Dear Media: Grow Up!

America has been given yet another opportunity to begin sincere dialogue about the problems we have with racism in our society. We have them at least once a month now. The reason we know about the events is because you report them to us. Then, tragically, you turn every single event into something fantastical that can get you ratings. 

Every. Single. Time.

I feel confident that the reason you ignore important discussions is because you know that most Americans don't want to hear it. They are quite content in their little bubbles where societal issues don't affect them. You fear they will turn the channel and watch some other network give them 24/7 nonsense. As a journalistic outfit, can you not just accept that and do your job? Can you not make it important to give America the information that they need?

Today Marc Maron's podcast, WTF, had an interview with President Obama. The interview was a revelation. We were offered thoughtful and candid reflections from our leader about the issues of race in America. These are issues that are traditionally ignored by those in leadership because they don't want to offend anyone in their base or be called out for saying something insensitive. We finally had a deep conversation with our President. You are all telling us that he used the N- word. Are you fucking kidding me? It literally gave me a vision of you sitting at your desk in third grade, raising your hand with your mouth  making an 'ooo' and begging the teacher to call your name so you can say, "Ooohhhh, teacher, Johnny said the N- word."

GROW UP!

Here is the podcast

The entire point of his having said it was to point out that just because those in society don't hear the words use as often doesn't mean the same supremacy that used to allow it doesn't still exist. He gave you something to tell us. If you truly were journalists the discussion would have started right there. You have plenty of news clips you could've shown of many politicians and pundits on the right using coded language to incite their base.

Here. Let me get you started. Take these videos and begin the dialogue in our discourse regarding why it is still acceptable for Americans to be full of hate and believe that racism is still a part of our political world.

Last week offered us plenty of opportunities to sincerely discuss race with the comments coming from the right. Their inability to empathize about how hurtful the Confederate flag would be to the descendents of slaves while supporting the people who see the flag as a proud symbol of their heritage (a heritage of their ancestors fighting for the right to maintain slavery) should be profound enough, but it was ignored and offered to us as just a matter of fact.

Here we have Lindsey Graham explaining why the Confederate Flag is an important symbol of the South and then he literally waves his hands as if to say 'over there' and says they have an "African American memorial." The memorial is, obviously, a throw away. And the pain the flag causes and its symbolism adopted by racist groups is, too.

Remember Charles Murray? The white trash piece of shit who wrote the Bell Curve? Right. The guy who wrote about how whites are genetically predisposed to superiority over blacks. Just this year in an interview Jeb Bush was questioned about solving the issues of income disparity and he went into a talk about welfare and, without encouragement, went into explaining how his ideas are shaped by Charles Murray. The rest of his answer was about welfare, and because of who he quoted, he was obviously talking about black people being the problem.

Rick Santorum telling a group of white people about how its not fair to give the black people welfare money that white people earn.

Instead of focusing on the President reminding us that racism exists, maybe give America an opportunity to reflect on why it is still deemed socially acceptable. Just last week Donald Trump, while kicking off a campaign to be our President offered us a nice look into the mentality:

Mike Huckabee is forever condemning the President for fighting against the Jews and Christians. This is his dog whistle reminder to their racist base who need to hear reminders about the rumors they started about President Obama being a Muslim and means to support Jihadists. He tells us that everything the President does is against the Jews and Christians (just like Jihadists).

 Here he tells us he was proud to have a black President and now he realizes that Obama doesn't want America to succeed. They are always telling their base that the President is sincerely trying to ruin the country.

The Chinese (all of them, apparently) lack imagination and are thieves

Maybe you could just discuss this for a single moment (from earlier this year):

Oh. By the way. Here is a journalist who gets it. Maybe give him a call and ask how its done. Editorializing is, in fact, necessary sometimes. If you do not editorialize you offer the Republican faithful only the dog whistles they are being sent without offering any rationality or asking thoughtful Americans to consider why they are hearing things they find offensive.

It is unfathomable that you all get to call yourselves journalists and then behave as if you are either employed by a tabloid or the Fox cable channel with the word 'news' in its title. 

As often as the politicians on the right offer us examples of how large swaths of human beings can be immediately dismissed or worse, you never find it important to report on that. You are literally complicit in the racism so pervasive in our society when you give a voice to the racist actors and do not either condemn them or ask your audience for reflection. 

