More Pro-Obama Media Manipulation

English professors advise media students that a piece of discourse requires an opening, powerful (preferably emotional) “hook” in order to grab the attention of potential listeners or readers.   Having secured the requisite attention, the presenter then can advocate his position, even when the position makes little or no empirical sense. 

Hook and manipulate (h&m) worked well in enabling the liberal media to promulgate the “beautiful story” of candidate Barack Obama that resulted in his winning the 2008 presidential election.  Now they are at it again. 

On December 26, 2011, in print and over the air waves, Chris Satullo, Whyy Public Radio’s Executive Director of News and Civic Dialogue, continued the h&m tradition.   On that day, he introduced an essay by recounting an uplifting vignette about how a lady in Grand Rapids, Michigan chose to pay anonymously the past-due K-mart layaway balances of three, presumably financially strapped, shoppers.    Satullo went on to recount how the practice induced some others to do the same such that over 1000 similar acts occurred in K-marts across our nation.

So far, so good.  We need all the positive news stories we can get and, to my way of thinking, the essay starts out right for Satullo, Whyy and for us all.   However, to really appreciate the Whyy story, it requires further context.  

For about two weeks prior to Satullo’s piece, President Obama had been pounding away at the Republicans, blaming them for refusing to tax the rich and for obstructing his plan to extend the “middle-class payroll tax holiday.”  His emotional hook concerned equating the evil GOP with the anti-Christmas villain, the “Grinch”  — a tactic consistent with the Barack Hussein Obama dark-triad personality that demonizes any opposition in an identity-oriented manner.

So, what about the Chris Satullo-Obama connection?

Halfway through his heart-rending essay, Chris asks, “Why are Americans so often so generous when the act of digging into one's own treasure to help others in need is framed as charity, yet so reluctant when it's framed as taxation?”   This pro-Obama question implicitly encourages us to suspend our reality testing and to accept Sutullo’s equating being taxed and being charitable.  I could spend all afternoon on this and I bet you could as well, so I will make only a couple points.

First, one gives freely to charity, whereas taxes are taken from us by force of law.  Second, one chooses when to give, whereas the government takes according to its timeline.  Third, a charitable giver presents his “gift” to the specific person or organization whom he chooses.   And  fourth,  a charitable giver provides as much or as little support as he wishes.

Chris Suttulo’s article, “Charity and paradox in the aisles of Kmart” has little to do with charity and everything to do with pro-Barack Obama political advocacy through subterfuge.  The piece captures our attention by tugging at our heart strings and attempts to deceive us by juvenile, mawkish logic.  What an affront to the intelligence of the National Public Radio audience!        

Making Soup

It’s the time of year when we think about our families, about getting together and nurturing one other. The Campbell Soup Company recommends that we make an old-fashioned “M'm! M'm! Good!” meal. 

Great idea.   Prepare a “hearty” healthful soup.  Choose the ingredients that you believe are best.  Invite everyone over.    

Should you expect to make a perfect soup that perfectly satisfies the entire gang?  Probably not.  After dinner, open up to the family’s constructive criticism and you will improve your meal for future occasions.   They will appreciate your effort and, over time, the soup will improve progressively.  In any case, what you make will be immeasurably better than what you would get at the local fast food establishment.

Right now Mitt Romney is the soup maker.  He has presented ideas for your consumption.  At this point, you might be especially vulnerable to the Obama people’s propaganda claiming that Barack used Romney’s Massachusetts’s plan as a template for his own health program.  They, of course, are saying that in an attempt to derail the Romney campaign because they are scared stiff about running against him.

There may be some Romney ingredients that you do not like, but Romney has been a collaborator.  He fashioned his health program in cooperation with the citizens of his state and with the Republican and Democrat legislators in order to make a “soup” healthful and palatable enough for the majority.  Obama made his soup in such total isolation that Nancy Pelosi told us that we needed to pass it before anyone could understand what was being force-fed to us.   The Obama plan was not the Romney plan.  Whatever Obama took from Romney was peppered  with artificial and toxic ingredients.  It was not the dish that Mitt Romney had created.

Mitt Romney presents our best opportunity to unseat Barack Obama.  In addition to being a good cook, he has the personality necessary to lead.  Romney has proven himself in his marriage, in his businesses, and in his conduct in government.  Forget about the cracks regarding his “perfect hair” and wealth.  Judge him by what he has done over an entire lifetime.  Compare that with the Obama personality, the Obama style, and the Obama “accomplishments.”  Then decide whose soup you want to sup over the next four years.               

The Mainstream Press’s Presidential Campaign

They have started their 2012 re-election campaign with obvious tactics—propagandize and incentivize subsections of the Barack Obama base, and disseminate party-line excuses for his failures.  Two examples should suffice to make my point.

