Dr. J.'s Short Takes: Maddow/Wright; bin Laden/Bush

Why the Coverage of Wright was Wrong

Rachel Maddow is the number one (and number two and three) star of Air America Radio. She is now appearing regularly on the (in U.S. terms) left-leaning MSNBC, and even sat in as host for Keith Olbermann on May 16, 2008. To my ears, she is generally correct in her analyses. But she was wrong when asked what was wrong with the Rev. Wright "debate" that went on and on and on, on the mainstream media (with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" talking about little else over a two-week period). She said the problem was lack of balance on dealing with toxic Reverends. That was there surely, and it will likely continue throughout the campaign, as McCain's toxic Reverends never or perhaps barely make it to the radar. They did make a blip last week when McCain unceremoniously dumped two of them. But courtesy of Rove/McCain, you can be sure the Rev. Wright will be back full-time in October. After all, the Republicans have nothing else to run on.

But what was really missing in the recent MSM analysis of the Wright-Obama phenomenon was not equal time devoted to those Christian Rightists gathered around McCain (although that would have been nice). The real problem in the "coverage" was that, just like following the Imus Controversy of a year ago, there was no: real discussion of race and how racism hurts everyone in this country except its manipulators; real discussion of Black Liberation Theology and what it means, how prominent it is in the Black Church and why; real discussion of why that majority of Afro-American Pastors polled after the "infamous" Washington Press Club news conference thought that just about everything that Rev. Wright said there was just fine. That's what was missing in the MSM treatment of "black issues" and likely always will be.

On the (Re-)Appearance of bin Laden

My, over the past few years hasn't he popped up at convenient times -- for Bush? Like here was Bush using his trip to Israel for the supposedly solemn purpose of honoring the 60th anniversary of its founding to make a clearly partisan speech -- to the Knesset of all places. And here were a couple of tape-recorded "pronouncements" from bin Laden (or is it really "bin Laden"). Their tenor just happened to reinforce the fear and loathing message that Bush just loves to trot out on a regular basis. Some observers are convinced that bin Laden is either dead (and the tapes manufactured) or is very much alive and is either a Bush family asset or a CIA asset or both. Recall that his Saudi family and the Bushes were very close commercially once upon time. And we should not forget the very convenient departure from the U.S. of a whole bunch of bin Ladens immediately following 9/11, when U.S. airspace was closed, without so much as one FBI interview of any of them. Recall also that bin Laden received his original terrorist training in Afghanistan in the 1980s in the war against the Russians from none other than the CIA. That his surfacings always appear to come at politically convenient times for Bush could of course just be coincidental. Or they could be not.

Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook University (NY), a weekly Contributing Author for the Web zine The Political Junkies.net; a Special Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online; and an invited contributor to the Web log The Daily Scare.

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