Reply #28: I had the opposite reaction. And I thought Alter apologized [View All]

[DirkGently]

for going down the wrong road. Maddow connected a narrative because the narrative exists. Alter, who is great, nevertheless came off as a little captured by his time hobnobbing with the adminstration.

1) Rightwing hit-jobbers make explosive allegations supporting THEIR narrative about the President or other liberals or Democrats being dangerous radicals poised to steal cultural and economic supremacy from entitled white people, often by way of a manipulated video clip or carefully edited sound bite.

2) Fox runs with it. Obama's a dangerous radical, surrounded by dangerous radicals. Out to take away the cookies of hardworking conservative white people who never owned slaves.

3) The rest of the news media either fails or partially fails to separate truth from fiction and

4) The White House goes along with the story. So went ACORN and Sherrod.

Alter perhaps had a point that Van Jones, in addition to the various lies Fox et al, put forward had actually taken some (edit: arguably) fairly radical action, but Rachel's point was that the "He's a convicted felon" lie was what seem to stick.

Either way, though, Rachel's thesis holds up well. There were shreds of embarrassing material in the ACORN video that were real, and there were elements of Van Jones' political past that were (edit: arguably) controversial. But there was no push back on the massive lying that was perpetrated. As a result, ACORN was destroyed and Van Jones and then Sherrod, were swiftly run out of office, in part because the administration reacts to these predictable, bad-faith accusations of radicalism and black-on-white racism as though they were kryptonite.

Look, Obama DOES need to tread carefully around these fake race-baiting hand-grenades. What these people would like most is to see Mr. Obama on television, speaking angrily about some racially charged issue in a way that can be spun as "Angry Black President vows to settle the score with White America." That's THEIR narrative, and he does need to avoid it carefully. He's probably still smarting from jumping the gun a bit on the Louis Gates, Jr. episode.

But. He and the administration cannot jump this high every time these people pull this crap. Breitbart, O'Keefe, Fox, et al. are wreaking real political destruction with a deliberate pattern of lobbing these hysterical, dishonest, racially charged political bombs.

They need to come up with an intelligent response. Banning Fox News hit the wrong note. Yelling back likewise would backfire. But at the VERY least, they need to be more circumspect in believing these things. They need to chuckle knowingly like the rest of us have learned to do when these stunts are pulled, and let it be known that Breitbart, Fox, etc. do not get the benefit of the doubt, because they are proven liars.

That's all I saw Rachel saying, and I don't see Alter nor anyone effectively contradicting it.