Derrick Bell

Michelle Obama’s Anti-Whitey Activism Finally Exposed

Posted by on March 18, 2012 at 4:08 pm. 4 Comments :

Ever since Glenn Beck announced that Barack Obama has “a deep-seated hatred of white people,” the conservative media has searched for conclusive proof that would unambiguously affirm that the President has a long standing racial bias against his own mother and her familial heritage.

Having failed to uncover any credible evidence, the race-obsessed right-wingers have proffered wildly delusional theories to advance their contention that Obama is fundamentally prejudiced against whites. The latest attempt at this characterization is the effort to smear his Harvard law professor, Derrick Bell, as a some sort of black supremacist merely because he advocated a more diverse faculty at Harvard Law School where he was the first black professor to receive tenure.

Continuing with this venture into the college history of the President, these rightist investigators have now expanded their inquiries into the past of the First Lady, Michelle Obama, who also attended Harvard. What they found is sure to blow the roof off of the White House. Apparently there is video documentation of someone that may or may not be Ms. Obama participating in a demonstration at the office of the law school’s Dean.

The video comes from the archives of WGBH, who covered the demonstration in May of 1988. It shows some students engaging in a peaceful protest to get the school to hire more minority teachers.

The discovery of this video is attributed to J. Christian Adams, a notorious race-baiter who has accused Obama of promoting a racially divisive America. Adams published his findings back on May 7, in his column at Pajamas Media where he wrote…

“A treasure trove of information is coming out regarding Barack Obama’s time in college. Over at the Breitbart sites, we are learning how Obama inserted himself into a fight to implement hiring on the basis of race at Harvard Law School. The Obama tapes also seem to show the other Obama – Michelle. […] In May 1988, Harvard Law students, borrowing from Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, and foreshadowing the Occupy movement of 2011, occupied the Harvard Law School’s dean’s office.”

Isn’t it interesting that Adams employs buzzwords like “Alinsky” and “Occupy” to describe what everyone else would recognize as garden variety protests? Adams goes on to state that one of the students in the video “appears to be Michelle Obama.” That’s right, he has no confirmation that the woman seen briefly from a distance in a 22 year old video is actually the future First Lady. Yet that doesn’t prevent him from publishing an article that not only alleges her participation, but infers that it has some meaning beyond the sort of standard campus activism that is a part of college life and a cherished freedom granted by the Constitution.

The Adams article was later picked up by the ultra-conservative DailyCaller, where they repeated the assertion that the “footage shows a young woman who appears to be Michelle Obama.” This is how the Right-Wing Noise Machine operates as they attempt to spread their derisive propaganda out to the racist audience they have so carefully cultivated. The next step should be an appearance on Fox News to discuss this bombshell.

The fact that these pseudo-journalists have no shame in disseminating false stories with nakedly prejudiced inferences should not surprise anybody. Recently the Breitbrats published an allegation that Derrick Bell had visited the White House twice in 2010 without first checking to ascertain whether it was the Harvard law professor (it wasn’t). And the right has been asserting for years that there is a mystery video of Ms. Obama using the term “whitey,” but it has never materialized.

And therein lies the harm. The object of these rightist rags is not to be accurate or honest. It is to plant seeds of hatred that they know will take root even after they have been exposed as false. There are people who currently believe that the “whitey” tapes have already been released. And as much as 30% of the Republican electorate thinks that the President is a Muslim. These distortions of reality exist because they were deliberately planned out with the knowledge that any subsequent fact-checking would not hinder their infestation into the right-wing community that is already predisposed to believe these racist lies.

Clearly there is a measure of desperation setting in amongst the right. These slanderous assertions are almost comical in their ineptness. They harken back to the Sarah Palin pronouncements that Obama was “pallin around with terrorists.” Those wild allegations came near the end of a campaign that they likely knew they were about to lose. And these new allegations are popping up now for the same reason: The right is increasingly fearful that their incompetent and unpopular candidates are headed for defeat. They also realize that their policy platform, consisting mostly of propping up oil companies and pushing down women, is alienating the electorate in a big way.

The sad thing is that we are still seven months from the election and these sort of nauseating and divisive attacks are probably going to get worse. Our only hope is for the public to express themselves and to make sure that there is a price to pay for spreading hate and lies. November cannot come soon enough.

Why The F@&K Does Anyone Pay Attention To Breitbart’s Ghost?

