Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts

Thursday, October 28, 2010

shaikhs on a plane

I've only seen a few Muslims online reference the Juan Williams firing, but the responses I've seen have been surprisingly nuanced. For sure, no one is gloating. I think it should be clear that the incident is not an indication of greater sensitivity towards Muslims in American society as much as it is just the fallout of a snarky conflict involving NPR, Fox and Juan Williams.

San Francisco Muslim: Juan Willams Stars in "Shaikhs on a Plane"
Imam Johari Abdul Malik: I’m a Garb-Wearing Muslim and Juan Williams Has a Point!

Monday, October 25, 2010

a plague on both your houses... and juan williams

[First the facts]
By now you've probably heard that Juan Williams was fired from his job at NPR, ostensibly for making certain comments about Muslims while appearing with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News in the wake of O'Reilly's own controversial appearance on The View. The main statement by Williams at the center of the storm is the following:

I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.


Not that long after making these comments, Juan Williams lost his job at NPR and not long after that he was offered a new three-year two million dollar contract with Fox News.

[climbing on soapbox]

-What Juan Williams said was Islamophobic in the most literal sense (i.e.expressing an irrational fear of Muslims) and by his own admission reflects his own thoughts and feelings. He's going to have to work on his neurosis on his own time.

-To his credit, what he said actually wasn't that bad. He didn't try to use his Islamophobia to argue that Muslims should give up some of our First Amendment rights (e.g. move the Park 51 project) or argue that that Muslims as a group should receive differential treatment (e.g. profiling).

-I would even argue that if we are going to have an honest discussion about Islamophobia in America, then it is actually necessary for there to be *some* forums somewhere, some safe spaces where non-Muslims can candidly express their fears, misgivings, etc. about Muslims. (A televised broadcast by a "neutral" news analyst is NOT one of those forums.) The priority here is on expressing emotion not advocating for specific public policies. And of course, it is also necessary (and much more rare) for there to be safe spaces for Muslims to express how the post 9/11 climate makes us feel.

-What Juan Williams said is mild compared to the bigotry which the usual talking heads spew on Fox. In fact, what Bill O'Reilly said on The View or what Brian Killmeade said in his defense is orders of magnitude more offensive than what Juan Williams said. I really do believe in freedom of speech and an open marketplace of ideas so I don't actually want to see them censored, but anyone in the media is going to lose their job for making bigoted comments, there are a lot of folks who should get booted before Juan Williams.

-Juan Williams' real offense is that he allowed his reputation as a "reasonable" and liberal journalist (in part developed through his relationship with NPR) to provide cover and defense for the more extreme bigots at Fox.

-If the decision to fire Williams was only based on Williams' own comments, then NPR definitely overreacted. I'm more inclined to believe that since Fox News and NPR are competing news organizations, the executives at NPR probably weren't happy with Juan Williams' relationship with Fox for a while and were just looking for a convenient excuse to fire him.

-In hindsight, NPR definitely made a bad call. They are coming out of this looking like clumsy opponents of free speech and they have basically only strengthened Fox's position.

Huff Post: Juan Williams FIRED: NPR Sacks Analyst Over Fox News Muslim Comments
Garvey's Ghost: NPR and the Silencing of Outspoken Black Men
Michael Moore: Open Letter to Juan Williams
Juan Cole: Williams supported Imus Firing, Censoring of Rap Music
Juan Cole: End Federal Tax Subsidies to Fox!
Bin Gregory: Muslim Garb
Daily Show: NPR Staffing Decision 2010

Thursday, October 07, 2010

my last post (maybe) on rick sanchez

Ok, this will be the last (maybe) round-up of a few more articles/blogs which looked past the surface of the Rick Sanchez firing. Here are some of the highlights:

In Slate: Is it so offensive to note the effectiveness of the Jewish lobby? by the famously secular Jewish British author, Christopher Hitchens we read:

It's not that long since the late Yitzhak Rabin was complaining that groups like AIPAC had too much influence on Israeli policy. Is there any other lobby that exerts a comparable influence? Perhaps the National Rifle Association. And, of course, on the single issue of the maintenance of a failed embargo, the Cuban-American caucus and its funding base in Florida and New Jersey. (I wonder if Rick Sanchez would offer me an argument there.)

Coming to Sanchez, then, I ask myself if the world in which I have worked for so many decades—the intersecting and overlapping world of the news media, publishing, the academy, and the think-tank industry—is even imaginable without the presence of liberal American Jews. The answer is plainly no. Moreover, I can't think of any other "minority" of which this is remotely true, unless it were to be the other minority from which I can claim descent: people of British or Anglophile provenance.


