Shocking News: Obama is Black! We Have the Tape to Prove it!
Shocking Tape Could Ruin Obama's Chance to Win Presidency in 2008.
Fox News ‘Exposes’ The Most Awesome Barack Obama Speech Ever…That Fox ‘Covered Up’
This will be remembered as the day Sean Hannity, Matt Drudge, Tucker Carlson, and much of the right wing prepared to board their white resentment mothership, only to have it crash and burn. On Tuesday night’s Hannity, host Hannity dropped the “bombshell” that Drudge had been teasing for hours, and that The Daily Caller published “exclusively”: a 2007 speech that was actually covered extensively at the time, now being hyped as “The Other Race Speech.”
The ultimate punchline in this long comedy bit of a story, though, is that the speech Hannity says “so-called unbiased journalists have been trying to hide for years” was actually aired by Fox News. In the ultimate act of newsturbation™, you had Sean Hannity exposing the coverup of a speech his own network aired, interviewing Tucker Carlson about a speech he had also covered in 2007.
There’s not enough space on the internet to cover the derision this story is receiving from those outside the White Resentment Bubble, where then-Sen. Obama’s completely empirically correct observation that the victims of Hurricane Katrina were treated differently than those of Hurricane Andrew or the attacks of 9/11 amounts to a declaration of race war, but the segment itself is a wealth of entertainment, up to and including Hannity and Carlson’s breathless, self-fanning critique of Barack Obama’s black-cent. As the rest of us already know, that’s called “being folksy” when white people do it, but to Hannity and Carlson, it’s eeeeevil.
There’s also not enough space or inclination on my part to catalog all of the stupid things Sean Hannity squeezed into this segment, so I’ll just give you one example. The then-Senator went off-script to describe the difference in the way disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Andrew, and the attacks of 9/11 was handled in relation to the Stafford Act. According to Hannity, Sen. Obama was advancing the “notion that the government is turning its back on African-American communities, while doing all it can for predominantly white areas.”
That’s right, folks, in Sean Hannity’s bubble, New York City is a “predominantly white area.” I guess if you only count the people Sean Hannity cares about, maybe it is.
Carlson’s comments are equally stupid and I believe extra racist claiming that Obama was “telling a predominantly black audience something very clear- the federal government doesn’t like you because you are black.” (Carlson hasn’t smartened up since the first time he covered this speech, at which time he predicted, of Obama, “He‘s going to lose the Democratic nomination and just be one of 100 senators.”)
If you step outside the Hannity bubble and watch the actual speech, though, you get a more impassioned, more inspiring Barack Obama than we’ve seen in years. That story he tells about the bullet in the baby nearly had me running down to church to repent, and he used the metaphor to powerful effect throughout, in a speech that addressed poverty in blackity-black places like Iowa, and urged totally racist things like his super-secret plot to expand public transportation. Much like the Breitbart.com “bombshell” from earlier this year, this tape actually makes Barack Obama more likable, not less.
That’s probably why the Romney campaign is denying any involvement in leaking the tape, because they don’t want to be blamed for helping Obama. The awesomeness of the speech, coupled with the naked racial paranoia of Hannity and Carlson, plus the deadly media mockery of the entire enterprise, will redound to the President’s benefit, except with people who were already not voting for him.
The Drudge hype falls flat
One night before the first presidential debate, conservatives Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson hyped footage of a five-year-old speech by then-Sen. Barack Obama, widely covered at the time, in which the presidential candidate suggested the George W. Bush administration was discriminating against the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
But when footage finally aired on Hannity's Fox News program and on Carlson's Daily Caller website at 9 p.m., following hours of aniticipation spurred by Drudge's promise of controversy and Hannity's promise of a "bombshell", it fell flat.
"What’s the ‘So what’ of this video? I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere,” Republican Rep. Allen West said on Fox News.
“I don’t think this particular speech is definitive," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, though he added that it was at least a "reminder" of Obama's "pattern of dishonesty."
If the footage failed to impress, it may be because Sen. Obama's remarks were widely covered -- by Carlson, by Fox News, and by the mainstream media -- when they were made on June 5, 2007.
