Tuesday, July 20, 2010

PCG and that Black Panther Voter Intimidation Story

Recently PCG has released a column by Robert Morley entitled President Obama, the Black Panthers, and the Coming Racial Explosion.

In it he mentions the story about an activist from the New Black Panther Party intimidating voters in the 2008 election. He also mentions J. Christian Adams who says that the Department of Justice is ignoring civil rights cases when white people are victimized.

This column exposes how PCG thoughtlessly parrots the line from right wing media outlets. I would like to state here that there are other hate groups out there that are more numerous than this small group, such as the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis, or even the COGs embarrassing racist cousins, so-called "Christian Identity".

As far as I am concerned this story is simply being strategically used by the right wing media, which PCG thoughtlessly imitates, to discredit the Obama Administration.

The forces of the right are doing their very hardest to ruin the Obama Administration. PCG adopts their pessimistic viewpoint to create fear in their followers in order for following to cling to PCG ever more.

Why are some right wing media outlets devoting so much attention to this story? Because they want to discredit the Obama Administration.

I would greatly encourage anyone to take a look at how Media Matters covers this story. Among the things that are mentioned are that some of the Minutemen also engaged in this sort of voter intimidation during the 2006 elections. Why haven't the media treated this story the same way? Because they could not use it against Obama.

Also it was the Bush Administration Department of Justice which decided to not pursue voter intimidation charges against this New Black Panther Party member.

Compared with the other racist groups out there this so called New Black Panther Party is quite small and insignificant. Alas within our free societies there are people who spread racial hatred like a drug. They always say outrageous and disgusting things against the targets of their hatred. They are always there. Every society harbors some extremists within its midst.

It is sad, (well I think it's sad,) how PCG have chosen to toe the line set by the right wing media so closely they are willing to just parrot this latest talking point so effortlessly and unthinkingly. They don't even bother being imaginative about this matter. The New Black Panthers are a threat Morley's column declares. What about the Ku Klux Klan? The Neo-Nazis? "Christian Identity"? Aren't they a threat too?

2 comments:

  1. This is actually par for the course for PCG (former member here). I got kicked out for questioning the trend of politicizing the church by aligning it, lock-step fashion, with right wing punditry. The last straw for me was when Flurry claimed that God was upset over Nanci Pelosi's win! I guess he forgot that God supposedly makes those decisions Himself. So Flurry was claiming that God was upset with Himself.

    Flurry was also a big fan of FOX and that sleazeball, O'Reilly. So it was satisfying for me to see PCG recently get slammed by FOX's propaganda machine. Sweet, sweet irony, and a bit of vindication for yours truly (I wonder if he remembered what I wrote in that letter). Anyway, glad to see someone else noticed this foolishness, as I spent a lot of time agonizing over it.

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  2. I was working at a TV station far from Philadelphia on Election Day 2008, and took a call from someone asking why we hadn't mentioned the video from Philadelphia.

    I checked the AP and our network's news feeds for it, and told him there was nothing on it. It was a Fox-only story at that point. It didn't seem to make national news again until this past week, when NBC did a report on it in conjunction with the Shirley Sherrod case.

    As for PCG "parroting" the RW (hockey abbreviation) line -- several members apparently were stunned when this article was posted on The Trumpet. Read all the comments, and you'll find some people couldn't believe the President was worthy of respect at all.

    P.S. Casey, I used to work at a Fox affiliate -- and the local newsrooms tend to act very independently of FNC. They don't get Roger Ailes's alleged daily "talking points" memo. So what KOKH Fox-25 did wasn't really connected with FNC.

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