CNN, Fox, etc., 2003:
Humiliating Black Men For Profits

 by Ishmael Reed

 Jan. 29, 2004, between 3:15 and 3:20 p.m., EST, CNN ran mug shots of George Clinton, Michael Jackson, James Brown, and showed R. Kelly in an orange prisoner's jump suit. When's the last time you saw a black male author on CNN and I don't mean a tough-love artist who preaches that the problems of blacks are internal. - I.R.

In last issue's editorial, I complained about CNN's concentrating on black male anti-social behavior and ignoring that of white men. I complained that it was Kobe Kobe Kobe around the clock, but the abominable behavior of Air Force cadets was ignored.

One out of five women,19 percent at the Air Force Academy, has complained of sexual assault. On 9/24/03 CNN finally reported a perp of at least one sexual assault. A former black male cadet. They apparently couldn't find a white cadet, though; given the enrollment of black cadets in comparison with that of white cadets, there must have been a large pool from which to sample. 0r would uncovering the crimes of white male cadets alienate its target audience: angry white males.) In the Tailhook scandal, which included a number of white air force men, a black man was also offered up as a scapegoat - but he was acquitted of any responsibility for a sexual assault. (And what became of those black soldiers who were accused of raping white women. At least that's what the army interrogators tried to get them to say. The women told the press and the NAACP that the sexual acts they conducted with these men were consensual. Are they still serving time, or doesn't anyone care?)

Anybody who watches CNN during the day will discover their desperate attempt to boost their ratings by exhibiting black men in an unfavorable light, as they search for another 0.J. to save their network as it vies with Fox, which has found the formula for dishing out red meat to their conservative audience. Heading toward extinction, CNN, which was saved by the O.J.Trial, has decided that its profits lie in marketing black male scandal to a sick miserable segment of the white public that gets off from such displays. This is why it's Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant and O.J. forever. Though CNN is equipped with the newest snazzy techno shock and awe techniques, exhibiting and humiliating black men for profit dates back to the slave trade. The cynical white men who push this product have hired Aunt Jemima type white women who, though wearing a feminist demeanor, can't get over their addiction to the pedestal. (They got rid of the sisters, and even some of the Asian-American women, when at one time the executives said they all wanted a Connie Chung). These anchor women allow the male executives to attire them in hooker garb as they carry on the attack against black men like snarling rotweilers. They even require that Paula Zahn show some knee during her Saturday morning show. (The anchor women on their CNN international service, by contrast, are dignified and professional, because the executives know that these audiences won't buy the kind of dumb downed rotten eye candy that they feed that dumb downed entity known as the cholesterol happy American public. 70% of the public, for example, believes that Saddam had something to do with 9/11. Ain't that pitiful. That's why Bush can get away with his Mad - Cow brained lies and speeches). Of course, on Jan.16th, the day that M.Jackson entered a plea of not guilty, the CNN men took over, spending just about a whole day trading jokes and sarcasm about Jackson, led by Miles 0'Brien, whose hatred for the singer is palpable. Every gesture that Jackson made was termed "bizarre," " weird," "peculiar," "strange." They all agreed that MJ was some sort of one man Circus. Given the tacky looneytoon graphics and circus like presentation of CNN and Fox, their screaming anchor people, they should recognize a circus when they see one. Who can be more clownish than Hannity and O'Reilly. Trying to fill in time, the anchorpeople took hours complaining about Jackson's arriving to the court 20 minutes late, and "sauntering" into the court room and standing on the top of a car to greet his fans. The nigger wasn't humble enough for them. They wanted him to arrive on a mule cart, dressed in overalls and bow before the judge with his hands clasped behind his back, the way that natives used to salute their colonial masters. Of course, later in the day, the CNN anchor women led by Nancy Grace and some other women, including some low grade trashy tabloid types from something called Celebrity TV, came in to do clean up duties on Jackson on the Larry King Show. This was another all white media jury except for the self-loathing loser Christopher Darden who was dragged out of merciful oblivion to get another shot at a powerful black man. He's their "legal consultant," and judging from his appearance on CNN has become sick over O.J. The white men were egging him on all day into some kind of Pat Juber with O.J. and he was dumb enough to accommodate them, comparing Jackson's arriving to court in a van to O.J. in a van being chased by the police. Obviously, Darden needs help! They also have Jeffrey Toobin, another legal expert, who suggested, in a book, that blacks are incapable of rational thought. everything is a con'spiriatatin' to us. Given his Afro hair he'd probably run into discrimination in Israel. When Michael Jackson's lawyer caught him lying during the week Jackson made his plea, he was reduced to stuttering and backing up. Another CNN consultant is Joe Klein (Klown) who slimed his way up as what FAIR called " a white militant"; his attacks on blacks got him a job at Newsweek and now Time where he now comments on " important issues." (Notice how neoconservatives like David Brooks become that way over some behavior engaged in by blacks.) Klown wrote a book about Clinton with some racist passages about the black protagonist's "voodoo" sexuality, called "Primary Colors" and lied about his writing it; yet he says that the inner cities should be turned over to the churches. Another hypocrite like Bennett, Gingrich Andrew Sullivan, Armstrong Williams and other scolders of blacks who have been caught wrong. While we're at it, why doesn't the media make as big a deal about Ann Coulter's anti-Semitism as It does the alleged anti-Semitism of Min. Louis Farrakhan.