Posted by on March 9, 2012 at 9:00 pm. 3 Comments :

Despite his untimely passing, Andrew Breitbart still seems to command attention from the mainstream media hacks who think that what he did was journalism. His ghost has the uncanny ability to summon up fables and pass them on to naive reporters desperate for a hot story.

The much heralded release of Breitbart’s supposedly explosive video that he promised would unmask the racially radical philosophy that President Barack Obama has been trying to conceal for twenty years came out this week. And there hasn’t been a more anticlimactic unveiling since Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone’s safe. But worse than just the sad spectacle of a failed exposé, the whole production number orchestrated by the Breitbartians (the inept crew that Breitbart left behind) fell apart amidst a tsunami of hype and lies. The list of unmet assertions is long and pathetic:

Claim #1) The videos would “vet” the President in a way he had not been vetted before. The result would dash his reelection hopes.
The Truth: The video was a harmless look back at a youthful and poised Obama advocating for more diversity on the Harvard faculty. If anything it makes Obama look better.

Claim #2) The Breitbartians accused Buzzfeed of “selectively editing” the video they released ahead of Breitbart’s big scoop.
The Truth: When the Breitbartians released their “uncut” version it had about two seconds at the end that showed Obama hugging the professor he had just introduced. Not exactly the makings of a scandal.

Claim #3) Prof. Derrick Bell was an extremist whose relationship with Obama was evidence of Obama’s radical roots. The Breitbartians repeatedly called him “the Jeremiah Wright of academia” in an attempt to paint a false and derogatory picture of Bell.
The Truth: Bell was a respected and admired legal professor and scholar whose work is still revered and taught at law schools around the country.

And the two most recent claims:

Claim #4) There was a conspiratorial effort to prevent the video from ever being released. The Breitbartians alleged that remarks made by Harvard professor Charles Ogletree were an admission of such.
The Truth: Ogletree was obviously joking when he said that “we hid this during the 2008 campaign.” He and his audience were laughing at the statement. Ogletree spoke with the Boston Herald today and affirmed this.

Claim #5) Derrick Bell had made two visits to the White House in 2010. I’m not sure why there would be anything wrong with a law professor visiting his former student at his new job in the White House, but nevertheless, the allegation was put forth as some sort of suspicious activity.
The Truth: It was a different Derrick Bell who was visiting the White House on a routine tour. Seriously, don’t these righties ever try to verify anything?

When you look back at all of the absurd concoctions that have been floated on the Breitbart network of web sites, you really have to ask yourself, why does anyone continue to pay attention to these people? Their record of mistakes, misrepresentations, and outright dishonesty should exempt them from being taken seriously by any other media outlet. How about we start to hold the media accountable for their poor judgment?

I would, however, like to thank the Breitbartians for having brought attention to the inspiring video of a young, activist Obama in his college days. I think that’s worth another look:

Breitbart’s Campaign Against Obama At Harvard Is Pure Racism

Posted by on March 8, 2012 at 2:07 pm. 3 Comments :

Yesterday was the day that the video Andrew Breitbart promised of a racially divisive Barack Obama in his days as a student at Harvard was released. It was almost universally panned as a pathetic and desperate boatload of nothing. After first yammering that the video posted by Buzzfeed (scooping Breitbart) was “selectively edited,” the Breitbartians posted what they said was the “uncut” video. Their version contained about two seconds more that consisted entirely of Obama hugging Prof. Derrick Bell, whom he had just introduced at a rally.

Since the video itself was proven to have no material evidence of anything the least bit detrimental to Obama, much less the cataclysmic data that would doom his career, the Breitbartians resorted to Plan B: Demonize Prof. Bell and tie him around Obama’s neck. This was a coordinated plot that began with Breitbart editor-in-chief Joel Pollak robotically repeating the mantra that “Derrick Bell was the Jeremiah Wright of academia.” Pollak even went on CNN and admitted that the video was irrelevant, and when Soledad O’Brein asked him “Then where’s the bombshell, I don’t see it?” Pollak responded that “The bombshell is the revelation of the relationship between Barack Obama and Derrick Bell.” But that wasn’t any revelation at all.

The argument that the Breitbartians are making rests on their assertion that Bell’s writings on Critical Race Theory define him as a racial radical. In fact, CRT is an aggregation of legal concepts that bring together law, politics, economics, etc., in a broad-based study of race and power in society. It posits that there are institutional barriers to eradicating racism that must be addressed at the root level. Those barriers are evident in things like employment practices and school admissions. Another example is the judicial system that incarcerates a higher percentage of African-Americans than their representation in the population. Affirming that example is the fact that crack cocaine, used by more African-Americans than whites, is punishable by sentences ten times more severe than powder cocaine, for which you find more white offenders.