"Barack Obama was talking about a quiet riot today. And no, it was not a reference to a 1980s heavy metal band, unfortunately," Carlson, who hosted his own program on MSNBC until 2008, reported at the time. "The senator waded into the controversial waters of race during a speech Hampton University in Virginia. He said the Bush administration has done little to quell a brewing storm among some black Americans. He compared the current tension to what fueled the L.A. riots in the wake of the Rodney King verdict."
"Senator Obama today said the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse what he calls a quiet riot among black Americans, a riot he suggests is ready to erupt," Fox News host Brit Hume reported. "Obama said African American resentments and frustrations are building, especially, he said, because so many blacks from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are still displaced 21 months after Hurricane Katrina. Obama warned against conditions similar to those in Los Angeles 15 years ago."
The speech was also covered by CNN, NBC News, ABC News, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Sun-Times, among others. Parts of the speech -- specifically, Obama's introduction of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- would also be mentioned by reports in 2008.
But Hannity and Carlson said the full 40-minute footage of Obama's speech was notable because it included parts of the speech not included in the 2007 reports, most of which were based on prepared remarks and a compressed version of the video. The two men faulted the mainstream media -- which presumably includes Carlson and Fox News -- for not covering Sen. Obama's remarks in full.
What the "mainstream media" missed, Carlson alleged, was Sen. Obama "whipping up race hatred and fear" with remarks about how the federal goverment helped victims of 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew (in Florida), but did not help the victims of Hurricane Katrina because it didn't care about them as much. Carlson called those remarks "racial rhetoric designed to make people fearful."
Five years after the fact, and almost four years into Obama's presidency, it may be difficult for the outside observer to understand how a previously reported event could draw so much attention, especially given that it offers few bombshell revelations. The answer isn't Hannity or Carlson -- it's Drudge.
Despite providing only 2 percent of Americans with their campaign news, the Drudge Report continues to carry outsized influence -- because of his brand recognition and, in 2012, because he has a direct line to the Romney campaign. (When Drudge first posted a banner-headline for the video, the link re-directed to the Romney campaign donation page, and was subsequently pulled down.)
At 3 p.m. today, Drudge tweeted, "Curious tape dropping tonight. NOT from MOTHERJONES. Will cause controversy, ignite accusations of racism -- in both directions!", and it was off to the races. The "NOT from MOTHERJONES" meant to suggest the "curious tape" would create controversy to rival the recent footage of Romney telling donors at a private fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans didn't pay income taxes and would never vote for him. Smelling Drudge-level sensation, reporters, including yours truly, spent six hours in heated anticipation -- and all for naught.
In order to sell the video, Hannity resorted to claims that the media "has been trying to hide" the video. He ran the footage next to footage of Obama's famous speech on race and Rev. Wright the following year and said he couldn't tell which Obama was the real Obama. No one seemed to care.
So why rehash the race debate now? Some have suggested that Romney was trying to get into Obama's head ahead of the debate. Others saw it as a dog whistle masking itself as an accusation against a dog whistle (or, as Carlson put it, a "dog siren.")
"This is supposed to make you believe that in this tape from before he was president, Barack Obama is revealing his secret plan to be way more black than he seems to you now," Rachel Maddow, the libearl MSNBC host, said on her show. "This is how he snuck into the White House, right? People didn't know he was this black and if they would have known he was this black, they never would have elected. That's the idea here, right?"
The Obama campaign sees something far less nefarious but far more pathetic afoot.
“In a transparent attempt to change the subject from his comments attacking half of the American people, Mitt Romney’s allies recirculated video of a 2007 event that was open to and extensively covered by the press at the time," Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt said in a statement. "The only thing shocking about this is that they apparently think it’s wrong to suggest that we should help returning veterans, children leaving foster care and other members of Mitt Romney’s 47 percent get training that will allow them to find the best available jobs. If the Romney campaign believes that Americans will accept these desperate attacks tomorrow night in place of specific plans for the middle class, it’s they who are in for a surprise.”