Some would argue that Michael Jackson and Kobe are superstars and that their cases have nothing to do with race.They would agree with John McWhorter, the right's new rubber mask that the only remaining issue about which blacks have a grievance is police brutality - another case of a person using a Ph.D. as a cover to commit intellectual larceny. But Lionel Tate is no superstar. This boy was sentenced to life for killing a girl by using moves he'd seen on wrestling shows.

They've run his story along with those about Kobe and Michael's. Sometimes the stories of the 3 run in succession at the top of the news, even deemed more important than the war in Iraq and the staged contrived capture Saddam Hussein. Sometimes they'll include Scott Peterson so that their baiting of blacks won't look so obvious.

But why Tate. For the same reason that the New York Times ran a front page story about the problems of Malcolm X's grand son. The argument beneath these stories is that blacks are genetically prone to violence. CNN did a favorable report about the Nazi-like "scientific " studies of Ms. Diana Fishbein, who believes that blacks are genetically violent, overlooking the fact that people of European ancestry nearly exterminated the indigenous people of this hemisphere and held brutalized Africans for centuries. If blacks are genetically prone to violence maybe these violent genes will mutate into more benign ones as they apparently have among the European population. They also gave James Q.Wilson a forum. He subscribes to the same theory about blacks as Ms.Fishbein and is the philosopher behind Giuliani's Fascist stop and frisk policies and W's new cynical initiative to get black people married. The president is a man whose wife nearly left him over his drinking and whose two daughters have gotten into trouble over their drinking. Family values, indeed.

Perhaps CNN is following the lead of Roger Ailes, president of Fox News, whose media strategies they wish to imitate. He won an election by putting the rapist Willie Horton's black face before the electorate, scaring white men in the south so that their percentages climbed by 20% in favor of Bush,1, yet, in an appearance on Tavis Smiley show on NPR, Ailes said that it's CNN that appeals to the hard right.

