Jack & Jill Politics

There are a lot of journalists and media types who happen to read this blog. So I’d like to direct this post straight to you. If you fail to cover the double standard in the way that Barack Obama is being treated in the media versus the treatment of McCain/Palin, you won’t have to answer to me. You’ll have to answer to your children and grandchildren. Don’t try to explain it to me later like you did the failure to cover the shallow rationale for invading Iraq and the administration’s numerous subsequent blunders there. Save your explanations for your descendants when they ask you why you actively participated in racism and fraud.

Thanks to Hazel for sending.

From Letters to the Editors @ Fort Worth Star-Telegram

How racism works

What if John McCain were a former president of the Harvard Law Review?

What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating

class? What if McCain were still married to the first woman he said “I do”

to? What if Obama were the candidate who left his first wife after she no

longer measured up to his standards?

What if Michelle Obama were a wife who not only became addicted to pain

killers, but acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard? What if Obama were a member

of the “Keating 5”? What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election

numbers would be as close as they are?

This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes

positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in

another when there is a color difference.

— Kelvin LaFond, Fort Worth

Posted at 12:05 AM in Letters to the Editor, U.S. Politics

To which I’d add — what if one of Obama’s kids was teenage and pregnant? What if one of his kids was rumored to be an Oxycontin addict? What if Obama just did not know the basics of our mortgage system and how Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae work (like Palin)? What if he and Michelle belonged at one point to a fringe political party advocating secession from the United States (like Palin)? What if he lied to the American public about his opponents’ record and positions over and over and over?

How long would he last in the public eye? What would you think of him and his campaign? What would the media do to Obama were the facts on the other foot.

I mean — ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Journalists — Do your jobs.