Obama Should See This Play

Mr. Shields. Thank you for you appearance on the News Hour, and this article. The statistics of the number of negative adds coming from the Mccain Campaign was very revealing. As was the whole analysis. All they have is negativity, and I think they are giving cover to a lot of people who really woudn't vote for a black man no matter what his color. Mr. Obama has a lot of lessons to learn, and when the republicans are done picking him up by his heels and spanking his butt, I think he will have learned a few. They are not warm hearted big headed people who want the world to be civil -who are willing to elect symbols and vote for side shows. Their hearts are in their wallets with the pictures of their grand children. Guided by practicality, they will destroy the political landscape to have their own little garden. They are losing. Fighting dirty is not only expected and required, but is considered a virtue. And every time the republicans race, Mr Obama loses. What does it matter that we cannot possibly be more united after such attacks upon a whole class of people than before? We'll deal with that later. The sort of government we have that can avoid many problems because we live in a land blessed by an abundant nature has left many problems to be dealt with later, and the To Do list is not getting smaller or less menacing. Just as with John Kerry going against a sitting president in time of war, Mr. Obama cannot fight. He cannot beat up on the old man for being old. He cannot load the old man with every sin and injustice perpetrated by the republicans upon the body politic. As with all democratic campaigns; he has to survive being a punching bag for the republicans for the duration. And Mr. Obama should say nothing of race. To say no to reparations and an apology gives away black votes for no white votes. He should say nothing. He should say nothing on the racial attacks, but the party should heap contumely on the republicans. As a child of freedom, and not of slavery, he should say there is some part of the resentment he will never understand, but that he understands when he is being abused on the issue of race. And let it go at that. We have to remember that as the republicans define Mr. Obama, that they also define themselves, and define the whole nation. If confusion of the issues, and character assasination, can gain them political office, they enter office with the country more torn down and weakened, and with the people revealed as parochial and ignorant. I hope they lose. No people can hope to survive the demands of the future if they meet it divided; but win or lose, the damage has been done. Every political victory in America is pyrrhic.

Mark,
Always love seeing you on the Lehrer Report! Your remarks last night concerning the legitimacy of the issue of Obama's background/life story not fitting into the accepted or typical norms of American citizens brought to mind an essay by Bob Cesca, copied below, which shows how these kinds of narrow mindsets are reinforced by the right wing Republican machine. McCain will lose on the issues so he must make sure that Obama gets marginalized, trivialized, trashed, smeared - not one of us! - so his politics of unity and a new agenda to counter the disaster of a third Bush term will be ignored.
Here's Mr. Cesca's essay:

