Not a Post-Racism Society: Fair and Balanced

by Kevin

June 12th, 2008

Confused why liberals don’t think that Democrats should go on Fox? This might help explain it.

Categories: Media, Politics, Race |

11 Comments

Morris June 12th, 2008
What a dishonest person you are. The scroll was concerning what another group said, not Fox’s opinion. BTW, go to the democratic national committee site and you can buy “Obama Mama” t-shirts. I guess the DNC must be a bunch of racists. Do you ever think before you write?
Elaine June 12th, 2008
“Obama Mama” obviously means “I am a mother who supports Obama.” “Obama’s Baby Mama” is a ghetto term for just some chick that a guy knocked up, a term that FOX “news” is all too happy to repeat in order to continue to beat over our heads that Obama and his wife are black. To them, it doesn’t matter if they are both classy, well-educated, successful, etc. American citizens; to the typical FOX viewer, the Obamas are still black, and thus can not rise above ignorant thug culture. At whatever chance they get, the commentators on FOX news make little statements like “this is a colorful race” just to drive home the the fact that Obama isn’t white, lest anyone start to think of him as a real man instead of a “boy.”

Please note that I do not and would never actually willingly watch FOX news. My father-in-law does, and I have thus been exposed to the faux news network to the point that I feel like I can never be clean again.
Big U June 12th, 2008
Fox was just plain stupid to do this. But it does raise an interesting point. Why did no one on the left complain when Tom Cruise was referred to as Holmes’ baby-daddy on Salon.com? Is the term baby-daddy not as insulting? This is the first I’ve heard the term baby-mama but from what I read it’s incredibly crass and rude to use it. Just not sure why no one made the same stink when baby-daddy was used against a married white man. I would think a disgusting term would be disgusting regardless of the race of the person.
digglahhh June 12th, 2008
Umm… because the use of the term for Cruise was an attempt at humor in the form of irony. (Whether it was successful or not is up to the reader, I guess). See, the archetype of the baby daddy is a poor, unsuccessful, black dude. Cruise is wealthy, successful white guy. Plus, baby daddy has an absentee context too, Holmes and Cruise are together, a fact reinforces by incessantly covering their shared mundane tasks. There’s also the whole thing that many people apparently thought he was gay too.

When a term has a racial undertone to it, its connotation is different when used to describe somebody of the respective race than it is when it is used to describe somebody out of that box. Like, when my gal calls me a remote control Nazi it’s not the same as if I was German and we were in the midst of WWII and she made the same joke…
Ted June 12th, 2008
Morris, sorry, but you are 100% wrong. The scroll says “outraged liberals: stop picking on Obama’s baby mama!”

The wording comes from Fox. They are paraphrasing. They are not direct quoting.

As for Obama Mama, (god you are stupid), a woman (a mama)wears that shirt to support Obama. It does not reference Obama’s wife. it is self-referential, and the purchaser makes the decision to refer to themselves that way.

So, the difference is, if a person chooses to refer to themselves as a “mama” that is fine. It is a casual reference, but perfectly acceptable - for some. On the other hand, if an alleged news station refers to the wife of a presidential candidate as his baby mama, that is, at a minimum, entirely inappropriate. Without even getting into the racial aspects or the fact that the term typically is used in situations where the parents are unmarried.
Big U June 12th, 2008
thanks for the clarification Digglahhh
Morris June 12th, 2008
“As for Obama Mama, (god you are stupid), a woman (a mama)wears that shirt to support Obama”

I know that, Dumbo.
Morris June 12th, 2008
“Please note that I do not and would never actually willingly watch FOX news.:

But, of course, you are an expert on Fox News.
digglahhh June 12th, 2008
And of course, you are an expert of the use of the term “baby mama” and all the derivative puns - as evidenced by your eagled-eyed spotting, and accurate and classification of the Obama Mama T-shirt…

And, shit, Morris, I can’t even believe it’s legal to be so stupid, er, um, intellectually challenged, as per the PC thread. Elaine didn’t claim that she didn’t watch Fox News, just that she does do so of her own volition; her father-in-law watches it, presumably on a (sometimes) shared television set. Her comments were about her observations when watching the network. Watching is sorta a precondition to making first hand observations.

And back to the Obama Mama shirt, it is just a function of his name rhyming with Mama. If his name was Obunkel, I’m sure he’d have “Obunkel Uncle” shirts. Then, TG would be out 19.95 or whatever, as he’d have to buy one for Say Uncle.

Here’s a freebie for you, Mo. Go to cafepress, and make up: Barry Hussein Obama - nary too sane, mo’ drama. Don’t say I ain’t never gave you nuttin’.
Elaine June 12th, 2008
Yes, digglahhh, the key part of my sentence was the fact that I do not _willingly_ watch Faux news, but I have seen enough of it to get a clear idea of how they operate.
Dan M. June 13th, 2008
Don’t worry, Elaine, you’re not by any means the first commenter here to have stumbled over Morris declaring himself right by leaving critical words, like ‘baby’, ‘willingly’, ‘only’, and ‘not’, out of others’ quotes. Heck, he even does it with his own quotes after he says something unusually counter-factual.