Terrorism Is Being Hijacked

The focus of yesterday's diatribe was about the voices that come out every time we have a tragedy relating to guns which tells us it is wrong to politicize the event and, in effect, dismiss the lives lost. Not only have those voices managed to politicize this massacre and dismiss those lost lives, they have managed to hijack the message America needs to hear. Initially the Tea Party was able to hijack the GOP. It was stunning. It still is. The Republicans began to fall to their will for fear of a radical base leaving them. The Tea Party then managed to hijack the Bible. The message of Jesus Christ in a relatively short period of time has turned from peace to vengeance, from love to hate, and from comfort to condemnation. They have grown adept at spinning things in a way that America is pretty much just left in a state of shock where it is too profound to imagine so they ignore it altogether. That may have been the objective all along.

Whatever their objective, I do believe that this attempt to hijack the tragedy in South Carolina was probably a step too far. I imagine anyone who has heard their leaders over the last few days explain to them that this mass murderer was on a mission to kill the Christians will have a moment of pause and scream a quick, "Wait! What?" at the television screen. We have plenty of Americans who do their best to never know what is going on around them. They don't really know what the Tea Party has managed to do to the country, but I feel confident that every time they are confronted with a message of Christian persecution having been a motivation in what was quite obviously a racist attack, they will have the sense to tell themselves, "That is so fucked up."

The politicians on the right, but those in the Tea Party specifically, have mastered the fine art of changing the national discussion. They don't want to talk about racism right now because their party is a safe haven for racists. And they don't want to talk about gun control right now because their party is funded by people whose base has a sole mission of obtaining and maintaining arsenals.

Lindsey Graham, a Senator from this state which is still proudly displaying its white supremacy today with the confederate flag on its state house lawn, was on The View yesterday and offered such an outrageous reflection on the massacre that I had to rewind it to make sure that I heard what he said. But he said it. "It is 2015. There are people out there looking for Christians to kill them." So in Lindsey's mind (a place I never want to spend a moment of time), this little sonofabitch determined that he would walk into a church, pray with its parishioners and kill them because he is afraid of Christians. Absolutely! I hear that all of the time. When I am anywhere in social media the thing I hear from Americans is abject fear over the pending murderous attacks from Christians. I guess that makes sense because I have never seen anyone say anything racist. And, even though we have had people who know this murderer come out and explain his extremely unbelievable views about race and hatred for the black community, I suppose it was this fear of their Christianity that finally pushed him over the edge.

Yesterday Rick Santorum was on a radio show in New York and said that it was an obvious "assault on religious liberty." He agreed that it was a hate crime, however the hate was not directed at the black community but at the Christians who have recently decided that they are being persecuted in the country they have an overwhelming majority in. He told the audience, "You talk about the importance of prayer in this time and we're now seeing assaults on our religious liberty we've never seen before. It's time for a deeper reflection beyond this horrible situation."

I can not find a place to put this. I actually feel rage over it and can not find a way to accept that any leader in one of our two major political parties is diverting the focus of a profound tragedy and another of the many opportunities recently afforded our society to talk about and work toward mending our national disgrace of racism toward a discussion about his political agenda. Many Americans don't even realize that the Tea Party candidates have decided that their own persecution is the new campaign slogan. What would rational people think if they knew? I certainly hope that if any good can come out of this deplorable plummet into the lowest of realms by the right it will be for Americans who are not paying attention to actually hear their message. I believe that is our only hope right now.

Many on the news have been asking one another whether or not the massacre in Charleston was a terrorist attack. I find myself actually shaking my head when I hear that question. Is it such a profound question to struggle over? Has the media conditioned itself to believe that the only way to define a terrorist is by their religion?

Terrorism: the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.

Ok. Where is the confusion? A massacre is certainly violent and is obviously meant to intimidate. If his act and its reasons were not meant to go out to the world beyond, thus being a political message, he would not have set one person free to go tell what he was doing.

I am sick of typing the same thing and I assume my readers are growing weary of reading it, but we are complicit in every facet of this problem. Society is allowing itself to ignore the hate that comes from the right. We are allowing them to hijack everything from our important and meaningful national discussions to our interpretations of the Constitution. The fact that a single media outlet would give a voice to a candidate who has the nerve to insist that Christianity is under attack and that the massacre this week was a result of Americans persecuting this religion is beyond my comprehension. It is only made worse by having those who are meant to inform us struggle to determine if this was an act of terrorism. But they do it. And they have an audience. And they sell advertisements. And that is why they exist. As long as we allow the voices of the most hateful among us to distract us from making reparations in our own country, we will continue to allow them to take us to the depths they envision for our country. That should terrify everyone with a conscience and a capacity for critical thought.