Though I would certainly understand not doing this on a regular basis, everyone should go look at the interview from The O'Reilly Factor last night (Tuesday the 11th). To discuss the specter of poverty in our country, O’Reilly invited Professor Cornel West and activist Travis Smiley. West and Smiley are two of the most vocal crusaders for the poor and underrepresented in our country and watching them in action is fantastic. I haven’t had a chance to check out Smiley’s new PBS documentary series, the Poverty Tour, but I certainly hope to do so. Both of these men present the economic issues facing the country fantastically well and if anybody is looking for clarification on these issues I would point them in either West or Smiley’s direction.
However, the real person to watch is O’Reilly. O’Reilly clearly spells out the current mindset of the American conservative movement on two issues. The first is on poverty itself. Of course he repeats the old trope that the poor are only poor because they are lazy (and in a drug-induced haze). Forget trying to argue that that statement is as incorrect now as it has ever been, even introducing the idea there might be some force in society (beyond evil socialist government) contributing to the rise in poverty is considered taboo. O’Reilly and the forces of modern conservatism aren’t interested in just defending their corporate pay-Masters, they purport that advocating that there should be transparency or accountability in the financial world as an unpatriotic waste of time. The same people who declare they are against government or say treasonous statements about our President and other members of government lash out at the slightest hint condemnation of Wall Street elites. However, as I mentioned in my article about the Occupy Wall Street protests yesterday, the idea of holding Wall Street and corporations accountable is becoming far more unifying than dividing. One of the great successes of the OWS movement so far is to begin make the dividing line more clear to many Americans. O’Reilly, Romney, Cain, Perry and the rest of them are all viscously trying to protect the interests of the 1% and they realize that actually having to own up to that publicly would be bad politically.
The other factor is the ever-present undercurrent of racism and exclusion rearing its ugly head. Hiding behind a banner of supposed color-blindness and ‘tolerance’, O’Reilly and American conservatives everywhere continue to spread their insidious racism. The way that O’Reilly treats West and Smiley, two authorities on a subject he clearly clearly knows very little about, is absolutely abominable. In the same way that Romney and other Republicans have been shaking their heads sadly and declaring that, even though they like Obama personally, the poor guy has bitten off more than he can chew, O’Reilly treats these experts as though they are in over their head and just confused by all of the information. The tone he and other white conservative (and some not so conservative) pundits, politicians, and pollsters take when talking with or about people of color sometimes makes it seem like their next speech would quote Kipling. That is, if they are up on their late 19th century poetry. The problem is, of course, about the same facing women. Just look at any of the town hall meetings Romney has where he answers questions from females (like the ones highlighted in this article: http://politics.salon.com/2011/08/26/romney_women/singleton/ ). They cling to the belief that a white male is the natural authority on all issues and they believe that their (primarily white) audience will lap it up.
No, the fact that the conservative establishment is, on the whole, racist, sexist, and hates the poor is hardly news. However, I would like to believe that we are beginning to live in a world where such attitudes will, in the broader electorate, hurt them more than it helps them. It is, of course, important to spread around news stories that support a Progressive point of view. But a second task for the active Progressive is also unmasking conservatives for who they really are. The next time someone says we’re living in a post racial world or that the economic plans put out by conservatives favor anyone but the upper one percent, show them this or plenty of other clips. Don’t let conservatives claim the banner of acceptance or even tolerance when their message is clearly rife with hatred and societal exclusion.
And above all, don’t let their feigns and misdirections distract from the fact that in a time where the poor and middle class are faltering, the conservative’s economic plans clearly still favor only the upper one percent of society. To quote a different late 19th century poem, There is no shape more terrible than this, more tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed, more filled with signs and portents for the soul, more fraught with menace to the universe.
For a very interesting interview on the way race is playing a role in the Obama presidency, check out the interview from today’s installment of the Majority Report with Sam Seder at http://majority.fm/. He interviews Professor Randall Kennedy, author of the recently published book The Persistence of the Color Line: Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency.
For more information on the Poverty Tour check out http://www.povertytour.smileyandwest.com/ and http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/
For information on how to take the fight actively to conservative talk show hosts (and their listeners) check out this website. http://www.truthticker.com/
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