The Smear Campaigns
Juan Williams goes on the offense to defend Bill O'Reilly against the Soros-backed smear machine that is attempting to damage him. Because the smear machine is also going after him.
O'Reilly, controversial host of the top-rated TV cable talk show on Fox News Channel, interviewed me on his radio show about a woman-hating, N-word-spouting rapper being hired by McDonald's for a celebrity endorsement. O'Reilly has been on a crusade against big companies legitimizing a crass, hateful and pornographic popular culture by putting stars like Snoop Dogg, the pornographer/rapper, in their ads.
Sad to say, but a lot of today's rappers fit the bill.
They make their name by bragging about how many people they've killed, how many times they've been shot and how many "bitches" they've abused. And those rappers, along with no-talent black comedians who use the N-word and profanity constantly, are creating a very negative image of black people in music, in music videos and in the movies.
So, O'Reilly says to me that the reality to black life is very different from the lowlife behavior glorified by the rappers. He told me he was at a restaurant in Harlem recently and there was no one shouting profanity, no one threatening people. Then he mentioned going to an Anita Baker concert with an audience that was half black, and in sharp contrast to the corrosive images on TV, well dressed and well behaved.
I joked with O'Reilly that for him, a guy from Long Island, a visit to Harlem was like a "foreign trip." That's when he brought up his grandma. He said she was prejudiced against black people because she knew no flesh-and-blood black folks but only the one-dimensional TV coverage of black criminals shooting each other and the rappers and comedians glorifying "gangsta" life and thug cool. He criticized his grandmother as irrational for being afraid of people she really did not know.
I defended his grandma.
After watching all those racist, minstrel images of black people, I argued, she is right to buy into stereotypes of blacks as ignorant, oversexed and violent. And I said while I worried about his grandma having racist images justified in her mind I had bigger worries.
Because Williams, who is black, dared to defend O'Reilly he was called a "Happy Negro" by a CNN commentator. The left uses attacks like this on a routine basis, of course. The valid point that both Williams and O'Reilly made, that glorifying thuggish behavior does lead to a terrible, one-sided cartoonish perception of black culture is ignored in order to take things out of context to launch a smear. We have to start paying attention to the man behind the curtain. Go read the rest of what Williams wrote. Its a rather damning indictment of the tactics the left considers acceptable.
(Side note, I don't listen to O'Reilly.)
Other Links to this Post
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Chuck Adkins › Jaun Williams Speaks out in defense of Bill O’Reilly — Saturday, 29 September , 2007 @ 12:34 pm
By syn, Saturday, 29 September , 2007 @ 10:32 am
On the subject of smear campaigns, I think I’m beginning to see a definite pattern emerging.
I don’t watch O’Reilly however I managed to watch on the internet a portion of a recent show where he had Tammy Bruce on as guest and she clarified the intention of this type of attacks made against ‘conservative’ talk show hosts; the intention is to de-legitimize or rather criminalize the conservative voice. I remember back when Monicagate had happened and my own response was much like Tammy Bruce’s ‘how come National Organization of Women is surrounding a notorious male-chauvanist pig who was getting his rocks off at the office with an intern half his age’. Yet, the only thing out of the media was to smear all those uptight conservatives getting their panties in a wad over a BJ.
The pattern has been going on for a long time yet, so many will never know that it’s happening since they are not engaging in alternative sources of information such as the various weblogs tracking the pattern.
Seriously, I live in NYC and if I had never brought a personal computer in 2001, taking the time to read from those with professional experience in any given field I’d still be stuck on stupid. This is why it’s very frustrating when having a conversation with those who still get all the news about culture/public policy/politics from media sound-bytes or worse Hollywood entertainment.
I know this will sound strange however, for an example, my dentist (educated and well-established) still reads the NY Times and believes the entertainer Jon Stewart’s news bytes and whenever I point out the disparities made in these media outlets he looks at me as if I’m from another planet; because of his very narrow mindset which 9/11/2001 could not even change I find as the years go by I’m becoming less confident in his ability to treat me properly.
