As you may have noticed, CNN has been making an effort in recent months to re-establish itself as an objective, authoritative news network, in opposition to Fox on the right and MSNBC on the left. (It's not like they wouldn't still lean left, but sure, we'll say they're trying.) Part of this effort involved a major shake-up among the news anchors and pundits. Among other changes, Mary Matalin and James "Ragin' Cajun" Carville have been dropped (aw), as has Erick Erickson of RedState.com (meh), while NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo's son Chris has been hired (????). Also, Jake Tapper, one of the few fair-minded guys in the MSM, has been given his own show, possibly in a prime-time spot.
Now, I don't particularly care about these changes, and neither should you (unless you're a fan of one of these guys or something). But one aspect of all this is rather enlightening. Among those sacked at the network was news anchor Soledad O'Brien, or as Twitter apparently likes to call her, "Special Snowflake." I know very little about O'Brien; I seem to vaguely remember her hiring being announced as an example of current-day diversity, because she's part-black, part-Irish, part-Hispanic, which as we'll see is somewhat involved here. I think she did that "Black in America" special once or twice, or maybe more. I don't know; I honestly didn't bother to look it up. But she did read talking points from Talking Points Memo on the air once as "research," shortly before claiming that as a true "journalist," she didn't suffer from bias. So yeah.
No, it's the circumstances surrounding her firing, rather than the fact of her firing, which deserve attention. Recently, a VP for CNN complained about O'Brien's show, not on the basis of its content, or even its ratings--which would be reason enough; "Starting Point," as it's called, lags behind every other network, even MSNBC--but because the program, specifically its audience, is "too ethnic." Yes. Their beef with the show is that there are too many black people watching it. That's the sort of comment only a liberal can get away with making--and not always even then.
As soon as word of this got out, of course, the network raced to spin it away. A "clarification" from CNN Wednesday about all this "explained" that this VP was complaining about the size of the audience, not its racial composition, and that he in no way meant to suggest that ethnicity was the problem. Which makes sense. Slips of the tongue like that happen. I know that I, for one, frequently slip up and say "Negro" when I mean to say "pizza." They're very similar words, after all. What's really disgusting about this is that the handful (and I do mean handful) of minority figures at CNN, people like Roland Martin, people who can't shut up about racism when they perceive it in conservatives or any institution to their right, will not talk about this at all. Conservative bloggers and those on Twitter have been trying to pry any comment on O'Brien's firing and the "ethnic" remarks out of them, to no avail.
This whole farce displays the race issues our media has. It's no secret that the people who staff the news networks and the publications live in a cultural bubble of their own--East Coast, upper-class, and therefore lily-white. For all their liberalism, these are exactly the sort of people who would complain about something being "too ethnic." Note, for example, that although the mixed-race O'Brien has been canned, our dear Piers Morgan has not. Insufferable? Yes. Pompous? Yep. So lacking in standards that his fellow Britons don't even want him back? You got it--but to the media, he's "one of us," and that's all that matters. As long as they continue to stand up for the Left and their supposed goal of racial equality, that counts for more than whatever biases they might have personally. These are the people who continue to control so much of our information. Sucks to be us, huh?
(Oh, and by the way, this isn't the only incident of egg-on-your-face for the media this week.)
33 comments:
T-Rav, When I was with the big law firm in DC, it was a hugely liberal firm with a couple liberal icons on staff. Most of the attorneys were very typical liberals -- lily white and loved Bruce Springsteen-loving because "he speaks for us, the common man," even as they lived in million dollar homes in Potomac.
They were unbelievable racist.
But what was interesting was that they actually couldn't see it. They threw around the racism word pro forma at conservatives, but somehow they never quite saw it in themselves.
One of the most blatant moments I remember came when a black guy they been grooming to become a partner fled the firm. The anger they had for him was amazing and I constantly heard comments basically suggesting that without their guidance blacks would never make it in a law firm and he owed them loyalty because they choose to lift him up to their level. Yet, they saw themselves as the good guys.
Right before I left, they actually fired every black attorney except one -- who was fired later. 22 of them. When they were accused of racism in the firing, they were shocked and outraged.
I imagine newsrooms are like this as well.
Andrew, there's a saying I've heard before that compared race relations in the North and South (back in the day, of course): "In the South, they didn't care how close blacks got to them, as long as they didn't get too rich or powerful. In the North, they didn't care how rich or powerful blacks got, as long as they didn't get too close."
I don't mean to make a North-South issue of this, of course, and it's a very rough description. But I think there is something to it. Like the DC lawyers you mention, these East Coast media guys are very rich, they travel to Martha's Vineyard when they go on vacation, names like "Vanderbilt" or "Rockefeller" are common currency among them--you get the picture. Sure, they're committed to racial equality and tolerance and affirmative action and all that; but they don't want to associate in the same social circles.
Even though I'm aware of this sort of thing, I still am amazed that a CNN executive would actually say this, just like I'm amazed a DC law firm would do that. But then, I don't live in liberal-land.