The Corporate Media Experiment: Why Isn't Senator Obama 'One of Us'? BOB CESCA

I'm not sure how he continues to be regarded as a very serious Washington pundit given his obvious history of race-baiting, but somehow he skulks his way onto MSNBC almost every day. Pat Buchanan on Hardball Monday night wondered out loud about Senator Obama: "Is he one of us?"
If by "one of us" he means a cranky, elitist, white, corporate media, man-shaped bunion who fashioned his career by demonizing brown people, the answer is a certain 'no'. But we know what Buchanan meant by this. Is Senator Obama with "us" or is he with the uppity blacks? Is he a real American like Senator McCain or is he a Muslim terrorist like those e-mails suggest? Is he too European (GAY!)? Is he like us: white, wealthy, conservative, elite?
During this dark ride of the Bush years, it's no longer surprising or shocking to hear such a bottomless cup of awfulness. This line of questioning has become the dominant theme in the corporate media's political narrative. "Us" has become a baseline which liberals -- regardless of race or gender -- will never achieve because the experiment is stacked against anyone who isn't centrist, moderate, right of center or conservative.
In scientific terms, the left has been tagged by the corporate media as the "experimental group" while the right is the "control group." The Republicans are the Awesome Republicans no matter what. They're constant. They set the tone of the debate. The corporate media accepts their terms, their rules and their frames as a given and the Democrats are expected to jump and dash and explain themselves based upon those givens, irrespective of how ludicrous they happen to be.
Prove to us that you're one of us. Prove to us that you support the troops. Prove to us that you're patriotic. Prove to us that you're not an effete snob. Prove to us that you can talk to a gathering of bumpkins in a diner like a plainspoken Republican can. Prove to us that you're not the enemy. Prove to us that you're not presumptuous.
And the experiment goes on and on with the Democrats (or liberals or progressives) poked and dissected and injected with false arguments, specious claims and disproved quotes (see Dana Milbank's recent column) often manufactured by the right and invariably parroted by the corporate media.
Instead of disregarding high pitched cranks like Buchanan and asking, "What Pat? Seriously -- why are you such a fringe psychonaut?" and discounting such a ridiculous question as beneath reason and credibility, the corporate media instead takes the "one of us" question seriously and more often than not wraps an entire debate around it.
This present week, in particular, has been yet another high water mark for this dynamic.
Senator Obama has been accused of being presumptuous, uppity (literally), against the troops, snobbish, elitist, hubristic, European (GAY!) and, considering the array of both subtle and obvious messages in Senator McCain's laughable Britney & Paris commercial, vacuous, frivolous, loopy, superficial, "Hollywood" and, I don't know, he produces amateur porn videos using night vision. Of course reasonable, professional analysts with ethical guidelines and some degree of integrity would disregard such accusations as the dripping-with-flopsweat acts of a desperate, pathetic McCain campaign. But instead, these accusations are somehow validated, debated and defended by people like Pat Buchanan. Prove to us, Senator Obama, that you're not a tabloid pop star. Prove to us that you're not a bleached blonde heiress or a slack-jawed ex-Mouseketeer.
Thankfully, for the cause of reason and rationality, there are people like Rachel Maddow who, while occupying the unglamorous role of debunking and debating Pat Buchanan, said to Buchanan on Wednesday's Race for the White House with Stretch:
"We have a responsibility to talk about whether [these accusations are] deserved, Pat. I think when John McCain doesn't speak to Pat Buchanan as being presumptuous -- calls himself 'President McCain.' But Barack Obama speaks to you as presumptuous for doing something much less damning... that says much more about you than it does the candidates."
In the menacing world of Pat Buchanan and of the larger barbecue media, Senator Obama is, in fact, presumptuous and all the rest of it, or, if he's not, the onus is on him to prove that he's not. Meanwhile, Senator McCain is simply...not. Senator McCain couldn't possibly be an elitist and out of touch with most Americans (even though he wears $520 shoes and his wife is the heiress to an Anheuser-Busch distributorship fortune) because it just doesn't fit their scientific experiment dynamic -- the script, the narrative. He's just not. Senator McCain couldn't possibly be a "celebrity" even though he's hosted SNL and had a movie-of-the-week made about his Vietnam experiences. He's just not. Senator McCain couldn't possibly be in favor of torture even though he voted against banning it. He's just not. Senator McCain couldn't possibly be out of his depth on foreign policy even though his lies and errors in this arena far outnumber any similar gaffes by Senator Obama. He's just not.
Is it any wonder why the latest polls show a much tighter race? And, thusly, is it any wonder that a tight race is better for ratings? Pat Buchanan, it turns out, is good for business.
Anyone who promotes -- or who doesn't necessarily oppose -- the scientific narrative is good for business regardless of whether they're racists or homophobes or drug-addled hooples. After all, Rush Limbaugh's contract was just reupped for $400 million while Sam Seder isn't even allowed on corporate radio.
So irrespective of what Senator Obama might do or say or what his life story might be, as long as he has a (D) after his name, he'll always be expected by the corporate media to explain himself. To prove himself. Why isn't Senator Obama more like Senator McCain: white, wealthy, conservative, elite? They'll go through this routine until the experiment is finished: either Senator Obama is experimented upon until he becomes more like Senator McCain (or another media-approved "one of us") or he'll lose the election and the actual Senator McCain is the next president. And the experiment continues. That is, unless we can seize the initiative redefine who "us" is. After a long history of white, wealthy, conservative elites running the lab, it's time to shut it down and clear the way for the rest of us.
CORRECTION: Mrs. McCain is the heiress to an Anheuser-Busch distributorship fortune.
Bob Cesca is the author of the forthcoming book ONE NATION UNDER FEAR -- a collection of blog-style essays which examine the politics of fear during the "dark ride" of the Bush years.
He's been a featured blogger for the Huffington Post since August, 2005.

