The behaviorof those media provocateurs over the past few months is almost beyond parody.They call the president a racist, even though there is no evidence of prejudiceon his part and much evidence to the contrary. They demand that nobody shouldever point out racial prejudice, but spend hours on the airwaves making falseclaims of bias against whites. And they whine constantly about being calledracists, even though the president has never made that accusation against them.
"Youcan't get your agenda," protested Beck the other day, speaking of thepresident, "so you unleash the hounds and point the fingers, and everybodyis a racist." That was around the same time Obama's spokesman said quiteemphatically that the president does not believe his opponents are motivated byracism.
But sinceBeck and Limbaugh seem to be obsessed with this touchy subject, let's examinetheir records. It turns out that both established their keen racial sensitivityon-air long ago.
Back whenBeck was simply a coked-out zoo-style morning talk jock on a Kentucky stationrather than a nationalpolitical philosopherhe regularly mimicked African-American speech patternsfor fun. "He used to do a funny 'black guy' character, really over thetop," recalls one of his former colleagues, quoted by biographer AlexanderZaitchik in a fascinating Salon.com profile.
Beck alsobecame a devotee of the Mormon crank author and conspiracy theorist W. CleonSkousen, whose writings he enthusiastically promotes to this day. AmongSkousen's pet theories was that Southern slave owners were actually the victimsof the plantation system, which according to him favored the lazy and pamperedslaves, whose children he called "pickaninnies." Like his ultra-rightfriends in the John Birch Society and kindred groups, Skousen was a dedicatedfoe of civil rights legislation.
ANew Low
Does thatmean Beck is a bigot? If Obama had ever endorsed the writings of LouisFarrakhan, replete with vile slurs against whites and especially Jews, thatwould certainly be enough for Beckwho says he believes that the president has"a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture." Thatmust be why the Obama White House has so many whites of all ethnic andreligious backgrounds advising the president, from the Cabinet down.
As forLimbaugh, perhaps nobody remembers the time that he told a black caller to"take that bone out of your nose"; or the time when he said thenonviolent NAACP "should get a liquor store and practice robberies";or the many times when he would play the "Movin' On Up" theme fromthe old “Jeffersons” TV show to accompany his commentary about Carol MoseleyBraun, the first black woman in the United States Senate. He used to do mockingbits in black dialect, too. But who needs to remember those sorry episodes whenhe continues that ugly pattern on-air nearly every day?
The Limbaughshow reached a new low recently when he began a campaign around a school-busincident in Belleville, Ill., where two black students werevideotaped beating up a white kid. Police authorities first said they believedthe assailants were motivated by race, but later said it was just a nastybullying assault (for which the two little thugs are now being prosecuted).
But Limbaughcould not resist the opportunity to turn that nastiness into something muchmore dangerous. "It's Obama's America, is it not? Obama's Americawhitekids getting beat up on school buses now. I mean, you put your kids on a schoolbus, you expect safety, but in Obama's America, the white kids now getbeat up, with the black kids cheering." In a more reflective mood, helater asked, "Can this nation really have an African-Americanpresident?"
Yes, wecanand despite the racial poison spread by Beck and Limbaugh, most Americansare proud that, at long last, we do.
© 2009 Creators.com.
