MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 5

Let’s add up some “knowns”:

1) Gates is a Harvard professor of humanities, making a career of Afrocentrism.
2) He is a self-described adherent of identity politics.
3) He has produced several PBS series on various African American subjects, including one that aired in February of this year and another soon to air.
4) Barry’s push for socialized health care will not come before the legislature before the August recess, and when the congressmen return from it, they will be very leary of passing it as he wants it due to fear of upsetting their re-election chances in 2010.
5) Barry is friends with Gates, and shares his attitude about the dominant race in America.
6) Barry needs sympathy from America to stem his declining poll approval numbers, and to possibly rescue his UHC dreams after August.

Knowing all of this, it seems very possible that Barry’s venture into what should have stayed a local (non)issue concerning the Cambridge police’s arrest of a disorderly professor Gates, was nothing more than a cunning ploy to distract attention from his failed UHC bill and further attempt to both racially divide this country and garner sympathy for him as a “black man in America where the black man is still a victim.”

It also seems very possible that Gates purposely inflated the situation with officer Crowley, knowing that the attention he manufactured from it would help sell his books, dvd’s and future projects.

And perhaps unrelated is the fact that CNN aired its much-hyped “Black In America” series for the last two nights. The massive promotions and lead-in to the shows were dramatically sensationalized by featuring the breaking news of the Gates case. The reporting on the Gates case by CNN has been decidedly one-sided, and after two days officer Crowley’s side was finally aired, but has been treated as if it is too-little-too-late and completely unconvincing. The interview with Soledad O’Brien today was particularly telling of a CNN perspective.

If you have the curiosity and patience for it, I have actually chronicled the CNN segments featuring this Gates case for the last three days on my new channel at Youtube. You can survey them at your leisure here.

Barry In Charge: Starting A Race War The Old Fashioned Way: Stupidity

For a Harvard-educated law graduate to make this kind of a pre-judgement is embarrassing. For our American president to say it is shameful.

These police officers put their lives on the line every time they respond to a call from you and me. To condemn them as "stupid" shows an elitism from a man who has never gotten his hands dirty with anything that taught him some basic principles of life: namely, that police have an enormously hard job and you don't backtalk them or give them any of your attitude. They are ready to die for you and me, and they surely don't get paid as much as a Harvard professor who has made a lifetime of arousing black suspicions about whites, police brutality, unfair justice practices, and overall victimhood for blacks in America.

Poor Barry here is associating Gates' arrest with the fact that Gates showed his credentials of identification and address, as if that's why Gates was arrested [with an African American police officer assisting during the entire episode, by the way]. The racemonger president knows better, but is choosing to further endanger the Cambridge Police officer's lives with these reckless statements.

Just to refresh Barry's beleagured mind a bit: Gates wasn't arrested for not being who he said he was, or for breaking and entering his house. He was arrested for disorderly conduct for mouthing off [even Gates' lawyer admitted that his client acted thusly] and acting beligerent during a routine response call from a neighbor.

It takes a couple of Harvard-educated idiots to not know that you answer politely and comply completely with the police or you suffer the consequences, no matter how important you think you are.

MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 4

MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 3

MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 2

MSM Diary: When Ratings Don't Come Your Way, Try Starting A Race War (the Henry Lewis Gates story) pt 1

CNN has been lagging so far behind in cable news ratings that they started scandalizing the benign long ago, much as the Hearst-era dailies of the past did in order to drum up sales. What is nothing more than a silly story of a grown man acting like a child makes national news under the special banner, "Divided Nation".

Where there is nothing more here than the division of people who appreciate a neighbor being concerned enough to call police when witnessing two people breaking into a nearby house versus those who ignore such things like the bystander effect noted in the famous Genovese case, CNN tries to amplify this embarrassing case of overrreaction by a grey-haired professor ("Yeah, I'll speak with your mama outside", indeed) into a national case in order to portray America as something it isn't: broken.

But as the famous news publishers of the past have bellowed, "The American people don't know what to think until I TELL THEM WHAT TO THINK."

MSM Diary: A Reporter's Life Is More Precious Than An American Soldier's pt II

As reported here weeeks ago, the msm went to great effort to keep the identity of a kidnapped journalist out of America's headlines, but in stark, amazing, despicable contrast, they gleefully report the kidnapping of an American GI by the same Taliban that captured one of theirs.

Here's a follow-up story about how even the soldier's hometown tried to keep their local serviceman's fate a secret.

HAILEY, Idaho – The Pentagon said Monday that troops are "sparing no effort" to find an American soldier captured by the Taliban as his family pleaded for privacy and residents in his hometown tied yellow ribbons on trees along Main Street in a show of solidarity.

The actions came two days after the Taliban released a video of Pfc. Bowe R. Bergdahl in captivity expressing his fear that he would never see or hug his family again. The footage showed Bergdahl with his head shaved, eating a meal and sitting cross-legged on what appeared to be a bunk.

