Why did journalists conceal the NAACP chief's crazy talk?
Whitewashing a Black Leader
BY JAMES TARANTO
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Friday, February 3, 2006 2:08 p.m. EST
Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, spoke Wednesday at North Carolina's Fayetteville State University during an event kicking off Black History Month. News 14 Carolina, a local cable-news network, did a feel-good story about this "civil rights icon" and NAACP recruitment:
<<< Bond said NAACP membership is alive and well. It has nearly 500,000 members. . . .
"I thought that it would be a good opportunity to have a more prominent role in my community," Victoria Ruffin, also a NAACP member, explained.
Bond said it's a positive attitude that lures more young people in. And it's those growing numbers that will help fight future racial discrimination. >>>
The Fayetteville Observer described the speech:
<<< Civil rights activist and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond told a crowd at Fayetteville State University on Wednesday that the fight for equal rights is not over.
"We now find ourselves refighting old battles we thought we had already won," he said. "We have to fight discrimination whenever it raises its ugly head." . . .
Bond spoke for 45 minutes, and his speech was interrupted several times by applause as he jabbed at the Bush administration. Bond's address was part of FSU's Distinguished Speakers Series and helped kick off Black History Month.
"We have a president who talks like a populist and governs for the privileged," Bond said. >>>
A little partisan jab is no big deal, but WorldNetDaily has an account of the speech that conveys quite a different tone:
<<< Civil rights activist and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond delivered a blistering partisan speech at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina last night, equating the Republican Party with the Nazi Party and characterizing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, as "tokens."
"The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side," he charged.
Calling President Bush a liar, Bond told the audience at the historically black institution that this White House's lies are more serious than the lies of his predecessor's because Clinton's lies didn't kill people. . . .
He referred to former Attorney General John Ashcroft as J. Edgar Ashcroft. He compared Bush's judicial nominees to the Taliban. >>>
Isn't it newsworthy when the leader of a venerable organization like the NAACP engages in such over-the-top, crackpot rhetoric? (Or, if you're an over-the-top crackpot and think Bond was right, isn't it newsworthy that the leader of a venerable organization like the NAACP is telling the truth about the evil Chimpy W. Hitliar?)
Why did the local media ignore Bond's crazy talk? (The speech doesn't seem to have received any national attention outside WND and cable chat shows.) The most likely explanation, it seems to us, is that they recognized the talk as crazy and felt it would be invidious, inflammatory or both to depict a respected black leader as crazy--even though doing so would have been merely a matter of quoting his own words.
What we end up with, then, is a double message, very much like Yasser Arafat* talking peace in English while inciting hatred in Arabic--except that in this case Bond is speaking a language everyone understands, and reporters, whose job is to report the facts, are instead concealing them. Bond's mostly black audience at Fayetteville hears his message of division and resentment, while the broader public is told that he has a "positive attitude" and is engaged in a "fight for equal rights."
And then people scratch their heads and try to figure out why blacks' political attitudes are so different from those of nonblacks.
* The haughty, Fre--oh wait, sorry. Arafat, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, is in stable condition after dying at a Paris hospital.
opinionjournal.com
rdu.news14.com
fayettevillenc.com
worldnetdaily.com |
