ON BROADCASTING QUESTIONS OF RACE: NOT JUST AN OBAMA TRAUMA

Candidate Barack Obama gave the speech that had to be given, confronting racists and intolerance from a number of sides and eras. What brought things to a head, of course, was the showing of a number of incendiary speeches by Mr. Obama’s former pastor, the Reverend Jeremia Wright, who for this worthy candidate (Obama) may be Reverend Guaranteeya Wrong. After the speech (I was not able to hear it all) I was dial surfing for commentary in the AM (Abundantly Malicious) radio regions. One announcer who caught my ear was playing the speech while voicing over his obviously agended commentary, rich with sarcasm, line for line. I was trying to figure, in the brief time I had available, who he (the talk show host) was, to literally dissect the dissector, and what, if anything, he represented in honest racial dialogue, here’s what I heard; Mr. Obama “ he (Reverend Wright) has done some worthy things as well”, talk show guy (again to the audience), “name one”, Obama “he’s set up Aids clinics”, talk show guy which he accuses the white man of spreading”, Obama, “and he’s served his country as a United States Marine” – talk show guy – suddenly not a word, there was silence. After that respite, there was more of the speech and more of the host right winging it and I had to go but still couldn’t figure out his identity, so…. maybe one of you kind folks can help. What I did know for sure was that the “patriotic” commentator serving himself on his talk show had quite clearly never served his country, and thus did not want to talk about Reverend Wright being a marine, that he spoke with sarcasm and a bit of racist code, but what I didn’t know was his identity. Again on a reasoned discussion of race in America he didn’t and doesn’t have a clue, but is that a clue as to his name? Not enough, we guess because given the tenor of right wing talk show hosts on race and anything not Republican, who couldn’t he be.