Incidentally, for the record, I didn't intend this post on the media as a complement or whatever to Andrew's thing on the media of yesterday. It's just what I wanted to talk about at the moment.
T-Rav, I've lived all over the country and I can tell you that I've never seen a more racist place that the liberal Northeast (other than democratic West Virginia).
As for CNN, I can't explain how a CNN exec would let this slip, because most liberals I've met fully understand that there are things they can't say in public even though they say them privately. Yeah, no hypocrisy there...
The media may be racist, but one idiot (even a powerful one) offering a silly reason for cancelling a show nobody watched doesn't support that claim.
O'Brien isn't any blacker now than she was when they gave her the show.
T-Rav....I think the media racism is part and parcel of the liberal mindset. When you lump people together in identity groups...blacks, women, gays, hispanics, etc...you tend to equate all their traits as the same. Think of a "typical" black, woman, gay, hispanic, etc., and you will have an idea of the inherent racism in their group-think.
I think most conservatives (yes, I'm not including repubs in here) look at people as individuals, with their own unique strengths and weaknesses. We then tend to look at "humanity" as a group. This then lends itself to our reliance on human nature and the historical record of what actually happened. Rise and fall of empires, man's inhumanity to other men, biological differences in men and women, you get the point.
My business mentor/rabbi was a big black guy in North Carolina. When I first met him as my boss when I was a fresh-faced punk right out of university, he scared the crap out of me. He looked like every stereotype of gangsta I'd always heard of. Yet, when he opened his mouth and spoke, he was the most inspiring, intelligent man I'd heard of to that point, black or white.
Point is, when we base our impression of people on what they look like, which is the liberal standard group-think m.o., then I believe our actions will reflect that unless proven other-wise.
Soledad was hired based on her appeal, or so they thought, to attract minorities. Jackpot!! A little white, some black thrown in, and some salsa to get the hispanic viewership and voila, can't miss! Unfortunately, once she opened her mouth and started spouting off her own thoughts (or lack thereof) off script, people started to realize she was just another liberal, pretty faced host. People don't like being taken, and the hype surrounding her was all about "look, we've got someone here embodies in one person, who will attract just about every demographic out there! Winning!!
Talent and skill will most always win out in the end. All Soledad brought to the table was her "ethnicity" and when that turned out to not work as expected, they cut her loose. I have no doubt we'll hear from Miss Soledad O'Brien again though.
Anthony, except that anyone on the Right caught saying "too ethnic" would be excoriated by the media and held up as an example of how all Republicans think.
Sorry, but this is indefensible.
It's not a matter of defending the comment. My point is that unless its part of a series of statements by people in similar positions, it doesn't indict the group,
Patriot, some conservatives look at people as individuals and some don't, just like some liberals do and some don't. However, I think it has to be said that it's conservatism, rather than liberalism, which encourages a color-blind, "content of their character" approach to people.
In O'Brien's case, we're really just seeing the logical consequences of the attitude identity-group politics produces. She was hired because of her ethnicity, then fired because of her audience's ethnicity. Now, I see no evidence that she was a particularly good news anchor, as the information above relates. But evidently, that wasn't the cause of her being sacked; it was the obsession with race categories and race quotas. Which is disgusting.
And no, I'm sure we haven't seen the last of Soledad. Conservatives elsewhere on the net are already making bets on whether she'll go to MSNBC or Current/Al-Jazeera. Given that the former already has its token black in the person of Al Sharpton, I'm going with the newest subsidiary of Big Oil.
Anthony, like I said, this was a VP at CNN, not some random underling. Given his position, and the fact that these networks are overwhelmingly white, we have just as much reason to say they're racist as they do to say conservatives are racist.
If you're waiting for a smoking gun before you will agree, sorry but it's probably not gonna happen.
Anthony, I think the main point is that this is evidence of the kind of thinking that is considered acceptable at CNN -- as evidenced by (1) him saying it openly, (2) no one at CNN freaking out, and (3) him not getting fired.
As for it being racist, the issue is this: liberals claim that any consideration of race by conservatives that in any way assumes they are different/undesirable would be considered racist. Thus, for example, if a conservative said "we will cancel her program because it attracts an ethnic audience and they are not as valuable to us as white audiences." The left would be screaming racism.
Thus, the fact this man openly makes a statement that liberals would call racist if made by a conservative, and he does so without raising an eyebrow at CNN, tells us that there is racist thinking going on.
Let me also point out that according to liberals statistical disparity in hiring or firing is proof of racism. Newsrooms and the executive structures of the media as well as their talking-head collections are overwhelming white. Using liberal definitions, they must therefore be racists.
"Obama is a light-skinned African-American with no negro dialect." -Harry Reid
T-Rav said...
Anthony, like I said, this was a VP at CNN, not some random underling. Given his position, and the fact that these networks are overwhelmingly white, we have just as much reason to say they're racist as they do to say conservatives are racist.
