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so he can race bait the President…again!
This is another press release from Media Matters.
Glenn Beck spent most of his Fox show on 6/14 talking about the President’s remarks toward BP CEO, Tony Hayward. Beck: “[T]here seems to be a little profiling going on here” that “sounds like racism.“
Would I mislead people?
On his Fox News show, Beck again cropped Obama’s 1995 comments to claim they sounded “an awful lot like profiling” and reiterated his suggestion that the reason Obama did not want to meet with Hayward is because “he’s a white CEO” and “white CEOs, they don’t like to — they don’t want to pay their tax dollars and have those tax dollars go to inner-city kids.“
Beck: What is it that Barack Obama knows that he won’t even bother to meet with the guy to hear him out? Well, until, you know, he changed his mind a couple of days later. What is it that the dictator of Iran, the crazy guy in Iran has in the credibility department that the CEO of BP doesn’t have? What is it? Tell me. I’d like to know. Does the fact the BP CEO is a capitalist — does that — is that what does it? You know, when I meet with those capitalists — he’s a white CEO. Maybe that’s it. He’s a white CEO. White CEOs — I don’t know if you know this — but white CEOs, they don’t like to — they don’t want to pay their tax dollars and have those tax dollars go to inner-city kids.
[...]
Obama: And I really want to emphasize the word responsibility. I think that whether you are a white executive living out in the suburbs who doesn’t want to pay taxes to inner-city children to — for them to go to school –
Beck: I know. Man, all those white executives, what racists they are. They’re all alike, you know. Oh, they just hate those inner-city kids. Wow. Inner-city kids — that’s not code language, is it? And gee, all those white executives that don’t want to pay their taxes, have to go to — that sounds an awful lot like profiling…It’s almost like he’s generalizing, profiling, and stereotyping.
In that August, 1995 interview with Bill Thompson, who interviews authors for his Eye on Books series:
MM: Obama discussed what he had learned in writing Dreams from my Father, his 1995 memoir, and he also addressed issues of race in America. When Obama was asked whether the next generation will also have to deal with the same racial issues, he replied that it “depends on what we do and whether we take some mutual responsibility for bridging the divisions that exist right now.” Obama continued: “And I really want to emphasize the word ‘responsibility.’ I think that whether you are a white executive living out in the suburbs who doesn’t want to pay taxes to inner-city children to — for them to go to school or you’re an inner-city child who doesn’t want to take responsibility for keeping your street safe and clean, both of those groups have to take some responsibility if we’re going to get beyond the kinds of divisions that we face right now“ [emphasis added].
From the whole interview Beck quoted out of context with what Beck aired in bold:
Bill Thompson
Thompson: What was the most difficult part of the book to write?
Obama: I think what was toughest was writing honestly and truthfully about the suspicions and hurts and failings of the people closest to me, and writing about those same failings and disappointments and blind spots in myself. I think whenever we talk about race there are all kinds of issues that we’d like to skirt. You know, I tell the story — just to take one of the clearest examples — of my grandmother, who loves me dearly and has made all kinds of sacrifices on my behalf, expressing at one point when I was a teenager her fear of black men on the streets. And, you know, to discuss that honestly and to discuss how that felt, to discuss how my grandmother felt, and then to be able to arrive at some sort of peace with that, some greater understanding and some forgiveness, I think was probably the most difficult part of writing it.
Thompson: Were there times when you felt like just backing away from the whole thing and saying, “Oh, I don’t think I can go through with this”?
Obama: Right. Well, certainly, I think there’s an impulse among all of us to shy away from these issues. There’s a certain race weariness that confronts the country, precisely because the questions are so deeply embedded and the solutions are going to require so much investment of time, energy, and money. And so I share that reluctance sometimes to explore these issues.
I think what kept me going is the recognition that we can’t solve these problems by ignoring them or pretending that they don’t exist. And one of the things that strikes me and the country right now is our tendency to either pretend that racial conflict does not exist, that racial division and hatred does not exist, and to pretend that we live in a color-blind society — I think sometimes members of the Supreme Court, the current Supreme Court, take that line — or to say that race is everything, that there’s no possibility of common ground between black and white.
And I think the truth of the matter is that — and hopefully what people will get out of the book — is some sense that although the lives of blacks and whites in this country are different, although our historical experiences are different, my family is an example — and, hopefully, I am an example — of the possibility of arriving at some common ground and that we do share values and principles around which we can organize and make for a better life.
[...]
Thompson: I’m wondering if the ethnically mixed couple of today, if when their child is 34 years old, if they’ll find it any easier to deal with these issues then than you have found it now?
Obama: That’s an interesting question. I’m not sure. I think in some ways there’s less novelty to the idea of mixed couples. They’re not seen as lurid or perverse in ways that I think they were 30 years ago. I think that this country is inevitably going to be undergoing changes simply due to demographics. I think that there’s been a lot of talk about the “browning of America” –
Thompson: I was just going to use that same phrase.
Obama: Right. And I think that is going to be happening, and we can’t ignore it. I think whether or not my children or your children will have to struggle with these same issues depends on what we do and whether we take some mutual responsibility for bridging the divisions that exist right now. And I really want to emphasize the word “responsibility.”
I think that whether you are a white executive living out in the suburbs who doesn’t want to pay taxes to inner-city children to — for them to go to school or you are a inner-city child who doesn’t want to take responsibility for keeping your street safe and clean, both of those groups have to take some responsibility if we’re going to get beyond the kinds of divisions that we face right now. [Emphasis added]
Beck is clearly trying to fuel those kinds of divisions! Later in his show, Beck told his audience, “If I get out of control and start leveling baseless charges that can’t be backed up, guess what happens? I’m fired. I’m out of a job.“
Got it? Race baiting? That’s OK (except for dozens of sponsors that will no longer advertise during his show). Lying? That’s OK. Quoting people out of context to distort the meaning of their words? That’s OK. Hypocrisy? That’s OK. Leveling baseless charges that he can’t back up? That’s not OK? Riiiiight!
As if Beck's boss, Rupert Murdoch, cares what Beck says!
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