In I, Sanchez Chez Pazienza gives a much more behind-the-scenes and personal account of her own experiences with Rick Sanchez and the CNN staff and why she believes we haven't seen the last of him.

The Black Snob piece: Rick Sanchez Gets Fired Over Most Epic "Jews Sux" Stupidity Ever (Rants) gives us a refresher course on the first two rules of American society:

Look. This is America and there are certain things in America that will guarantee you will get fired. One -- Be a white person saying the actual N-word in its proper context, as a dirty, dirty slur. You can be as racist as you want in America, but DEAR LORD! Don't actually SAY the word "nigger." It has magical powers apparently. So, you can make all the watermelon jokes you like. Just don't say that word in it's proper context. White people DO NOT LIKE THIS. The fact that black people also don't like this goes without saying.

Two -- Don't diss Jews.

Americans don't do criticism of the Jewish people very well. Unlike the black people, of whom you can smack around as much as you like as long as you don't say that dastardly word and mean it, you can't say anything that even looks like it might want to be wrongiddy-wrong-wrong about the Jewish people. Almost anything negative comes off as antisemitic, so you really don't have to say much to offend. Hell, just try to take the side of the Palestinians in the Middle East conflict and you could get called out as antisemitic even though you're criticizing a sovereign country with nuclear weapons ... not all sons of Abraham. Some folks, bless their hearts, don't know that Israel isn't the last word on Judaism, not even among Jews who are, wow, really critical of Israel at times.

But, whatever.


The most thoughtful and thorough discussion I've seen of the Rick Sanchez affair is in the Racialicious piece: On Rick Sanchez, Jon Stewart, and Why We All Lose Playing the Oppression Olympics by Latoya Peterson.

Peterson's piece is unique in at least two respects. First, hers is the only article I've found which didn't just take Stewart's (And Colbert's) non-racism totally for granted and actually questions the ways both shows use racial stereotypes to get a laugh (e.g. The Daily Show’s “Asian Correspondent” Olivia Munn, Dear Olivia Munn, The Daily Show Introduces Us to Gitmo, Open Thread: Cornel West on Stephen Colbert – Respect or Mockery?)

Second, Peterson's piece is also the only one I've seen on the Sanchez issue to actually take the time to debunk the idea that Jews run/own the media with any kind of evidence. She extensively quotes from a FAIR report The Jewish Media: The Lie That Won't Die and also links to Wikipedia's American Mass Media Owners

Of course, the ideal way to refute claims like Six Jewish Companies Own 96% of the World’s Media and put the issue to rest once and for all would be for someone to just do a survey or census of the media at the various levels (owners, executives, behind the scenes staff, columnists and anchors) and just deal with the issue objectively.

See also:
rick sanchez, jon stewart, jews and the media
cnn on rick sanchez
jews and the media

Sunday, October 03, 2010

jews and the media

The whole Rick Sanchez issue reminded me of a joke from this year's Oscar award show:



Some related links:
An LA Times article, Who Runs Hollywood? C'Mon by Joel Stein who actually celebrates (to the point of gloating) the high levels of Jewish achievement in the entertainment industry.

A list of Jews in The American Media (From SimpleToRemember.com Judaism Online). Actually this one surprised me because I don't think I'd ever seen a list of names laid out like that. Did Rick Sanchez lie?

--
See also:
Mondoweiss: Do Jews Dominate in American Media? And So What If We Do? by Philip Weiss

rick sanchez, jon stewart, jews and the media

As you may know already, Rick Sanchez was fired from CNN, apparently because of a conversation he had on Sirius XM radio with Pete Dominick which included a passing implied mention of the role of Jews in the media.

This whole controversy is a bit surreal to me. The issue seems to have started off as just a personal conflict between Stewart and Sanchez. Over a period of time Jon Stewart repeatedly mocked Sanchez on various episodes of the Daily Show. (The Colbert Report has done similar things but to a lesser extent) For example, at one point Stewart calls Sanchez an over-caffeinated control freak (among other things) and Sanchez was featured several times on the Daily Show's "moment of zen" segment (for example in the wake of Sotomayor's nomination Stewart even did a bit including Sanchez' own mother.)

Then, this past Thursday, on the show with Pete Dominick, Rick Sanchez talked about a number of topics, his new book, his family, his faith, and his experiences of feeling marginalized in the news industry (including the mocking he's been getting from Stewart and Colbert).

Rightly or wrongly, Sanchez frames this marginalization in terms of race and class. He is Latino with a working-class upbringing in an industry where many of his colleagues are white and raised middle-to-upper-class. And if you listen to the entire interview Sanchez isn't fixated on Stewart or Jews but also mentions prejudice coming from Stephen Colbert, Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and some unnamed "top brass" at CNN as well:
Sanchez: I had a guy who works here at CNN who's a top brass come to me and say, ‘You know what, I don't want you to --

Dominick: ‘Will you wash this dish for me, Sanchez?’

