http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11718.html
Scare tactic — Obama slams Muslim portrayal
By MIKE ALLEN | 7/13/08 6:14 PM EST
The Obama campaign is condemning as “tasteless and offensive” a New Yorker magazine cover that depicts Sen. Barack (Baraq Hussein) Obama (D-Ill.) in a turban, fist-bumping his gun-slinging wife.
An American flag burns in their fireplace.
The New Yorker says it's satire. It certainly will be candy for cable news.
The Obama campaign quickly condemned the rendering. Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama's right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree."
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”
The issue, which goes on sale Monday, includes a long piece by Ryan Lizza about Obama’s start in Chicago politics.
At a press availability Sunday afternoon in San Diego, Senator Obama was asked, according to a transcript by Maria Gavrilovic of CBS News: “The upcoming issue of the New Yorker, the July 21st issue, has a picture of you, depicting you and your wife on the cover.
“Have you seen it? If not, I can show it to you on my computer. It shows your wife Michelle with an Afro and an AK 47 and the two of you doing the fist bump with you in a sort of turban-type thing on top. I wondered if you’ve seen it or if you want to see it or if you have a response to it?”
Obama, shrugging incredulously: “I have no response to that.”
The magazine explains at the start of its news release previewing the issue: “On the cover of the July 21, 2008, issue of The New Yorker, in ‘The Politics of Fear,’ artist Barry Blitt satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama’s campaign.”
Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post said Sunday on his CNN media show “Reliable Sources” that the cover is arguably “incendiary.”
“I talked to the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, who tells me this is a satire, that they are making fun of all the rumors,” Kurtz added.
Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune defended it as “quite within the normal realms of journalism,” adding that “it's just lampooning all the crazy ignorance out there.”
The panelists agreed it would succeed in its goal of getting attention.
Attached below is link to the 15 page "New Yorker" article. I have read it and several things come out - in no particular order.
Obama's has systematically promised change but abandoned it for power. When Obamats first began in Chicago politics in the early 90's, he built his entire platform on change. But he lost. At that point, he abandoned change and instead ingratiated himself with the power brokers. This time he won. Sound familiar?
Obama has never appealed to black voters. When he lost his first run for State Senate, the single greatest reason was his lack of campaign financing. But the millions he needed was difficult if not impossible to come by in his district which was essentially black. But then Obama's pollsters discovered an astonishing fact - the most devout group that loved Obama wasn't blacks - it was young white yuppies. And unlike blacks, young white yuppies of Chicago had a lot of money. Thereupon, Obama cut a deal with the power brokers in the Chicago machine to redraw his district giving him an enormous gain in the rich white yuppie districts of Chicago. And he won. Sound familiar?
The article isn't bothered by Weatherman terrorists Ayers and Dohrn backing Obama early and hard. As the article puts it serenely, none of us should be bothered by the early and hard - and continuing - support of Obama by Ayers and Dorhn. (Yes, those bomb exploding Weathermen who even today sneer they didn't throw enough bombs and only a few months ago insisted on having Ayers photographed stomping his boots on the American flag. Ahuh.) As the article assures us, Ayers and Dohrn have now been accepted into 'polite society' in Chicago. Oh, goody.
Less than a week after 9/11, Obama 'frankly my dear didn't give a damn'. His statement - pasted below - was the first public statement given by Obama after 9/11. The date of the article is September 19. Now, note that the article was published on September 19th - which means it was written within days, if not hours after burning bodies hurtled in their agonizing death falls from the flaming towers of the World Trade Center, when charred bodies were being retrieved from the smoking ruins of the Pentagon, when unarmed American passengers sacrificed their lives to bring down a plane which was aiming for our nation's capital.
Every one of us can remember OUR intense emotions, our shock, our horror at that cataclysmic event. That event literally defines our lives, as news of President Kennedy's death, the moon landing, etc. 9/11 eclipses even them - it was and is one the most powerful, soul shaking moment of our lives. It triggered our shock, our horror - our patriotism, our instant roaring loyalty to our nation. And our outrage at the monsters who did this.
But Obama's response? Total opposite. He demands we 'feel the terrorists' pain.' Yes, within mere days of this cataclysmic event, his thoughts are NOT on the victims, not on patriotic Americans, loyalty to this country or its flag - and certainly not support for its military. Nope - instead his thoughts are on those poor little terrorists. What on earth did WE do that made those poor little terrorists do what they did? Yes, folks, Obama is consumed with worry and compassion for their suffering, their poverty, their deprived lives which drove them to do the icky naughty things they did, etc.
It's enough to make you vomit.
And obviously the 'New Yorker' senses that damned well. Before printing the statement of Obama below - a statement which will definitely enrage patriotic Americans - the New Yorker first tries a tactic to divert us from anger over Obama's 'feel the terrorists' pain' stance. The tactic? He wasn't as bad as the other Chicago politicians.
As the 'New Yorker' stresses, they didn't give a flip for 9/11. On September 12, the Chicago politicians came into the city consumed with one idea only - a crucial redistricting move which was being put forward. To hell with the burning bodies in New York and D.C. - the only thought of the Chicago politicians was 'what about my election'? So - in contrast to this nihilistic 'I don't give a flip' attitude, Obama's 'hug a terrorist' schtick doesn't seem so bad now, does it?