But the women on CNN aren't the only ones who are surrogates for male corporate executives. (One of the reasons that the white middle class feminist movement has singled out black men for their wrath is because black men lack the economic power of their bosses.Hollywood women said that they feared losing their jobs, were they to charge Arnold Schwarzenegger with sexual harassment [he won the women's vote]; maybe this is why the feminist movement has singled out black men to take the brunt of criticism for misogyny. They have no economic power from which these women might benefit. Also, the author of "Tales From The Boom Boom Room" about sexual harassment on Wall Street , said that her women informants were also scared to death to talk about white male misogyny for fear of losing their jobs. That's why the only way some white women feel that they can vent their frustrations against men is to take it out on the brothers, and making millions of dollars for people like Stephen Speilberg, (who is mum about the battering of Jewish women. No money in it I guess).Two of the sisters were recruited by their white male employees to criticize Kobe on the pages of Newsweek and The New York Times. And the New York Times gofer and twofer ended the year with a vicious assault on the character of black men. This time, black athletes. So did Katha Pollitt of the Nation, which has been as hard on black men as those owners of the corporate media when it comes to slamming black men. ( Notice no black men are ever invited to speak on these cruises the Nation is always sponsoring). The Nation even startled its readers by supporting a book that expressed sympathy for the police who beat up Rodney King,in a review of "Official Negligence..." , written by Lou Cannon, who said that King got what was coming to him . This is what happens to black men when a liberal publication hires a feminist editor. The author of the piece was Peter Schrag who is allied with the right wing Free Press, McWhorter's publisher. The Aunt Jemima Nation feminists complained to Victor Navsky, their publisher, because they weren't invited to contribute to a special Travel issue. Ms. Katrina vanden Heuvel 's name was missing from the complaint that they signed to Navsky, the publisher, about their being left out of a travel issue, Navsky told them in so many words to buzz off. Charles McGrath of the New York Times had the same attitude when confronted by feminists critics who complained about the preponderance of books reviewed and reviewers being (white) men. He told them that he had laura Miller and Margo Jefferson writing for him. Tokens. He added that most of the people who staff the book review are women. So here are women who work for an outfit where the criticism of black men is even sneaked into the book reviews, the features, the magazine section, and the sports pages, yet they tip around in an atmosphere where women's literature is disrespectedand where "The Bell Curve" was praised and where a book about black slavemasters received high marks. Boss we wonts to keep our job.We aint gwine say nothin'. Aunt Jemima feminists. And how does Laura Miller and Margo Jefferson feel about being used by Mr. McGrath. Ms.Margo Jefferson challenged me to a fist fight before an audience at New York University. Now, do you suppose that she will confront Mr. McGrath. Think that she will threaten to whip his ass over the omission of women's literature from the Times Book Review?

Ms.vanden Heuvel who plays a progressive on TV, reserves all of her criticism for black men even though some black men are listed on the masthead of the magazine. Randall Kennedy. Roger Wilkens. Maybe they don't read the magazine and maybe they aren't aware that the nation is staffed by black male hating feminists like Kathy Politt.

Appearing on Amy Goodman's show at the end of the year, the only sexism that she could cite as having occurred during the year was the Globe newspaper's outing of Kobe Bryant's accuser, who is called "the victim" by CNN's all white media jury, omitting the adjective "alleged. " Basketball star,Charles Barkley had to remind Nancy Grace of this when she referred to this groupie for athletes as a "victim." So that's all she could come up with? This was a year in which a white man confessed to the murder of scores of women. The Green River Killer. A year in which a white male dominated government sent an army into Iraq, resulting in the murder of thousands of Ms.Politt's brown sisters.A year in which one out of three women cadets at the Air Force Academy and in which half of the women in the army said they'd been subjected to sexual harassment and all she could come up with was the outing of Kobe's publicity hungry accuser as the most sexist outrage of 2003? She said this on progressive Pacifica radio where women broadcasters carry around in their heads, the same stereotypes as the American Nazi party. They even have the kids on their Saturday Youth Radio program on their Berkeley affiliate KPFA issuing angry accusations against black men. On the Saturday after New Years , a "spoken word poet" hit the brothers with a fusillade of invective even bringing Al Green into her firing range. This was followed by an opinion piece about a black father who wasn't paying child support. (The typical face of domestic abuse and crime and child abandonment on KPFA's morning show is black! In a country in which half of the men who are obligated to pay child support, don't , and where the divorce rate is I out of 3 and where millions of white women are on welfare as a result of being abandoned by their husbands, child abandonment is hardly a black male issue. Isn't there a media outfit operated by the white center, left or right doesn't spread stereotypes about black men?) Not to be outdone, Neo-liberal and Progressive feminists like Terry Gross and Laura Flanders of NPR used the occasion of the anniversary of the march on Washington to vent their grievances against black men by asking guests about the exclusion of women from the leadership that made speeches from the platform. When they not hitting live black men, they dig up some dead ones. Of course, a number of black women writers have made this observation and many would agree that the male domination of the march was unfortunate. A program that you will never hear from Ms.Flanders and Ms. Gross? How the privileged white middle class women's movement has excluded black, Asian-American and Latino women from their movement (See their complaints in the book "The Feminist Memoir Project.") Ms. Gross is married to Frances Davis, a "Jazz critic" whose idea of Jazz criticism is to whine about how white Jazz musicians haven't been given credit for their contributions to Jazz. He should be joyful about Nat Hentoff's having received a Jazz Masters award.As far as I know, Mr. Hentoff doesn't play an instrument, nor does Jan Wenner who was recently inducted into the bogus Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Davis's articles appear in the Arts and Leisure section of the Times, which over the last decade, has attempted to deliver forms created by black musicians to white artists. The Emineming of black culture that predates the Al Jolson phenomenon (who also used to surround himself with blacks in order to add a flavor of authenticity to his product). Of course, the Times' criticism of Afro-American music continues to be a joke.Recently critic Jon Pareles wrote that the blues was limited to some simple chords. He should take a look at Bird's "Blues For Alice."