Sanchez: No no, see that’s the thing; it’s more subtle. White folks usually don't see it. But we do - those of us who are minorities and women see it sometimes too from men in authority. Here, I’ll give you my example its this 'You know what, I don't want you anchoring anymore, I really don't see you as an anchor, I see you more as a reporter, I see you more as a John Quinones - you know the guy on ABC. That’s what he told me. He told me he saw me as John Quinones. Now, did he not realize that he was telling me, ‘When I see you I think of Hispanic reporters’? Cause in his mind I can’t be an anchor. An anchor is what you give the high-profile white guys, you know. So he knocks me down to that and compares me to that and it happens all the time i think. To a certain extent Jon Stewart and Colbert are the same way.

(I have to wonder if the same "top brass" Sanchez alludes to is still an executive at CNN.)

As a counter-balance, Dominick brings up Stewart's Jewishness to suggest that he is also a minority and has some understanding of Rick Sanchez's position. But based on Sanchez's childhood in Miami, Jews were just another flavor of white Anglo.
I grew up not speaking English, dealing with real prejudice every day as a kid; watching my dad work in a factory, wash dishes, drive a truck, get spit on. I’ve been told that I can’t do certain things in life simply because I was a Hispanic. My friends who are black, I’ve seen that with them; I’ve seen that with a lot of minorities. I can’t really think — although I understand the plight of Jews, and all the experiences, and the things that have happened historically for them — but I can’t say that my buddy Glen or my buddy Izzy who I grew up with in South Florida ever were prejudiced against directly simply because they were Jewish. There may have been jokes around them or about other things, but it’s kinda — you know what I’m saying, it’s kind of a different thing.

This is all context to the essential gaffe. When Dominick suggests that Stewart has minority status which should help him understand where Sanchez is coming from, Sanchez comes back with:
He’s such a minority, I mean, you know [sarcastically]… Please, what are you kidding? … I’m telling you that everybody who runs CNN is a lot like Stewart, and a lot of people who run all the other networks are a lot like Stewart, and to imply that somehow they — the people in this country who are Jewish — are an oppressed minority? Yeah.

Sanchez doesn't hold Jews in the media to any special scrutiny or suspicion. He just views them as part of the dominant establishment with all other white people. If anything, he is actually indifferent about the distinction. As he says to Dominick:
You brought the whole Jewish conversation into this. I don't think Jewish has anything to do with this. I don't think you are are less apt to be prejudiced or more apt to be prejudiced because you are or aren't Jewish.

Here is a partial Transcript of the Sanchez/Dominick interview but I would definitely recommend that you go to the very first link above and listen to the whole conversation. Sanchez does not go on a rant. He does not have a meltdown. He does not say "Jews are in control of all media". (Contrary to how some of the coverage is parsing the incident).

Some other thoughts:
If CNN is so racially sensitive then how was Lou Dobbs able to stay on CNN for such a long period of time before leaving? It's pretty clear that Mexicans don't run CNN. For that matter, even Dr. Laura is still on the air after her N-word rant. She announced her retirement after the incident, but she's still basically leaving on her own terms. Helen Thomas unceremoniously lost her job within a day or so.

At the same time, how is Patrick Buchanan able to stay on the air, on MSNBC no less? I would argue that comments about Jews are much more of a third rail than comments about other groups, but the whole picture is more complex than a question of who gets offended. To be honest, I suspect that Rick Sanchez's real mistake wasn't what he said about Jon Stewart, and implied about Jews, as much as what he said about "top brass" at CNN. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, regardless of ethnicity.

Grenada's Past
thoughts on helen thomas
more on helen thomas
why don't they talk about bennett the way they talk about farrakhan?
us deports lou dobbs

Phoenix New Times: CNN Fires Rick Sanchez, Hires Eliot Spitzer, World's Most Famous "John"

Sunday, June 01, 2008

television, the drug of the nation

I've been listening to this song lately in my car and I thought I'd share. The song is "Television, the drug of the nation" by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy which lead vocals by Michael Franti. The song goes back at least to the early 90's but the lyrics are still pretty timely.

T.V. is the stomping ground
for political candidates
where bears in the woods
are chased by grecian formula'd bald eagles
...
where image takes precedence over wisdom
where sound bite politics are served
to the fastfood culture
where straight teeth in your mouth
are more important than the words
that come out of it
race baiting is the way to get elected
Willie Horton or will he not get elected on...

Televison, the drug of the nation