Nevertheless, the Breitbartians are deliberately misinterpreting the legal theory in order to condemn its proponents, including Bell. In this way they can assert that Obama, as a result of his having studied at Harvard, is also a racial radical. The object is to incite fear among those who are ill-informed that Obama aspires to threaten their status in society. He is coming after your jobs, your schools, your churches, all the trappings of your comfortable, privileged lives.

In the wake of the initial flop of the video’s release, the right-wing media has been redoubling its efforts to stir up a phony controversy. Fox Nation has posted multiple stories on the subject (it has been at the top of their page for two days running). Fox News has featured it on their broadcasts, notably the video “exclusive” presented by Sean Hannity. Ironically, Fox Nation posted a video of a debate about Bell between Michelle Malkin and Juan Williams, but edited out Williams entirely.

Note the edit at about 2:20 where Hannity says that Juan’s gonna disagree, but then fades to Malkin saying “No, no. no.”. What Williams said in between was…

“Well, first of all, I must say, I thought this was going to be so much more. I thought this was going to be the smoking gun, as you describe it. But it really didn’t come too much. I mean, I just don’t think that there is.”

And that’s all that Williams was permitted to say in the entire segment, but they even cut that out when they put it online. And then they have the nerve to complain, falsely, that others “selectively edited” video.

Pollak and his Breitbart colleague Ben Shapiro have been making the rounds on the lamestream media. On CNN they argued with Soledad O’Brien over the meaning of Critical Race Theory, but spoke very little about what any of it had to do with Obama, despite O’Brien’s attempts to steer them back to the topic. That’s a tactic designed to keep the focus off of substance and aimed squarely at innuendo and slander. For good measure they threw in a bashing of the media for trying to suppress the video (for what reason, they never make clear), and to silence them (even while they are speaking on the air).

For its part, the Breitbart web site has been piling on with articles that reek of racism. One article was authored by J. Christian Adams, a notorious race-baiter who has accused Eric Holder’s Justice Department of coddling civil rights violators if they happened to be black. He wrote that…

“Both Obama and Bell demanded that Harvard hire professors on the basis of race. […] The Obama-Bell connection is the latest in a pattern of Barack Obama’s associations with individuals who promoted a racially divisive America.”

That’s an open assault on affirmative action, which was not developed to produce hiring on the basis of race, but to put an end to it. Adams also repeated the lie that Obama had appeared with a member of the New Black Panther Party. In fact, Obama attended a civil rights rally that was attended by thousands of people, one of whom happened to be an NBPP member. Obama had no control over who came to a massive, public rally. Adams also characterized cases of civil rights abuse as “crackpot racial grievances.” That pretty much reveals his personal bias.

Another story posted by the Breitbartians alleged that “Obama Forced His Students To Read Bell at the University of Chicago Law School.” Their evidence was a document describing a course that Obama was teaching. The course was “Current Issues in Racism and the Law.” It would be difficult to teach such a class without the textbook materials by one of this generations most respected scholars on that subject. But the allegation is made even worse by that use of the word “forced” as if it were under duress. By that measure isn’t every student forced to read something? In fact, many of the references to Bell’s writings specifically said that they were optional reading.

Meanwhile, over at NewsBusters, there was an article that alleged that the non-event video was being suppressed as part of a conspiracy orchestrated by George Soros (Isn’t it always?). The evidence of that was that Soros’ foundations had made donations to Harvard (where the video took place) and WGBH (the public TV station that owned the video). Using their logic I can surmise that the Koch brothers are behind this whole phony video scandal because they have made contributions to NewsBusters.

And, believe it or not, they even have a Plan C: It’s a Cover Up! The video was a bust. The racial attacks could backfire. So if all else fails, blame it on a massive cover up. The Breitbartians took on another black Harvard professor, Charles Ogletree, by posting a video wherein he said that “We hid this during the 2008 campaign…” He was referring to the video of Obama at Harvard. Of course there would have been no reason to do that since, if anything, the video shows Obama in a positive light. The truth is that Ogletree was joking. He even laughed immediately after, which proves that he was humorously dismissing the throw-away line. but, not surprisingly, the humor-challenged righties didn’t get, even though Ogletree’s audience did.