If you're waiting for a smoking gun before you will agree, sorry but it's probably not gonna happen.
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I've never subscribed to the 'statistical disparity' view. As I've pointed out to people that attack the tea party, they are conservative's conservatives and most blacks are liberal, so there being few blacks at rallies isn't surprising.
"I've lived all over the country and I can tell you that I've never seen a more racist place that the liberal Northeast."
Andrew - I concur. I was shocked when I first moved here at how racist it is. I have always chalked it up to the fact that there are just many more subgroups to hate. There's a reason that Tom Lehrer wrote "National Brotherhood Week" while living in Cambridge and teaching at Harvard...
And T-Rav - I read this and gasped. This is as true a statement as I have ever read! Thanks.
"In the South, they didn't care how close blacks got to them, as long as they didn't get too rich or powerful. In the North, they didn't care how rich or powerful blacks got, as long as they didn't get too close."
Kit, but you have to understand, Harry Reid cares about black people, unlike those evil Republicans, so it doesn't matter what he says.
Glad you liked it, Bev! :-)
In truth, this is a little before my time, so it's not like I could verify that statement with firsthand information. But it matches with pretty much everything I've read or heard about the North or Northeast, especially New York, over the years.
And it's not like there aren't racists in my neck of the woods--there are. But at least they don't dress it up with faux-sophistication.
Anthony, again, the fact that the networks are 96% white isn't in itself proof of racism, but according to their own standards, in which opposition to affirmative action and so on is racist, it is. And again, when you combine this with the statement by this CNN executive, it's clear that there is a lot of racialist thinking going on at the network (and probably other networks as well).
RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
AndrewPrice said...
Anthony, I think the main point is that this is evidence of the kind of thinking that is considered acceptable at CNN -- as evidenced by (1) him saying it openly, (2) no one at CNN freaking out, and (3) him not getting fired.
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If such thoughts were common at CNN, presumably the same people who leaked the guy's statement would have added 'And that is just an example of stuff that gets said all the time'.
The sad truth is that once someone is high up enough in an organization (or on the favorites list of someone high up), idiocy and/or senility won't do them the same damage it would someone at a lower rank (getting rid of a peon is nothing, getting rid of an exec type is a big deal).
All that being said, I won't be surprised if the idiot in question is no longer with CNN in a few weeks (tends to be the way these things play out).
tryanmax said...
RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
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Fair enough.
tryanmax: Word.
I loved when Soledad was caught having her staff members feed her material directly from Wikipedia, and she was caught doing it trying to match wits with Joel Pollack. The definition she read was later scrubbed from Wiki. She deserves to be scorned, and I am glad she lost her gig. She is a triumph of ethnic liberal "babism" over "gravitas."
I loved when Soledad was caught having her staff members feed her material directly from Wikipedia, and she was caught doing it trying to match wits with Joel Pollack. The definition she read was later scrubbed from Wiki. She deserves to be scorned, and I am glad she lost her gig. She is a triumph of ethnic liberal "babism" over "gravitas."
Andrew: They were unbelievable racist.
Affirmative action for thee, but not for me.
= fairness, Washington style.
Jed, I'm not sad to see her go, that's for sure, and I doubt many other people are, either. She seems to have been little more than a partisan hack, and not a particularly smart one at that. Still, the stated reason for her firing is wrong; I don't know which is worse, losing your job because of your own skin color or because of your audience's skin color. Oh well. Live by the race quota, die by the race quota.
that sums it up pretty well, Rav :)
T-Rav: "Partisan hack" is just part of the job description for news anchors these days.
K, the question is how long it's been that way. Given Walter Cronkite's belief that you have to be a liberal to be a good journalist, probably longer than we want to think.
How is this?
LINK
Andrew
Shame on you. The "ethnic" column was not about race at all. It was about cuisine. Being part Irish the potato based food gets really old and only hard core Irish people watch the show.
Sure it makes for great ratings on Saint Pactrick's day but what about the rest of the year.
Obviously this is what it was all about because CNN would never say anything that could be misconstrued.
K, I read through that yesterday while composing this post. Never been a huge fan of Twitter, but darn if it doesn't have its uses from time to time.
Well Indi, her surname is "O'Brien" isn't it? And we're agreed that discriminating against Irish people is (still) wrong, right? Same thing. We can still be outraged about this.
They may well be racists. We have long known they are bloody hypocrites. Remember "The news we kept to ourselves" in Saddam´s Iraq?
As that case show, in the end it is about business. Why do they care about the composition of their audience at all? Because advertisers care. Advertisers care about purchasing power and demographics a lot. They have to.
Perhaps "ethnic" is simply an in-house euphemism for "poor people who won´t buy stuff white people like". Trouble is, CNN can hardly admit that.
According to Red Letter Media this is also called "the urban market" and got Sam Jackson a role in Star Wars. Poor Soledad isn´t ethnic enough to become a Jedi. She has no niche of her own.
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