By Mwalimu Daudi, Saturday, 29 September , 2007 @ 12:23 pm
Some pundits have noted that as the MSM’s audience has shrunk, the MSM itself has moved to the hard Left. What you see on al-CNN is the real MSM - ignorant, patronizing white liberal racists trying to smear anyone who dares to disagree with them.
By terrence, Saturday, 29 September , 2007 @ 1:25 pm
I am increasing perplexed by the acronym “MSM”. What is mainstream about it the media? Does it represent the mainstream in any meaningful way? Not really! I think “LEM†is more appropriate: “Leftwing Establishment Mediaâ€.
By terrence, Saturday, 29 September , 2007 @ 1:26 pm
I am increasing perplexed by the acronym “MSM”. What is mainstream about it the media? Does it represent the mainstream in any meaningful way? Not really! I think “LEM†is more appropriate: “Leftwing Establishment Mediaâ€.
By Maggie, Saturday, 29 September , 2007 @ 3:17 pm
TERRENCE -
I’ve always seen the “mainstream” in MSM as that entity of media that the public is easily and daily accessible to (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines …).
And no, it is NOT mainstream by any sense of the word’s political meaning. But I’ve taken to calling it the LLLMSM … Lazy Lame (kudoes Laura Ingraham) Liberal MSM … But after the Bill O`Reilly, Juan Williams, and Rush Limbaugh attacks of this past week I’m thinking of calling them PRAVDA …
By terrence, Saturday, 29 September , 2007 @ 5:26 pm
Good points, Maggie…
By Third Rail, Saturday, 29 September , 2007 @ 7:57 pm
To view the rebuttal of Juan Williams and Bill O’Reilly in regards to comments made by CNN, go to thirdrailradio.com
By Mwalimu Daudi, Saturday, 29 September , 2007 @ 7:58 pm
One of the MSM’s favorite dirty tricks is to claim that opinions that are at odds with their own are “out of the mainstream”. The pattern is familiar by now - they never confront the arguments made by their own opponents except by creating a mythical “mainstream” and portraying dissent from that “mainstream†as some kind of offense against public tranquility. It is an effort to invoke cloture on debates that they would rather not have.
For example: you see this in the MSM’s descriptions of the debate about the Iraq War. Supporters of the war are usually referred to as “hardliners”, “hawks”, or “conservatives” (Joe Lieberman might chafe at the last description). War opponents, by contrast, are almost always referred to as “moderates”. Rarely if ever are war opponents labeled as “doves” or even the now-shunned “liberals”.
Thus, MSM stories about a group of Republicans seeking to stop funding for the Iraq war might go something like this: “Moderate Republicans today unveiled a new compromise plan to confront the Bush administration and its hard-line stance on the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.”
Never mind that these “moderates” are not seeking a compromise - they want to force a withdraw of US forces. The Bush administration and many others in Congress oppose this. Why can’t the MSM be honest and simply report the actual debate between the two sides, rather than create a phony paradigm involving an imaginary conflict between “hardliners” and “moderates”? Is it really so hard for the MSM to call supporters of the war “war supporters” and opponents “war opponents” and let the debate begin?
For that reason I use the term “MSM” with a heaping helping of sarcasm. With their artificial “mainstream†they compose a modern-day “Ministry of Truth”.
By Maggie, Sunday, 30 September , 2007 @ 10:20 am
Mwalimu Daudi -
Yeah … PRAVDA.
I don’t know if it’s true, because I was just a self-centered, easy-going kid at the time, but wasn’t there an Olympic event where the USSR team lost to the USA team (don’t recall the event), and the PRAVDA headline went something like : “USSR comes in second …”
THIS IS exactly how today’s media is writing/spinning/wording/crafting the news of the day…