Fox News ‘Exposes’ The Most Awesome Barack Obama Speech Ever…That Fox ‘Covered Up’
This will be remembered as the day Sean Hannity, Matt Drudge, Tucker Carlson, and much of the right wing prepared to board their white resentment mothership, only to have it crash and burn. On Tuesday night’s Hannity, host Hannity dropped the “bombshell” that Drudge had been teasing for hours, and that The Daily Caller published “exclusively”: a 2007 speech that was actually covered extensively at the time, now being hyped as “The Other Race Speech.”
The ultimate punchline in this long comedy bit of a story, though, is that the speech Hannity says “so-called unbiased journalists have been trying to hide for years” was actually aired by Fox News. In the ultimate act of newsturbation™, you had Sean Hannity exposing the coverup of a speech his own network aired, interviewing Tucker Carlson about a speech he had also covered in 2007.
There’s not enough space on the internet to cover the derision this story is receiving from those outside the White Resentment Bubble, where then-Sen. Obama’s completely empirically correct observation that the victims of Hurricane Katrina were treated differently than those of Hurricane Andrew or the attacks of 9/11 amounts to a declaration of race war, but the segment itself is a wealth of entertainment, up to and including Hannity and Carlson’s breathless, self-fanning critique of Barack Obama’s black-cent. As the rest of us already know, that’s called “being folksy” when white people do it, but to Hannity and Carlson, it’s eeeeevil.
There’s also not enough space or inclination on my part to catalog all of the stupid things Sean Hannity squeezed into this segment, so I’ll just give you one example. The then-Senator went off-script to describe the difference in the way disaster relief for Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Andrew, and the attacks of 9/11 was handled in relation to the Stafford Act. According to Hannity, Sen. Obama was advancing the “notion that the government is turning its back on African-American communities, while doing all it can for predominantly white areas.”
That’s right, folks, in Sean Hannity’s bubble, New York City is a “predominantly white area.” I guess if you only count the people Sean Hannity cares about, maybe it is.
Carlson’s comments are equally stupid and I believe extra racist claiming that Obama was “telling a predominantly black audience something very clear- the federal government doesn’t like you because you are black.” (Carlson hasn’t smartened up since the first time he covered this speech, at which time he predicted, of Obama, “He‘s going to lose the Democratic nomination and just be one of 100 senators.”)
If you step outside the Hannity bubble and watch the actual speech, though, you get a more impassioned, more inspiring Barack Obama than we’ve seen in years. That story he tells about the bullet in the baby nearly had me running down to church to repent, and he used the metaphor to powerful effect throughout, in a speech that addressed poverty in blackity-black places like Iowa, and urged totally racist things like his super-secret plot to expand public transportation. Much like the Breitbart.com “bombshell” from earlier this year, this tape actually makes Barack Obama more likable, not less.
That’s probably why the Romney campaign is denying any involvement in leaking the tape, because they don’t want to be blamed for helping Obama. The awesomeness of the speech, coupled with the naked racial paranoia of Hannity and Carlson, plus the deadly media mockery of the entire enterprise, will redound to the President’s benefit, except with people who were already not voting for him.
The Drudge hype falls flat
One night before the first presidential debate, conservatives Matt Drudge, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson hyped footage of a five-year-old speech by then-Sen. Barack Obama, widely covered at the time, in which the presidential candidate suggested the George W. Bush administration was discriminating against the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
But when footage finally aired on Hannity's Fox News program and on Carlson's Daily Caller website at 9 p.m., following hours of aniticipation spurred by Drudge's promise of controversy and Hannity's promise of a "bombshell", it fell flat.
"What’s the ‘So what’ of this video? I don’t think it’s going to really go anywhere,” Republican Rep. Allen West said on Fox News.
“I don’t think this particular speech is definitive," said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, though he added that it was at least a "reminder" of Obama's "pattern of dishonesty."
If the footage failed to impress, it may be because Sen. Obama's remarks were widely covered -- by Carlson, by Fox News, and by the mainstream media -- when they were made on June 5, 2007.
