Prometheus 6

You know the right-wing talk radio communities have been very unhappy...and, in fact, threatened...by Imus' removal from the airwaves. You also know coded meanings, sending messages and such are amont the right's favorite tactics. You know Bill O'Reilly has made clear Media Matters is seen as the source of their troubles. They've been trying to discredit the organization. And you know their most powerful tool is Fox News and the crew that graduated from talk radio to television.

But we also know they aren't the only tools in use. The Associated Press is also quite useful...if the actual text of the speech isn't convenient their reporting is enough to fool even folks who are quite intelligent.

Associated Press' Crappy Reporting Makes Obama's Rhetoric Sound Racially Threatening

By Greg Sargent

This is some really, really rank journalism. The Associated Press is badly distorting a speech Barack Obama gave today, giving his words a scary and racially-threatening cast that they simply didn't have in reality.

Here's the headline and lede on the AP's story about Obama's speech:

Obama warns of 'quiet riot' among blacks

HAMPTON, Va. (AP) -- Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a "quiet riot" among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.

The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentments are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.

The loaded language ("warns," "threatens") in the headline and lede -- combined with the obvious insinuation that Obama is somehow threatening that riots may occur -- has already earned this story its pat on the head from Drudge, who made it his lead story for some time today. And CNN is now playing along, too, running the AP's headline about Obama warning of a "quiet riot among blacks" across the screen.

But here's the thing: It's not remotely clear how the AP reporter concluded that this is what Obama was saying.

But it's totally clear to me how the reporter or editor came to this conclusion.

Fear. White supremacists fear equality for minorities because they are convinced they will receive the same treatment they dispense.

No, I haven't become less circumspect. Neither have I become less accurate.

All this talk of superiority of white male domination by O'Reilly and his peers says to me they see this as an issue of insuring white supremacy. Not bias. Not discrimination. Not racism. None of that. These guys are talking up a racial shitstorm, quite intentionally. When some asshole call himself

the whitest man in America, who is the black man's best friend

you know you're dealing with a small dick who is trying to clever and evasive. Typical passive-aggressive tactic, and obvious once you look at it in those terms. And just as I call those who accepted Imus' crap his accomplices in polluting the culture, I call those who sit and nod as these guys spew a part of the problem.

Now, if talking white supremacy gives you the creeps, try looking at it as a term of art indicating race-based tactics to preserve the network that gives them all influence. Whatever you call it, functionally it involves one of the largest media companies in the world using its considerable power to insult, harass and attack Black Americans en mass, up front, with a wink and a chuckle that does not make it all okay with me.