WTF? The Childish Fox News Reaction To Obama Saying Nig…. Um, The N Word

President Obama spent an hour in Marc Maron’s garage to record a podcast with the popular comedian (full audio below). They discussed numerous subjects including politics, climate change, family, and media. And given that the tragic massacre in South Carolina was just a few days earlier, it would have been surprising if they had not also talked about race and racism in America. But leave it to Fox News to inflate a trivial segment of an hour-long interview in order to insult the President and distract from the other important issues that were being discussed.

During the portion of the interview that dealt with race (@46:25), Obama spoke movingly about his personal experiences and the broader context of race relations in America. At one point he said…

“The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, you know, that casts a long shadow, and that’s still part of our DNA that’s passed on. We’re not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘nigger’ in public. That’s not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It’s not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don’t overnight completely erase everything that happened 2-300 years prior.”

Oh lordy me. Pass the smellin’ salts Martha. The President uttered the unmentionable, and the inevitable demise of Western civilization will surely follow. Everyone knows that in adult conversations you have to spell naughty words rather than communicate with other grown-ups in a manner that reflects intellectual maturity. Because if you say the “F” word, or the “N” word, or the “X” word (don’t ask), no one will know that you really mean a word with more letters that will cause your ears to seal up. Responsible adults know to always speak as if you’re addressing children or others with stunted emotional development (or, as it turns out, Fox News viewers).

It’s notable that conservatives suddenly find this word so objectionable as an expression of hatred and division, yet they don’t have any problem with the official banner of hateful dividers, the Confederate flag.

Obama Confederate Flag

The reaction by conservative media to POTUS dropping the “N” Bomb was swift and stupid. Taking the lead, of course, was Fox News, where their early morning gabfest, Fox & Friends, accused Obama’s language of being beneath the dignity of the office of the presidency. Saying “‘N’ word” is so much more dignified. And besides, Fox News has declared that racism is over so there is no need to even bring the subject up anymore, much less use controversial language.

The Curvy Couch Potatoes, Steve Doocy and Elisabeth Hasselbeck, both speculated that Obama might also use the word in a State of the Union address because, in their cartoon brains, whenever someone uses a word in one venue, it will then be used everywhere else: State of the Union, United Nations, The Tonight Show, PTA meetings, etc.

Throughout the morning (and afternoon and evening) the editorial mandate on Fox News was to keep repeating this non-story that involved a five-second blip from an hour long interview. Perhaps the most strikingly obtuse opinion was rendered by Fox contributor Deneen Borelli, who called Obama the “Rapper-in-Chief,” and said that “He has really dragged in the gutter speak of rap music. So now he is the first president of rap, of street?”

Really? Borelli’s attempt to equate a substantive discussion of race, wherein the President made thoughtful remarks about lingering problems, with the provocative creative license exercised by rappers, is beyond ludicrous. Apparently she would also blanch and\or giggle at the words breast or penis if a doctor used them in a medical context, because in her mind it’s the same as if they were used in a dirty limerick.

On Fox News and elsewhere, Obama was accused of using the word as a “grand distraction.” The absurd hilarity of that charge rests in the fact that it is only the right-wing media that is using this to distract. They plucked the sentence fragment out of a long, in-depth interview and ignored everything else that was discussed. As an indication of just how fixated they were on Obama’s use of this word, they completely missed what he said about Fox News:

Obama: There’s this big gap between who we are as a people and how our politics expresses itself. And part of that has to do with gerrymandering and SuperPACs and lobbyists, and a media that is so splintered now that we’re not in a common conversation. And the fact that if you watch Fox News you inhabit a completely different world with different facts than if you read the New York Times. And that becomes self-reinforcing. And there’s a profit both for politicians and for news outlets simplifying and polarizing.

Fox News Obama Maron

Ordinarily, when Obama invokes Fox News, the network takes immediate and prolonged offense, even if it isn’t due, as is the case here where Obama also cited the New York Times. Regardless, Fox generally strikes back viciously and condemns Obama for trying to belittle or intimidate the alleged “news” channel that spends most of its time demonizing him. So for Fox to give this allusion a pass shows how seriously they were overwhelmed by the power of the “N” word’s utterance. Or at least it shows how seriously they are committed to using this to bash the President.

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[Update:] This afternoon the governor of South Carolina announced that she would back a plan to remove the flag from the grounds of the state capitol. She said that it was time to show that state property belongs to all South Carolinians. That’s funny, because all the South Carolinians who have been offended by the Confederate flag for decades never bothered these southerners until a white, racist brandishing the flag murdered nine African-Americans in a church. Let’s see how the other states that feature or allow the Confederate flag respond to this.

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8 thoughts on “WTF? The Childish Fox News Reaction To Obama Saying Nig…. Um, The N Word

  1. This is cool. Newshounds noticed that the Fox Nation post on Obama saying “nigger” on the Marc Maron podcast has shut down all comments. Gee, I wonder why.

  2. Lawd a mussy, He said ni66er and gave me the vapors. Pox News is brain poison.

  3. I mentioned this already a few times earlier on other sites, but these guys NEVER tire of showing us that they will NEVER fail to NOT take into consideration context in anything now would they.

    So they freak out over the President mentioning the N-Word….in a speech about race relations and racism.

    If one were to look into the history of this word as a racial smear one would know just how it represents a derogatory term designed to denigrate and diminish blacks as a race. It could not be more appropriate to bring up such slurs, and this one being one of the most well know ones, in any discussion or speech addressing racism and race issues.

    Which was exactly the context in which it was brought up by the President.

    So they have their freakout. Next we’ll have them freaking out about someone mentioning the F-Word in a topic or speech that focuses on swearing and/or vulgarities in speech and their impact on societal norms and etiquette.

    If there’s someone who has connections to investments in fainting couches, could you let me in on it too? From this reaction from the right, I see big money to be made from timely investments in such an area.

  4. Steve Doocy is a pantywaist who would be selling insurance in New Jersey if it weren’t for Roger Ailes. He is basically Ailes’s mouthpiece. And we all know that Elisabeth Hasselhack is just in it for the money and the mini-skirts. Yeah, a lot of integrity there…

  5. I have a lot of issues with this president. A lot. Don’t even get me started. But I’ve always respected his intelligence. His comments on these kinds of issues are always a cut above what we’ve come to expect from Uh’merican politicians.

    The Foxtards, on the other hand, can’t stop themselves from sounding like complete assholes because they simply lack the cognitive skills and self-awareness needed to even have a conversation with (or about) somebody like BHO. Wingnutz just don’t get stuff like context, nuance, objectivity, ambiguity, cultural memes, poetic license, irony, satire… not to mention logic and factual analysis. Their brains are just a tangled rat’s nest of fear, hate, and paranoia.

    At 56, I’m just barely old enough to remember a time when people could speak of “conservative intellectuals” without laughing. Now somebody explain why we are still clinging to our two-party system. This is still a relatively young nation, but surely we’re old enough to know when to grow up!

  6. Mark – your Newshounds link doesn’t appear to be working.

  7. Whenever I click through Fox & Fiends, I find that watching even 1 minute of it actually destroys 1000’s of brain cells…I can FEEL it happening. Just looking at Doocey (apt name) & Hasselbeck (also very apt name) makes me feel stupid.

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