Racial Pride

Let us now praise hateful men:

• "The fact is we keep talking about flip-flops - how politicians change their positions - Jesse Helms never changed positions. He was not a compromiser....He was true to his ideals."

• "Well that was always part of his, those who loved him and those who hated him, race was always a big issue. One famous moment...up against Carol Mosley Braun...in private he sang Dixie to her....obviously race was a big part of him."

• "Appealing to racial pride, appealing against quotas, and things like that helped his career."
  

So we have Ken Rudin's Jesse Helms, with no dissent from Ari Shapiro, on July 4th's Morning Edition. NPR's coverage of Helms (and his ilk) illustrates how extremely far to the right NPR works to push the boundaries of what is acceptable. Helms built his career on supporting segregation and race baiting (Now would that be racism or racial pride?), general bigotry, and savvy fund-raising abilities that helped him eke out electoral victories.

I'd suggest folks at NPR take a look at that radical publication The Economist, for a few ideas on how to write a fitting obituary on someone like Jesse Helms. They would also do well to take a look at Mother Jones interesting survey of Helms "accomplishments" as of 1995. Though overdue, Washington Post's Broder had a fine piece on Helms when he retired from office - it serves just as nicely now that Helms has mercifully retired from the planet.

Oh an finally a little hint to Mr. Rudin at NPR. When you hum or whistle "Dixie" to an African-American Senator in an elevator that's an "infamous" moment, not a "famous" moment - that is unless you admire such an incident.

A Provocative Piece

For once, when anti-Muslim/anti-Arab hatemongers in the US lay their ignorant, xenophobic cards on the table, wouldn't it be refreshing if the media (in this case NPR) simply called it out for the racist ideology that it is? Sadly, as Arianna Huffington has pointed out in her latest book, Right is Wrong, the establishment media (such as NPR) have gone to great lengths to accommodate and normalize the most extreme views of the right wing:

"A key to understanding the fanatical Right’s takeover of the Republican Party and how these ideas spread to the rest of the country is looking at the role of the media—not the Fox News pseudo-newsmen or the talk radio blowhards—but the respectable, supposedly liberal media. Without the enabling of the traditional media—with their obsession with “balance” and their pathological devotion to the idea that truth is always found in the middle—the radical Right would never have been able to have its ideas taken seriously."

So when the venomous Michele Malkin and the Little Green Brownshirts Footballs blog attacked Dunkin Donuts for featuring Rachel Ray wearing a scarf that looked like a keffiyah, it would have been great for NPR to put such anti-Arab/anti-Muslim activism in context. Given all the Arab/Muslim bashing in the media, is it any wonder that US torturers at Gitmo have included anti-Islamic tactics in their repertoire, that a Marine was filmed singing an anti-Islamic song, that a US soldier used a Quran for target practice, and that a Marine in Fallujah was evangelizing the locked-down residents of that city with "Christian" coins?

Instead of just naming the anti-Keffiyah attacks as another example of the far-right's strategy of expanding the general Islamophobia that pervades the US, NPR treats it as reasonable, or at best subjects it to some slight ridicule as if it's just harmless overreacting. And so on Thursday's ME we get Robert Smith trying to be funny: "conservative commentators noted that the look was popularized by fashion icon, Yasser Arafat. Perhaps they have uncovered a vast donut conspiracy...." Jamie Tarabay follows up on Thursday's ATC, sadly opening the piece with

"Rachel Ray is one of Dunkin Donuts most prominent spokespeople...there's a provocative piece of black and white clothing draped around her shoulders in one online ad...."

Provocative piece of black and white clothing? I'm sorry but what's "provocative" about it, unless you are walking in lockstep with a bunch of hardcore pro-Zionist, Islamophoic rightwingers? Tarbay's piece does include some criticism of the anti-keffiyah attacks, but overall it presents this latest far-right action as deserving balanced, mainstream consideration. Not surprising really; that was the same premise that underlay the really disturbing NPR "Intelligence Squared" segment I heard in April on whether radicalism dominates Islam (imagine them doing a similarly inflammatory slant on Judaism or Christianity).

How 'Bout Them Apples?

Morning Edition has been interviewing "conservatives" this week. Of course conservative is a virtually meaningless term encompassing a vast terrain from the basic rightwing Republican conservative like Chuck Hagel to the far right, trash-talking brownshirts of the airways like Rush Limbaugh and...

...Glenn Beck! That's right, this morning NPR went bobbing for guests and came up with a doozy: Glenn Beck. Yes, that class act radio/TV personality who called Cindy Sheehan a "pretty big prostitute," warned Muslims about ending up in concentration camps, and claimed that " if you're an ugly woman, you're probably a progressive as well." (Oh and there's more.)

Steve Inskeep interviews Beck and does he brings up some of these unsavory remarks to put Beck's opinions in perspective, and perhaps to challenge them? Not a chance. Inskeep puts quite a shine on Beck:

Of Beck's racist mockery of John McCain, Inskeep states matter-of-factly: "The radio and TV host went on to refer to Senator McCain as Juan McCain which suggests an issue where conservatives disagree - immigration."

Inskeep says nothing when Beck says, "Let them bottom out and this is - boy this is tough medicine. Let Barack Obama get in."

Again silence from Inskeep as Beck characterizes the elections of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as a "swing to the extreme."

And lastly when Beck says of former Senator Rick Santorum, "the guy is a Winston Churchill in many ways," not only does Inskeep not laugh out loud at such rubbish, he actually praises Beck:
"Does it say something about the lack of leadership in the conservative movement if you as a relatively well informed conservative look around and Santorum, a guy who was defeated in 2006, is the only name that comes to mind, that excites you?"

Stunning, isn't it. That's our listener-support dollars at work. If you thought this was fun, tomorrow its back in the bowl for "drown it in the bathtub" Norquist of the Americans for Tax Reform front. I can barely wait.

How About that Wing?

This morning Liane Hansen, noting Huckabee's successes in Saturday's voting, commented that "once again it showed that McCain faces a significant hurdle - the conservative wing of his own party." Conservative wing! What other wing of the Republican party is there? And is there anyone in their right mind who thinks John McCain is not conservative?

I know there are a few (very few) Republicans out there who consider themselves moderate Republicans, but what sway do they have in the G.O.P.? As Harold Meyerson pointed out in the WaPo in September of 2006, the idea of moderate Republicans is a sad joke - they don't have any (zero, zilch, nada) influence in stopping the reactionary, extremist Republican policies from steamrolling ahead.

NPR is not alone in this misrepresentation. Listen to any mainstream news and you'll hear the word conservative being used to describe not only the traditional pro-business, anti-union, big-Pentagon conservatives but also the more radical core of politicians and activists who are bigoted, theocratic, homophobic, fetus-focused, authoritarian, pro-torture, pro-war, corporatist, etc.