Nonviolence remains the most effective tool to social and economic transformation. It is paradoxical to observe how bigots in the Tea Party movement and other fringe groups are using viol
ence in an attempt to change policy, while the gains of the Civil Rights Movement were achieved because of the blood of thousands murdered for using nonviolence as their weapon.
President Obama is not a communist or socialist. He is a man with a deep sense of justice. His background informs him about the decades- old problems his predecessors were either too afraid to touch or too compromised to handle.
While it is understandable that not everyone would support Obama’s policy, human decency requires of us when we disagree to register our opposition in a nonviolent form. That allows for a healthy debate on the issues and how we move forward.
It is disappointing to watch how the media is fanning the embers of the hate-filled rhetoric from the opposition and cunningly legitimizing the violent acts by creating an excuse for them.
When people are mad, that’s how they act is how some in the media are cowardly explaining the despicable outbursts with its ever-ready racial undertones. Some of these so-called high priests in the media can barely hold their own as they wiggle through the issue giving the false impressions that they are offering a sane voice to the debate. Afraid to condemn the acts of violence and the accompanying racial nuances, the media still wants to be thought of as the first signal in a democracy that shines light on darkness.
One would expect that the media, which claims to be credible space between the government and the people, would play a fair or at least a neutral role by condemning the acts of intolerance.
Instead, what is being fed by the media is no different from the red meat that the right wing extremists are giving their followers. Some media outlets are equally as culpable as the extremists and the Joe Wilsons of the world.
Wilson, who referred to President Obama as a liar in the halls of Congress at the height of Obama’s State of the Union Address, barely got rebuked.
In fact Wilson was celebrated for insulting a president who was legitimately and overwhelmingly elected by the electorate to govern because he was deemed qualified to do so. Because democracy urges every voice be heard, Wilson gets a pass.
But when that voice is extended to those begging for health care reform and are now basking in a legislation that covers preconditions, those in support of the reform are now referred to as socialists.
Meanwhile the arm chair warriors in the media are doing their own bidding by giving a false and dishonest intellectual argument about why the new legislation is a bad idea. For some reason, the dishonest intellectuals in the media expect everyone to make sense of the nonsense and hear what the bigots and hate mongers have to say.
They are opposed to anything that creates a semblance of fairness. Rather, they continue to be the personification of injustice, even leaving scary messages on the voice mail of lawmakers who are compassionate about the health crisis in our communities wishing death on them.
In doing so they are giving the false appearance of vulnerability to attract sympathy and for others to give them the benefit of the doubt that their suspicion of an Obama presidency is legitimate.
Watch senior editor Bankole Thompson’s weekly show, “Center Stage,” on WADL TV 38 -Detroit, Saturdays at 1 p.m. This Saturday’s program, April 3, will feature an exclusive roundtable with WDET General Manager Mikel Ellcessor and Arthur Horwitz publisher of the Detroit Jewish News talking right wing extremism in Southeast Michigan. E-mail bthompson@michronicle.com.
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