The Hip Hoppers of course are the latest black invention that is used to make millions for white producers and artists. Some of our current group of Hip Hoppers, who make Mantan and Stepin seem dignified, could have been extras in the old Al Jolson movies. "Hollywood Homicide" is the latest installment of Hip Hop minstrelsy, a shoot-em-up coon-chasing number in which police brutality complaints are trivialized and Johnny Cochran and Robert Shapiro are invoked by the comical bagged Coon as a way of luring laughs from the white suburban audience that this movie is meant to entertain. The kind of audience that should join O.J.Recovery. This movie appears at a time when a suburbanite jury acquitted some cops called the "Riders," who brutalized, kidapped and planted evidence on some black Oaklanders and after another cop was acquitted for banging the head of a black teenager on the hood of a car. Why would Gladys Knight and Smokey Robinson lend their names to this trash? The big scene in this sorry mess of a flick occurs with the character played by Harrison Ford and his partner participate in the chase of a SUV a reference to 0.J.who seems to be lodged in the unconscious and dreams of many white Americans, maybe even some of those who say that blacks, when they complain about all white juries acquitting Negrophobic cops, should move on. That's what Jerry Brown said when the "Rider's" verdict came down. We in Oakland want him to move on. (The "Riders" said in their defense that they thought they were carrying out Brown's mandate).

In this" Hollywood Homicide, "we're asked to believe that a high flying slick black Hip Hop record executive flees the cops when he could get any number of high priced lawyers to spring him. Back to Kobe. To add to the sliming of Kobe Bryant, and convicting him before the trial begins, the men who run the Times and the Neo-Conserative Newsweek brought in a couple of sisters of the kind who can always be relied upon to tank black men. The Newsweek article criticized Kobe for being a loner (while the sister who carries out the orders of the men at Sports Illustrated criticizes black athletes for being gregarious; go figure). Kobe's high school coach said that the Newsweek article was full of it. As for the Times where the feminists black and white are so hateful of black men that they even dragged their obsessions into Calvin Hernton's obituary, one of their house sisters said that Kobe should sit out the season. In the last game played before the completion of this editorial, he scored 31 points.

Speaking of the Kobe, after my Kobe editorial, I got some angry mail and phone calls from a few sisters who believes that white men should have more freedom of choice than black men. The old slavery minded attitude parading under the banner of radical theory. The kind of attitude that gives black feminist theory a bad name. Can't understand why the Grand Dragon hasn't thought about opening chapters for his like minded black sisters. He's too busy chug-a-lugging budweisers, I guess.

Finally, how do the feminists explain the 44% women's vote for the mass groper Nazinegger for Gov. of California. I even saw black male hater Tammy Bruce at his victory ceremony and Susan Estrich is one of his advisors. It figures. She once wrote an article discounting racism in the criminal justice system as a factor in the incarceration of young black men. Tammy Bruce has made such racist comments about black men that NOW expelled her. So there she was up there hugging Nazinegger who, having exhausted a mediocre downhill movie career, has leased his BI ceps to some aging California Nazis. He is a step and fetch it for the rich. His budget cuts would "cap health care payments for illegal immigrants, reduce state payments for in-home care of the elderly and disabled, place a cap in enrollment in Healthy Families and lead to a 10% reduction in fees to Doctors and other medical providers under the Medi-Cal program. Well maybe dat is too extreme calling de man a Nazi, but didn't he say he had this paranoid porno fantasy about Hitler and didn't Hitler and his people declare war on the disabled and the "weak." This is what Schwarzenegger has done with his budget , which might send 65,000 elderly people into institutions. God forbid that they have to take showers.
 

Ishmael Reed