The absence of any substance on the video has led to a redirection by the right to their usual stance against Obama – he’s black. His associates are black. And they advocate for radical concepts like equal justice under the law. They support fairness in hiring and other social contracts. They oppose discrimination.

If anyone is advancing a racialist philosophy, it’s the right-wingers who are peddling this repulsive nonsense. And if there is anything positive to take away from this, it is that they have once again shown their true colors. It isn’t about a video of a young future president. It isn’t about health care or oil prices or deficits. It is, and always has been, about one thing for these meatheads. They just can’t accept a black man in their White House.

Buzzfeed Scoops Breitbart: The Obama Harvard Video

Posted by on March 7, 2012 at 1:55 pm. 16 Comments :

At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Andrew Breitbart said that he had videos of President Obama in his college days at Harvard. The implication was that the content of the videos was so scandalous that it would have an impact on Obama’s reelection. Breitbart gleefully announced that…

“I have videos. This election we’re going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008. The videos are going to come out, the narrative is going to come out.”

Well, they came out today. But Breitbart’s survivors at BigGovernment.com had nothing to do with it. The “vetting” was done by Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed. Kaczynski acquired video from WGBH TV in Boston of the future president speaking at a rally for more diversity in the Harvard faculty.

The Breitbart crew immediately blasted Buzzfeed for releasing what they said was a “selectively edited” copy of the video.

“[T]he video has been selectively edited–either by the Boston television station or by Buzzfeed itself. Over the course of the day, Breitbart.com will be releasing additional footage that has been hidden by Obama’s allies in the mainstream media and academia.”

Gee, I can hardly wait. This should be endlessly informative since the Breitbart clan is intimately familiar with the practice of selectively editing videos. BigGovernment’s Joel Pollak says that the unveiling of the uncut video will take place tonight on Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News. There’s another sign of how much credibility any of this will have. Hannity is famous for airing videos of sparsely attended Tea Party rallies that turned out to be from completely different, and crowded, events.


The most remarkable thing about this video is how little Obama has changed. He had the same oratorical style and poise then as now. At the time Obama was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was speaking on behalf of Prof. Derrick Bell, the first tenured African-American professor in Harvard’s law school. The occasion was a rally in support of greater diversity in general, and specifically the hiring of an African-American woman in the law school.

Pollak further promised to expose Bell as a “radical academic tied to Jeremiah Wright.” I’m surprised that he isn’t also tying him to George Soros, Van Jones, Saul Alinsky, and Che Guevara. However, Bell was a respected legal scholar and author who served in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, at the NAACP as an associate counsel, as the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law and, in addition to Harvard, also taught at USC, Stanford, and NYU. Clearly a dangerous anti-American. But Breitbart’s ghost is already setting in motion the smear campaign.

Perhaps Pollak has portions of the video where Obama advocates the violent overthrow of the government by black nationalists or discloses his Kenyan birthplace, but somehow I doubt it. It appears that the Breitbart folks are just upset that their phony plot to trickle out snippets of an entirely harmless video in order to create a fake controversy has been foiled by the lamestream media (if Buzzfeed qualifies as that). Now they will have to resort to smearing the name of a deceased law professor and pretending that there is something wrong with Obama supporting a more diversified Harvard faculty. Fox Nation has already jumped in with an item about this story headlined: Obama Harvard Video: Rally for Race-Based Hiring. So there’s your talking point, righties. Go at it.

Late Breaking: Breitbart’s site released the “uncut” video and the only additional footage on it is of Obama embracing the professor he had just introduced. It was not exactly a secret that Obama admired his Harvard law professor. But the real problem for the Breitbart clan is that they have been bashing Buzzfeed all day long about having “selectively edited” the video, but now they have been shown to be lying.

PBS/WGBH posted the REAL uncut video here.

Hannity and Co. spent over 20 minutes discussing this embarrassing flop of a scandal, even though the exclusive broadcast of the uncut video offered nothing new. The pair from Breitbart.com (Ben Shapiro and Joel Pollak) fidgeted nervously as they desperately tried to set some sort of fire under this non-event, but they utterly failed to come up with anything other than a bumper sticker criticism of Bell which they repeated incessantly to make sure the brainwashing stuck: Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia.

Just as I suspected, that’s the talking point they are running with. It’s so pathetic that I actually feel a little sorry for them. Their leader passed away last week and now they are floundering like lost orphans. What a sad spectacle.