First, consider the “Occupy Wall Street” anarchists— retros, quackos, wackos, smackos, slackos, or bandidos— to whom I referred in a previous blog.

The media needed three years to finally start paying attention to the Obama-based economic fiasco.  It took they that long to find a way to turn the meltdown into an Obama plus rather than the negative that it indisputably is.  To do so, media types jumped on the occupy bandwagon as it careened down Main Street, out of control.  Following the “never let catastrophes or miseries go unexploited” philosophy of Barack Obama, the media suddenly got religion in the form of supporting the occupiers.  To their way of thinking, the nation should blame Republicans for all its economic and other woes and, well, that’s worth talking about.  

So, television, especially, has recruited a cadre of talking head to relentlessly, pseudo-scientifically assemble and disseminate the “data” to show how only the Democrats can avert Republican-initiated social-political-economic  Armageddon.    And, you can be sure that the current onslaught of pro-occupy media is merely a dress rehearsal for next year.  

The closer we come to the presidential election, the more frequent, intense, and sympathetic the media will be to anything that in anyway can be construed as anti-Republican.  A few months from now, you undoubtedly will begin seeing shabby, starving American waifs, staring  out from the cover of Time magazine and pleading for “social justice” of the Barack variety.

Second, simultaneous with the first strategy, media types already are honing their Obama apologetic talking points to a keen edge so as to be razor-sharp by Fall 2012.  I already have heard one laugh-out-loud, ludicrous discussion that just must be shared. 

How does popular, Obama-pandering media explain the current economic  chaos and failure of presidential leadership?   Rush Limbaugh provides a partial answer by citing Morning Joe December 12, 2011 during which Jon Meacham, executive editor at Random House and syndicated columnist Mike Barnicle explain who Obama is and why he does as he does.

BARNICLE: He has reeeemarkable gifts. He’s eloquent, he’s convincing, he’s clearly very smart. He wins the presidency in 2008; overcoming all sorts of doubts and surpassing a field filled with a couple of truly, truly good candidates.   I think he is stunned, given his gifts, and his inability to get anything really done in Congress. I think he’s stunned by it.

MEACHAM: In a weird way the country is not commensurate with his gifts. That’s a harsh thing to say but I have a feeling in the dark night of the soul –

BARNICLE: Yeah!

MEACHAM: — that’s what he feels. I think he thinks that this is a[n] eighteenth century constitutional republic that needs s-s-significant updating.

There you  have it.  The liberal media advises that the crises assailing us and not due to any Barack Hussein Obama inadequacy.  The crises are due to deficiencies in the archaic, 18^th Century principles that served to found and guide our country until the 2008 presidential election.  Since then, whatever has gone wrong in America is attributable not to anything in anyway associated with the remarkably gifted, eloquent, convincing, very smart, 21^st Century Barack, but to our failure to understand and follow him.  Meacham and Barnicle implicitly suggest that we must re-elect our nonpareil president so that he can educate the nation out of its foolish ways.  If so, there will be no occupiers, poverty or pestilence; rather we will discover: 

Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions

Mystic crystal revalation

And the mind's true liberation.

Those lines sound soooooo familiar.  I hope I haven’t failed to quote someone!

What's Up with the Term, "People of Color?"

It’s much more than an objectively descriptive word.  “People of color “often is used by some non-whites, and even some whites, as a wedge, dividing humanity into two mutually exclusive camps.  On one side are white people, and on the other are all the rest, united in their “non-whiteness.”

Who would promote so destructive and cynical a distinction?  The answer, of course, is:  anyone with what is called a “dark triad” personality structure characterized by narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.  These are persons—Barack Hussein Obamas and Eric Himpton Holders— who so avariciously lust for profit, power, and prestige that they do not hesitate to climb over anyone or everyone to achieve their ends.   Dark triad individuals continually speak about “people of color” to keep the issue fresh in our national consciousness, and, thus, always available for their self-serving exploitations.

But not even a president or an attorney general can keep a malignantly divisive idea alive.  Many “lesser” persons, even a few everyday people, sometimes identify themselves as a person of color in a deliberate or unconscious attempt to extract even a small measure of personal or social advantage.

If I conceive of myself as a person of color:

Whatever failures I sustain can be mitigated, blamed on my racial victim status.

Whatever successes I achieve can be magnified by my racial victim status, “Look what I did despite the insuperable odds against me!”

Whenever I am angry, I can express hatred of the wicked white culture and vent rather than looking within myself for the source of my misery.

Whenever I feel alone, I can console myself by remembering that most of the world is populated by poor, downtrodden people of color who would understand my desperation and feeling of oppression.

If there is a benefit to be had, by referring to my person of color membership I can go to the head of the handout line, even if I am more objectively well-off than most of the “poor white trash” in line behind me.