"Barack Obama was talking about a quiet riot today. And no, it was not a reference to a 1980s heavy metal band, unfortunately," Carlson, who hosted his own program on MSNBC until 2008, reported at the time. "The senator waded into the controversial waters of race during a speech Hampton University in Virginia. He said the Bush administration has done little to quell a brewing storm among some black Americans. He compared the current tension to what fueled the L.A. riots in the wake of the Rodney King verdict."
"Senator Obama today said the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse what he calls a quiet riot among black Americans, a riot he suggests is ready to erupt," Fox News host Brit Hume reported. "Obama said African American resentments and frustrations are building, especially, he said, because so many blacks from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are still displaced 21 months after Hurricane Katrina. Obama warned against conditions similar to those in Los Angeles 15 years ago."
The speech was also covered by CNN, NBC News, ABC News, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and the Chicago Sun-Times, among others. Parts of the speech -- specifically, Obama's introduction of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- would also be mentioned by reports in 2008.
But Hannity and Carlson said the full 40-minute footage of Obama's speech was notable because it included parts of the speech not included in the 2007 reports, most of which were based on prepared remarks and a compressed version of the video. The two men faulted the mainstream media -- which presumably includes Carlson and Fox News -- for not covering Sen. Obama's remarks in full.
What the "mainstream media" missed, Carlson alleged, was Sen. Obama "whipping up race hatred and fear" with remarks about how the federal goverment helped victims of 9/11 and Hurricane Andrew (in Florida), but did not help the victims of Hurricane Katrina because it didn't care about them as much. Carlson called those remarks "racial rhetoric designed to make people fearful."
Five years after the fact, and almost four years into Obama's presidency, it may be difficult for the outside observer to understand how a previously reported event could draw so much attention, especially given that it offers few bombshell revelations. The answer isn't Hannity or Carlson -- it's Drudge.
Despite providing only 2 percent of Americans with their campaign news, the Drudge Report continues to carry outsized influence -- because of his brand recognition and, in 2012, because he has a direct line to the Romney campaign. (When Drudge first posted a banner-headline for the video, the link re-directed to the Romney campaign donation page, and was subsequently pulled down.)
At 3 p.m. today, Drudge tweeted, "Curious tape dropping tonight. NOT from MOTHERJONES. Will cause controversy, ignite accusations of racism -- in both directions!", and it was off to the races. The "NOT from MOTHERJONES" meant to suggest the "curious tape" would create controversy to rival the recent footage of Romney telling donors at a private fundraiser that 47 percent of Americans didn't pay income taxes and would never vote for him. Smelling Drudge-level sensation, reporters, including yours truly, spent six hours in heated anticipation -- and all for naught.
In order to sell the video, Hannity resorted to claims that the media "has been trying to hide" the video. He ran the footage next to footage of Obama's famous speech on race and Rev. Wright the following year and said he couldn't tell which Obama was the real Obama. No one seemed to care.
So why rehash the race debate now? Some have suggested that Romney was trying to get into Obama's head ahead of the debate. Others saw it as a dog whistle masking itself as an accusation against a dog whistle (or, as Carlson put it, a "dog siren.")
"This is supposed to make you believe that in this tape from before he was president, Barack Obama is revealing his secret plan to be way more black than he seems to you now," Rachel Maddow, the libearl MSNBC host, said on her show. "This is how he snuck into the White House, right? People didn't know he was this black and if they would have known he was this black, they never would have elected. That's the idea here, right?"
The Obama campaign sees something far less nefarious but far more pathetic afoot.
“In a transparent attempt to change the subject from his comments attacking half of the American people, Mitt Romney’s allies recirculated video of a 2007 event that was open to and extensively covered by the press at the time," Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt said in a statement. "The only thing shocking about this is that they apparently think it’s wrong to suggest that we should help returning veterans, children leaving foster care and other members of Mitt Romney’s 47 percent get training that will allow them to find the best available jobs. If the Romney campaign believes that Americans will accept these desperate attacks tomorrow night in place of specific plans for the middle class, it’s they who are in for a surprise.”