Hope he's listening. He's clearly got a right to be cocky. But he doesn't have a right to be president.

Re: Masako; No one has the right to be president, and the presidency as a part of government has no right to be. Office has the right the people give to it. Even the right of the establishment press is a right we give. If we are going to stand for our public airwaves to be polluted with garbage such as who is the rascist, and who is the countra rascist and who said when first; then no one running has the right and no one reporting it has the right. Every time some owned media reports this crap it gives un deserved news time to the deserving loser. It will not go away because as No Issue, it is a winner for Mr. Mccain. And by sowing a mine field of doubt he avoids the same. Will he know his name in eight years? Will he be alive, on life support, on medication? The fact is that age destroys more people than youth. He avoids the question in all the muddy mess. Is black a factor. Sure, the poor have made the Blacks better off. None of it has come from the rich. So as long as race runs the race we are not going to talk about vision, or plans, or issues, or solutions. We may as well start talking about how we plan to survive John Mccain. None of us should fail to recognize the great attraction of power that emanates from the presidency. People are drawn into the greatest debasement of their honor to reach that home. Ask: what and who that power is over, and what it is about. Who in this generation has voted to allow such power to single individuals without effective checks? It is nonsense that we should allow this exercise of power over us, -of parties, of presidents, and of media. All stand as impediments to effective government. Do they have the right? Not until I agree they have the right. Thanks; and thanks again to Mark Shields. And I must say, that I would love to see peace and friendship in the halls of government. But it is better for government to fight and for the people to love each other than for goverment to know peace while we suffer strife.... Sweeney

Dear Mark,
My wife and I were surprised to see in your column that you reprinted the thoroughly discredited Obama "quote" Dana Milbank attributed to the candidate. You wrote, "In a meeting with House Democrats, he was quoted as saying, "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." Self-assurance in a candidate is good. Cockiness is not good."
But those who were actually there say it was totally different. Robert Parry [http://www.consortiumnews.com]:
"At this pivotal moment in American history, the major U.S. news media is back to its old game of drawing sweeping character judgments about a presidential candidate based on misleading “quotes,” a sickening replay of other recent elections.
The latest example of this wearisome gamesmanship was a column by the Washington Post's Dana Milbank, who distorted a reported quote from Sen. Barack Obama at a closed Democratic caucus and used it to prove Obama was a “presumptuous nominee.”
Milbank's colleague from the Washington Post's neoconservative editorial page, Jonathan Capehart, then took the point a step further on MSNBC's “Morning Joe” show, citing the misleading quote to establish that Obama is an “uppity” black man.
Yet, the true meaning of the Obama quote at the core of Milbank's snarky column appears to have been almost the opposite of how Milbank used it.
Milbank wrote: “Inside [the caucus], according to a witness, [Obama] told the House members, ‘This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for,' adding: ‘I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.'”
However, other people who attended the caucus complained that Milbank had yanked the words out of context to support his “presumptuous” thesis, not to reflect what Obama actually was saying.
Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-South Carolina, said Obama's comment was “in response to what one of the [House] members prefaced the question by,” a reference to the crowd of 200,000 that turned out to hear Obama speak last week in Berlin.
According to Clyburn, Obama “said, ‘I wish I could take credit for that, but I can't. Because it's not about me. It's about America. It's about the people of Germany and the people of Europe looking for a new hope, new relationships, as we go forward in the world.' So, he expressly said that it's not about me.”"
Milbank's incorrect account of what Senator Obama said at that meeting was noted by house leadership aides on the morning of July 30th and has been verified by others who were actually present to hear Obama's remarks.