Well, at least that's the hope of the 'New Yorker'. You can read Obama's statement below and make your own conclusions.
Obviously, I have made mine known. I would appreciate hearing yours.
Carolyn
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/21/080721fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=1
"Obama’s response to the event was published on September 19th in the Hyde Park Herald:
Even as I hope for some measure of peace and comfort to the bereaved families, I must also hope that we as a nation draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy. Certain immediate lessons are clear, and we must act upon those lessons decisively. We need to step up security at our airports. We must reexamine the effectiveness of our intelligence networks. And we must be resolute in identifying the perpetrators of these heinous acts and dismantling their organizations of destruction.
We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.
We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe—children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and within our own shores."
July 15, 2008
This morning, just before I left for work at 7:50 a.m. PST, I logged onto my net to see that Fox News had a prominent piece on how Google was making anti-Obama sites disappear - using the excuse that the sites had been mistakenly categorized as spam. The 7 anti-Obama sites were affected for five days.
However, when I then logged on at work less than an hour later, the FOX piece had disappeared. I searched on the FOX website for it but couldn't get it. I searched through Yahoo and, again, couldn't find it. Ironically, when I 'googled' it, the piece popped up.
The affected sites aren't buying Google's 'explanation' - they've since gone on to WordPress in protest. Anyway, what do you think?
Carolyn
http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/07/15/anti-obama-bloggers-question-why-google-froze-their-accounts/
Anti-Obama Bloggers Question Why Google Froze Their Accounts
by FOXNews.com
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
By Joseph Abrams
Some bloggers opposed to Barack Obama say they suspect Obama’s supporters — with the assistance of Google — may have tried to censor them when the Internet giant froze their Web sites for five days last month.
Seven blogs run by Democrats who oppose Obama’s nomination for the presidency were incorrectly flagged as spam sites by Blogger, the hosting service Google has owned since 2003.
“It appears that [Blogger's] policy can be manipulated by people determined to shut down the free exchange of ideas,” said Carissa Snedeker, whose blog, BlueLyon, was among those that were frozen.
Google, however, says it was a filter issue.
“We believe that there was a spam e-mail sent promoting the seven particular blogs as part of the ‘Just Say No Deal Campaign,’ and so only those URLs were flagged in our system as spam sites,” Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said, referring to a coalition of disaffected Democrats who oppose Obama’s candidacy.
The bloggers believe that Web surfers who support Obama took advantage of a loophole in Blogger’s system that allows readers to report spam blogs, the artificial Web sites that abound on the Internet and are used to promote other sites.
“It’s unusual — I’ve never heard of similar blogs of the same nature being shut down like that,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of the tech site SearchEngineLand.com.
Blogger quarantined the seven anti-Obama blogs on June 25 while it conducted a review, a process that took five days and made it impossible for the bloggers to write posts on the weekend of a joint event held by Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“Blogger’s ‘guilty until proven innocent’ approach is appalling,” wrote blogger GeekLove on her site, Come a Long Way. She said she felt silenced by the freeze.
Google said in a press release that the blogs were blocked because an automatic spam filter had locked on to those Web sites.
“We believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the ‘Just Say No Deal’ network of [anti-Obama] blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam,” Google wrote.
But the bloggers say it was no accident that their sites were shut down, and they suspect they were targeted by Internet surfers with an agenda.
“The conclusion that many of us came to was that we were specifically targeted by some over-enthusiastic Obama supporters,” Snedeker said.
The bloggers believe it’s part of a larger campaign to evict them from left-wing sites like the Huffington Post and DailyKos.
Google says the bloggers’ suspicions are unfounded. “Politics had absolutely nothing to do with this — it was a spam issue,” Kovacevich told FOXNews.com.
Sullivan said he would have expected more blogs to get shut down if there had been a concerted effort to stop anti-Obama sites.
“I think that there’s something weird, in general, that all these were shut down,” he said, “but why, exactly, is uncertain.”
As a result, all seven bloggers opened accounts with WordPress, a rival blog-hosting site, hoping to avoid such problems.
Google said it was addressing the issue and “constantly evaluating our policies and technology to reduce the number of false positives caught by our spam filters.”
“We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs,” it wrote, “and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.”
Snedeker wrote on her blog that she wasn’t satisfied with Google’s gesture.
“How’s about a little benefit of the doubt for the next set of bloggers that get caught in your ‘automated spam detection’ maze?” she wrote.
BTW, I have now finished reading Michelle's Princeton thesis. Suffice it to say that woman is (1) totally self-pitying resentful Black and (2) badly educated. Essentially the entire thesis was that her attempting to get Black Princeton alumni to agree with her preconceived 'black victim' status which she states up front that she holds. She then sent out questionnaires hoping to get the alumni to agree. But they didn't. And boy was she one pissed off lady as a result. One other thing - those 'tables' she uses for justifying her 'study' are the worst designed I've ever seen. Confusing, unclear, and lacking crucial information that would make them slightest bit unbelievable. And her bibliography was beneath inadequate. All in all, this is the sloppiest piece of work I've ever seen from a supposedly 'honor graduate' of Princeton.
One final thing - her racism just seethes from every page.
I'll send you my conclusions when I get them.
Carolyn
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