitutionally-protected private property of the communication industry, the sole industry protected by the Constitution. It's protected against the people, against democracy, and against civilization.

    It doesn't need another century of plugging but it does require recognizing an insane system for what it is. As a first step toward civilizing it.

    by Gooserock on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 01:27:14 AM PDT

•  Of course he knew what they would talk about

  He gave a speech that shows he continues to be a positive, clear-thinking, statesman-like guy who, for better or for worse, is not going to get all that specific about the nitty gritty details right now.

  The commentators then go on to obsess about race -- but Obama knew that was coming. His own wife is a PR person, and he himself was a kind of low-level business reporter when he started out, so he probably knew exactly how he would cover himself if he were a reporter.

  But the pundits are going to say all of that stuff many times between now and November. Maybe Obama figures that the sooner they start talking about this stuff, the sooner the excitement about the topic will evaporate, and the sooner everyone can get down to talking about the actual issues, as opposed to whether he has all of Wright's sermons engraved in microprint on his left pinky.

  by sclminc on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:11:23 PM PDT

•  If they were to listen...

  then SNL might do another pillow skit.  Wouldn't want SNL to make fun of you.

  The way I understood Barack was that if they continued to report in the same old way, they would be just as culpable for division as Wright.

  by C Dawgg on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:18:12 PM PDT

•  Fortunately

  The more he gets on the teevee, the more people trust him more than the boneheads dissecting his soundbites.  He is really good at speaking past the noise.  

  by Sun dog on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:20:16 PM PDT

•  2 things

  First- a pattern we've seen again and again this campaign is that it takes the media about 2 or 3 days to process information and eventually recognize what's right in front of them.  Think Super Tuesday or 3/4, and how long it took the talking heads to recognize the uncomplicated reality of the Obama delegate math.  That's basic arithmetic; this is differential calculus.  So I think a delay of at least 48 hrs should be expected at this point.  

  2. Our civil society is much broader than the coffee table of Morning Joe (thank god).  So its quite possible people are already talking about the speech in bars and diners across the country. and maybe absorbing some of its deeper message.  

  by oxman on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:24:46 PM PDT

•  Do you think...

  ...that they even get that a good portion of Senator Obama's speech was directed squarely at the media?

  The fact that within seconds after the speech the media began doing exactly what Senator Obama called them out on is just said.

  Have they no shame?

  by moviemeister76 on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:27:22 PM PDT

  •  Darn it

    "just sad" not "just said".

    Darn my eyes.

    by moviemeister76 on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:38:47 PM PDT

  •  Do you think any of Obama's speech

    was directed at the blogosphere??

    by sara seattle on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 12:17:48 AM PDT

    •  I actually do

      I believe that he feels that we, the people, have for too long been unwilling to deal with such complex issues as race with the honesty and thought it deserves. Too often, many of us take complex issues and deal with it in poorly thought out ways. That's if we deal with it at all.

      I also get the sense that the reason he so confidently gave a long speech is that he believes in the power of the internet.

      by moviemeister76 on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 12:45:00 AM PDT

      •  What do you think about this passage?

        For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

        We can do that.

        But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

        That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time.

        So here at Kos - do we continue to pounce - or do we come together??

        by sara seattle on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 12:58:33 AM PDT

        •  I have seen both

          To me, he seemed his most passionate there. He truly shined at that point.

          I believe that this site has the capacity to come together. I have read diary after diary, comment after comment, of how profound many of us here found his speech. I believe that we have the capacity to move away from much of the snipping I have witnessed recently.

          by moviemeister76 on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 01:23:22 AM PDT

          •  From your lips (fingertips)

            to God's ear .....

            by sara seattle on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 01:26:17 AM PDT

          •  I need to go to bed

            My spelling has really fallen off in the last hour or so.

            "sniping" not "snipping"

            by moviemeister76 on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 01:28:53 AM PDT

•  tried to watch - wrote this earlier

  I watched Obama’s "A More Perfect Union" speech in PA. I was deeply moved by his words. Being multi-racial is not easy for anyone who has had to live with the prejudices of your own family, so his words really resonated for me.

  Aside from Obama’s speech which you can read in full content here, the talking heads continue their "blah, blah, blah"...impressed with hearing themselves. Puffing themselves up with how intelligent they "think" they are, and disecting every word. Give me a fricken’ break. Probably the only one I found who really got to the core of what Obama’s message was all about was Roland Martin,a CNN contributer.

  Even after all Senator Obama had to say regarding the talking heads; they continue on with their loop-de-loop. The only way we will ever get that to stop, is to turn off the TV set, turn off the radio and surf elsewhere, when our so-called news providers fail to provide us with NEWS. We are interested in what is going on in our economy, our communities and on the wars that we have been taken into. Yes, we want to know about our candidates, but we do not want a 15 minute recycle of untruths and sensationalized sound bites that go on and on and on, in an attempt to brainwash into believing what they have to sell. Playing it over and over - will NOT, I repeat, NOT make me believe what garbage of the day you are peddling. So get over yourselves, and report the NEWS.... please.

  by marley619 on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:28:14 PM PDT

•  40 years, folks, 40 years.

  I've said something like this at least a dozen times here and this is as good a place as any to repeat it.

  After losing the presidential elections in 1960 and 1964, it took the GOP 40 years to get to 2004 where they have strangleholds on Washington politics, the courts, the media, and many other institutions.  40 years.

  Yeah, Nixon won in 1968, only four years after the Goopers were routed in 1964.  But they were still a long way from 2004.  And the wingnut true believers kept plugging away until they had as close to total control as they will ever get.

  Why should we think it will take us any less than 40 years to get things where we want them to be?

  Patience and persistence, folks, patience and persistence.  Obama may well win the presidency this year.  Or, he may not.  But either way, 2008 is only "our 1968."  It is nowhere near the apex of where we want to be.  Don't give up.  We are going to have to "be the change" for now and for a long time to come in order to unwind the things that we are talking about in these diaries.

  by MJB on Tue Mar 18, 2008 at 11:45:46 PM PDT

•  I Think the speech worked like a charm

  I watched MSNBC and CNN tonight.  I never do that but wanted to see the coverage.  (a) Obama grabbed virtually 100% of the attention, Hillary who? McCain who?  (b) Most folks said it was a good to great speech.  They questioned whether it went above the average voters head.  Plays perfectly to a meme, watch the speech the talking heads say you won't understand.  (c) Most people won't hear speech, they will hear about it, and since most people call speech brilliant and good, even the Buchanans, I suspect that the buzz about this speech, as it filters through the national grapevine will be a real positive.  

  by shawesq on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 12:12:04 AM PDT

  •  I agree! Sure there have been

    detractors, but there are some great stories too!  Like this one, and many others.  Perhaps we need a diary just to post some of the great stories that are out there for Obama. This one is a recent favorite- a cute story about a tie ...!

    by From a distance on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 02:27:39 AM PDT

    •  And some more ...

      About the speech - A moving moment in our nations history, and Obama 'right on target', Obama shows amazing grace, from Delaware,  Dallasand LA. Wow. Now there are plenty of nay-sayers, sure, but you can't not be moved by these great stories people!!

      A great story about Obama's potential class in international relations (he really has such an informed and balanced approach)

      Plus progressive radio gushed all day long, as well they should! Including numerous guest speakers from

      by From a distance on Wed Mar 19, 2008 at 02:58:27 AM PDT