Every time something momentous like the Zimmerman trial occurs, there's always a gaggle of what we'll call “political ambulance chasers” following right along behind it, trying to use the issue to score a few cheap political points towards their own pet causes. This has been pretty standard stuff for the political Right for quite some time now, who are masters at both the manufacture and the cultivation of hysteria and outrage. But with every turn of the news cycle, increasing numbers of progressive-minded journalists, pundits, and academics are heeding the Siren's call of cheap shots and straw men, and feeling much less squeamish about courting controversy for clicks...or cash.
Cornell West on a recent Democracy Now!, claiming that Obama has no 'moral authority' to speak on matters of race. He also claimed that Americans are living on Obama's 'plantation' and that the Executive Branch is full of 'house Negroes'.
The most outrageous accusations made by the Professional Left in the wake of the Zimmerman trial have been (unsurprisingly) against President Obama himself, comparing him to directly to Zimmerman with the claim that Obama's so-called “Drone War” is nothing more than a broader reflection of the attitudes that allowed Zimmerman to get away with murder. As such, they claim that the President holds no moral authority with which to speak upon the trial, let alone on racial politics at all. This argument - however valid or well-intended it might be – has been horribly, brutally framed multiple times since the verdict was released, even leading one so-called 'journalist' to refer to Attorney General Eric Holder as President Obama's “Inner Nigger.” And no, I'm not joking.
At the same time, other, more venerable political figures on the Left have come forward to speak out upon the trial, as well as on other issues of the day. None have been more problematic as of late than former President Jimmy Carter, who stated last week that he believed
justice had been meted out fairly to George Zimmerman in his trial. Around that same time, he balanced the slate to a degree by publicly
denouncing the NSA for spying on the American public, claiming that America no longer has a “functioning democracy.” From a progressive standpoint, the problem with his comments on the trial is obvious; his current stance on the NSA, however, lies in stark contrast to that of the man who signed the FISA Amendment into law in 1978, essentially giving birth to the modern security state in America's post-Nixon era. This is a fact not so obvious, one that many of those that would use Zimmerman to shame Obama prefer that you didn't know.
These attacks on Obama in the wake of the trial have signaled what feels like yet another disturbing shift in the tactics of progressive journalism. On the response to Carter's NSA commentary, writer David Von Ebers offers the following:
“When did this become a thing, that centrist Democratic ex-presidents could do no wrong? When did it become not only acceptable, but expected, that centrist Democratic ex-presidents would routinely bash a sitting Democratic president, and the ideological purists on the left would cheer them on without so much as questioning those ex-presidents’ own liberal bona fides?”
In a separate article regarding Carter's comments on the Zimmerman trial, Von Ebers writes:
“No doubt, Carter’s fans on the left – especially those wide-eyed young white liberals who often cite him as the elder statesman of liberal purity – will rush in to say, given all the good he’s done, we have to give him a pass for the Deen and Zimmerman faux pas, at the very least. And I can see that (although … Pol Pot? The Shah of Iran? Really?). But I wonder why the standard you apply to Jimmy Carter allows for some mistakes – including fairly major ones – when the standard you apply to President Obama allows for none.”
As conservatives have continued to push their brand of ideological extremism over the course of the past several decades, they have dragged the Professional Left right along with them, as the conciliatory nature of liberal politics doesn’t allow for much in the way entrenched ideological standoffs. Over the years, media practices and political dealings once considered above reproach by Democrats have become increasingly commonplace among them. The shiny patina applied to Jimmy Carter and the ugly comparisons of Obama to Zimmerman are just the latest examples of how ideology continues to supplant reason as the guiding force behind certain progressive spaces, led by those who would use fear and hysteria and tribalism to further their own respective cults of personality. They peddle half-truths wrapped in layers of bias and fallacy, delivered with a passion and zeal that is as contagious as it is deadly.
There was once a time where it was permissible to be wrong on the Professional Left. Not only was it was permissible, mistakes were almost encouraged because they promoted greater discussion, and provided opportunities for real growth. But much of the patience and the humility of the liberal intelligentsia has been weeded out, and replaced by entitlement, hubris, and a growing competitiveness of a kind that only the Digital Age can offer. The information marketplace has expanded into a vast, dirty, incomprehensible bazaar, where hucksters, shysters, snake oil salesmen, and a few honest folk compete in a perennial Misery Olympics for that most valuable of all consumer commodities: attention. Question your sources, challenge their bona fides; in the Information Age, where there is no product, the product is you.