"We've been overwhelmed with the outpouring of support and concern towards Bowe and our family," the family said in a statement read by Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling. "As you know, the situation is extremely difficult for everyone involved. We'd like to remind all of you our sole focus is seeing our beloved son Bowe safely home."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates condemned the video Monday, saying he was disgusted by the exploitation of a prisoner. "Our commanders are sparing no effort to find this young soldier," Gates said at a Pentagon news conference.

Bergdahl, 23, grew up just outside Hailey, a central Idaho resort town where residents said he was home-schooled, danced ballet and rode his bike everywhere in town. They also called him adventurous and said he joined the Army at least in part because he wanted to learn more about the world. He had been stationed at Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Bergdahl's parents, Bob and Jani Bergdahl, have refused requests to be interviewed, and the sheriff declined to answer personal questions about Bergdahl in a news conference that was televised nationally from this town of 7,000 people.

And few in town would speak openly about Bergdahl because of fears that any remarks might hurt the possibility of his safe return. The town learned about the capture in early July but kept quiet about the ordeal.

The circumstances of Bergdahl's capture on June 30 weren't clear.

On July 2, two U.S. officials told The Associated Press the soldier had "just walked off" his base with three Afghans after his shift. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

On July 6, the Taliban claimed on their Web site that five days earlier "a drunken American soldier had come out of his garrison" and was captured by mujahedeen.

Details of such incidents are routinely held very tightly by the military as it works to retrieve a missing or captured soldier without giving away any information to captors.

Officials with U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., declined to give additional details of his capture.

Bergdahl's family learned of his capture when a member of the Idaho National Guard came to their home in early July. Over the weekend of July 4, four service members who specialize in hostage events visited and told them what their son might be experiencing in captivity as well as what the military was doing to have him released.

Military officials in Afghanistan refused a request from the AP to interview fellow soldiers from Bergdahl's Army unit. Spokesman Navy Lt. Robert Carr in Kabul said the military was controlling the flow of information so nothing could be used against the other American forces or Bergdahl.

Not all family members of captured soldiers stay quiet about such situations.

Keith Maupin, whose son was captured in Iraq in 2004, was vocal during the four years his 20-year-old son Pfc. Matt Maupin was missing before his body was found.

"I know if they stay quiet, they're not going to get any information," Maupin told the AP from his home in Ohio. "They've got to stay on top of it."

Some say the discretion exhibited in Hailey fits with the region's history of respecting the privacy of part-time celebrity visitors and residents such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore

"It's just the way we are," said Hailey Chamber of Commerce Director Jim Spinelli. (source)

The Wisest Latina

Out of masochisim I found myself watching CNN on Saturday. It was coverage of the Sotomayor hearings from last week, and they were asking for viewers to comment on their companion website about the proceedings.

I decided to do my bit as a concerned citizen, and left this message you see below. It was taken down by the site moderators within three hours of being placed there. I was suspicious of their Leftist sensitivities and allergic reaction to anything that defended the opposite side of their obvious bias, so I took a screenshot of my comment post right after I posted it, which you can see below.

Here is the link to the site to see the type of comments CNN prefers instead of mine:

http://newsroom.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/17/sonia-sotomayor-are-you-convinced/#comment-19726

Decide for yourself if CNN caters to only the reactionary brain-dead in our country:

I watched intently many hours of the CSPAN 2 broadcast coverage of the Sotomayor hearings, and came away with the thought that Judge Sotomayor was well prepared for this process.

Having received Arlen Specter’s questions far in advance to this hearing, as he repeatedly admitted while questioning her, it became apparent that many more of the questions were also given in advance to Ms Sotomayor in order to practice and refine her responses.

Upon reflection, I am unable to say for sure whether we saw the “real” Sotomayor. After all, can someone watch an actor perform on stage and claim to “know” the real actor?

Much has been made about the composition of the Senate panel. Apparently, it upsets many people that white men proceeded to ask Ms Sotomayor questions. Indeed, Rick Sanchez reported just an hour or so ago how Latinas he interviewed, who weren’t just common folk, but well-educated and experienced women felt indignant at the questions.

An impossible bar is placed upon the men on that panel who are demanded by the Constitution to discuss and ask questions in order to determine any nominee’s fitness for SCOTUS. If they ask probing questions about a prepared public statement Sotomayor made not once, but 7 times concerning racial superiority of her ethnicity, they are accused of trying to deny a person’s “life experience”. If they ask casual, unassuming questions such as “Can you live on what we pay judges?”, they are criticized for presuming that her Bronx upbringing was inconsequential.

From what I saw, the white men asked about the only things they had to go on: her rulings, her speeches, and her advocacy work. What is so wrong about that? Previous nominees from Republican administrations not only had to answer questions from those areas, but had to also answer question on incidental memos, casual unofficial comments, jokes, and even their video rental purchases.

For such a fuss to be made over the lines of questioning Ms Sotomayor had to “endure” by these white men ignores not only the mandate of the Constitution, but the history of previous nominees as well. To continue with this act of being offended leads one to think that Latinas can’t handle a thorough vetting process. Or at least the ones that men must endure.

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Sotomayor Hearings, Day 3: Angry Arlen Contribution

Sotomayor Hearings, Day 3: The Franken Contribution