Filed under: Politics | Tags: Al-Jazeera, Journalism, Presidential Debates, Presidential Electoral Politics, Race, Racism, Video
After watching this evening’s increasingly onerous debate and catching the end of a nailbiting and disappointing tie between Mexico and Canada in World Cup Qualifying, the above video landed in my reader, courtesy of the best post-Chicano blog this side of high culture: Ken Burns Hates Mexicans.
Reportage such as this from (ostensibly terrorist-loving, dontcha’ know…) Al-Jazeera English only makes John McCain’s example-as-digression (search for “Lewis”) concerning Georgia Rep. John Lewis’s comments on the recently racialized and paranoid tenor of McCain/Palin rallies and the respective campaigns’ responses worth re-evaluating. When you’re noticing the kind of speech openly making the rounds and carrying currency at these events and the rather earnest concern on the part of the last interviewee, Rep. Lewis’s remarks actually ring more true upon review. This is so in spite of both the McCain campaign’s falsely humble attempts to play the Congress member’s remarks up as a variety of liberal race-baiting and the Obama campaign’s overly-cautious desire to downplay and discredit nearly anything that could be remotely construed as controversial and seemingly anti-American. It should give us pause to consider our population’s information consumption and (more importantly) analysis habits.
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I agree — those people in the video are pretty crazy. here’s my take on the debate:
http://culturedecoded.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/analysis-the-third-and-final-presidential-debate/
Comment by pacer521 October 15, 2008 @ 11:51 pmThanks for dropping by and for introducing me to your blog, pacer.
If I may, it’s more than just crazy people, though. The simple designations of ‘crazy’ ‘weird’ ‘yokel’ or the like are way too easy designations to rely on when it comes to political discourse. I think that some thought should be taken on the phenomena surrounding the current backlash to approach the matter dead-on and state some good reasons why stuff like this is worth being concerned about and denouncing. My hope is that a post like this would get readers to come up with and share the reasons with others, maybe even here.
Comment by tirado October 16, 2008 @ 12:03 am