Would you have noticed Barack?


Would you have noticed that Barack Obama is black?

  • Yes, I keep a tick sheet to track the ethnicity of everyone I encounter.

    Votes: 1 6.7%
  • Probably, but it doesn't concern me greatly.

    Votes: 7 46.7%
  • Probably not. I don't really care.

    Votes: 6 40.0%
  • What's "black"?

    Votes: 1 6.7%

  • Total voters
    15

toreskha

Titles are un-American.
Just curious...if the media hadn't told us over and over and over and over again...would you have noticed (or really cared) that Barack Obama is black? To be honest, I heard him on the radio around the time he won his seat in Illinois (I wasn't watching the race all that closely), and couldn't tell what color he was just by listening to his voice. Society is so integrated now that I doubt people really remember or care about the ethnicity of most people with whom they interact.
 

Probably, but it doesn't concern me greatly.

I do not vote based on color but on the morals and positions they take on issues. Also their past record. There are a number of very conservative blacks that I would vote for in a heart beat over any of the three that we have running n ow.
 
I do not vote based on color but on the morals and positions they take on issues. Also their past record. There are a number of very conservative blacks that I would vote for in a heart beat over any of the three that we have running n ow.

Well, not so much how you would vote...just, would you have noticed, generally speaking? It seems to me that in the beginning, Barack didn't point to the fact that he was black, and honestly, I think a majority of Americans just didn't know or care. To his credit, he resisted discussing it because he didn't seem to think it was important. Since then, the media has found ways to bring the race angle in, when there wasn't really any reason to.

This, to me, shows that the infotainment-focused media (I lump CNN, Fox, NBC, etc all together in one pile) is focused on making a particular issue into a dramatic performance, and filling the stereotypical roles of leader, underdog, good guy, villain, renegade, whatever. Any good drama has to have some sort of conflict, and race conflict is a popular dramatic context. They seem to have artificially injected this issue in, when it just wasn't there to begin with.

Some people prefer Fox over CNN or vice-versa, but IMO they're all the same, just aimed at different audiences. They consistently take things way out of context and refabricate them into something they're not. They all use more or less the same themes and ideas, just reformulated based on the target viewer.
 
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I do not believe that most of the main stream press in this country is free or tells us the real truth any more. They are puppets doing the will of their masters. Studying a few quotes can leave you with no other choice but to believe this.

Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have."
Richard Salant, former president, CBS News

We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."
Katherine Graham, Washington Post publisher and CFR member

There is no such thing as an independent press in America, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.

"I am paid $150.00 a week for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone.

"The business of the New York journalist is to destroy truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon; to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools and vessels for rich men behind the scenes. We are intellectual prostitutes."

John Swinton, editor of the New York Tribune.


We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with."
Richard M. Cohen, Senior Producer of CBS political news


"We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."
-- Katherine Graham, Washington Post publisher and Bilderberg

We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
David Rockefeller, Baden-Baden, Germany 1991
 
I would have noticed that he's black, and I do care that he is black, not in a racist sense, but in the way that he plays the "race card" so well. When his folks come to do a rally here in Hawaii, they make it a big thing to say that "He is from Hawaii, born & raised" and "Help America elect the first BLACK President".

I won't vote against a candidate because of ethnicity, but I do not appreciate a candidate that uses their race to generate votes.

As for his politics in general, don't like the guy. He's never served in the military, yet is in a big hurry to pull troops out of Iraq. If he ever took the time to talk to folks who actually went there and got the first hand account of what it's like, he'll realize that it's going to take time to get desireable results. I've got friends in Iraq and I'm against anyone who is in a rush to put their safety at risk. Telling the enemy that we'll be out of the country in X number of months is a very bad idea, puts our fellow service members at risk and is poor tactical strategy.



gf
 
I've never seen anyone play the race game as well as he does. Unfortunately for him, a mixed race dorky looking dude from Hawaii with a Harvard education needed to cozy up to the Nation of Islam, militant black churches, and convicted black terrorists to have any chance of getting elected out of the Southside of Chicago - too bad it's all biting him in the ass now.
 
It's not so much his race that catches my attention as it is his name. Think about it, how many guys named Barack Obama does the typical American encounter in his or her lifetime, let alone presidential candidates?
 

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