As a person of color, I share in the glory of people of color heroes—past, present, and future—and I discount any Caucasian standouts.  For instance, I can reject George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and the like as nothing but degenerate slave holders.  Instead of paying attention to them, I can band together with other people of color to cajole, threaten, and coerce our society into giving the lion’s share of societal attention to the accomplishments, holidays, and festivals related to Martin Luther King, Junior-like persons.

If you doubt the last point, some quiet time, take an elementary-age child aside.  Ask him/her to tell you about Washington, Jefferson, and King and merely tally the amount that he/she knows about each.  Then, ask the child how much classroom time was spent this year in talking about the three historical figures. 

Mumia and Geraldo: Birds of a Feather

The Associated Press reported today that Mumia Abu-Jamal, a Black Panther convicted of murdering white police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, will serve life in prison, rather be executed as had been his sentence.  As far as I know, murder victims always remain dead, but those sentenced to death for murder almost never are executed.  Why?

Geraldo Rivera provided a “perfect” answer to the Abu-Jamal case this morning on Fox News when he rationalized that “It  [The execution of Jamal] only would exacerbate racial tensions in Philadelphia.”

Time to deconstruct Rivera’s comment and, in the process, to learn a little bit about race, crime, and journalism in America.

Geraldo’s remark suggests the “burn baby burn mentality” that implicitly or explicitly threatens mayhem whenever a “popular” bimp (black inner-city male person) is convicted of a crime against someone white.  The conviction always is framed as egregiously racist and indicative of the immorality of the “white” Justice System, even when that system is lead by a black Attorney General, in this case an “articulate fella” named Eric Himpton Holder, Junior.  No one ever worries that white people will burn down the city when O. J. Simpson-like "folks" go free.

Notice, too, that Geraldo Rivera uses the word, “exacerbate;” presuming that he, a New Yorker, knows all about Philadelphia.  He knows that Philadelphia is awash with racial tension because his saying so lends further credence, power, and urgency to his sage explanation of the logic of converting the death sentence to life imprisonment.   

Geraldo had his opinion about the mother of the apparently slain two year-old child, Caylee Anthony.  Her referred to that white woman, Casey Anthony, as a “narcissistic, child killing slut.”

So, what do we have here?  Geraldo Rivera, an attorney by education, had no problem with a sentence reduction for a convicted black cop killer.  On the other hand, he maligned the never-convicted Casey Anthony as a “slut.”  No matter what you or I thought about the Caylee Anthony death, to have her non-convicted mother mocked on national television was nothing short of a character assassination by broadcast.  Here we found Geraldo, a powerful, prominent so-called “person of color,” campaigning against a helpless white woman. Where were the National Organization for Women, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the sundry other groups who sanctimonious preach about women’s rights?  

Washington Senators 100, Obama 0

Barack Obama, who regards himself as the Great Communicator II, tried to stereotype George W.  Bush as a shoot-first-and –ask- questions- later, loco cowboy.  During the 2008 election, Obama promised to a “different” kind of president, more erudite, articulate, and cosmopolitan than “Bushy.”  After all, Barack lived in Indonesian from about age six to ten.  He even visited Africa for a couple months after graduating from college.   

From the outset then, Barack has been convinced that he and only he understands the intricacies of our world.  With his vastly superior intellect and unassailable logic, he, and only he, can present arguments of such persuasive power that all nations fall in line behind his Pied Pipership.

Barack Obama and his supporters touted him as “the man” who can “talk to our enemies,” despite his abject failure to even try to communicate effectively with Republicans in and out of government.

So, whaaaaa  happened this week?  You undoubtedly know: the United States Senate voted unanimously against President Obama.  That is, 51 Democrats, 47 Republicans, and 2 Independents slapped Barack down on Iran.   Against the advice of the Oval Office, all senators came out for tougher sanctions against Ayatollah land.  

When was the last time you found such anti-presidential cross-aisle unanimity on so critical an issue?  Does this mean that Barack, you now can call me “Hussein,” Obama might not be so great a communicator, either at home or abroad?

Democrat Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey certainly did not have any faith in Barack Obama’s allegedly superior international relations skills.  To quote Josh Rogin’s article, (http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/01/menendez_livid_at_obama_team_s_push_to_shelve_iran_sanctions) Menendez livid at Obama team’s push to shelve Iran sanctions amendment :

The administration's strategy of working behind the scenes to change what's become the Kirk-Menendez Iran sanctions amendment, only to publicly oppose it today, angered several senators, including Robert Menendez himself. The New Jersey Democrat took seven minutes at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing to chastise Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman and Treasury Undersecretary David Cohen at Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting for asking him to negotiate on their behalf, and then criticizing the compromise he struck with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL).

Next time someone boasts of the President’s “fantastic” intellect, persuasive oratory, and foreign policy successes remind them of the Senate’s vote on Iran.