Trotta: Take Obama Out
Liz Trotta, a veteran journalist who helped pioneer a place for women at the front as war correspondents, was being interviewed on Fox News on Sunday by Eric Shawn, when she commented on Hillary's Clinton's reference to RFK's assassination:
' "And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, uh Obama. Well, both, if we could." She laughed. '
Here's the video:
She laughed.
And Mr. Shawn did not stop her, did not say "Surely you do not mean that," and just went on with the interview:
' "But do you really think that--she didn't mean that she thinks that he going to get assassinated, and she apologized--
Trotta: "Well, that's beside the point, whether she meant it or not."
Shawn: "And she's just using it in a historical context?"
Trotta: "She's tone deaf, because it's a radioactive word. And the whole question of the first black man becoming a candidate for presidency of the United States has all kinds of overtones and all kinds of caveats that really have to be considered in this thing. And his security has been a real issue. He's had bodyguards earlier than anybody else. Surely this woman had to know that that was a third rail to say 'assassination.' And it's hard to argue for her on this, because it isn't the first time she's made this step." '
And Trotta thinks that Hillary Clinton is tone deaf!
Trotta appeared to have no remorse whatsoever for what she had said.
Is this what Rupert Murdoch's petty, spiteful, poisonous media have brought us to in this country, jokes about killing our presidential candidates and pairing their names with those of mass murderers? Under the rules of the Federal Communications Commission as they existed before the Supreme Court gutted the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, Fox would have been hugely fined or closed as a thinly disguised Republican Party House organ. (As for the argument that there are lots of news points of view to choose from now, I'm still waiting for the Socialist Party to have its cable station available in almost all US markets.)
Some are petitioning for Trotta to be banned from Fox, but it seems to me what is actually appropriate is an apology, from Rupert Murdoch himself, for all the false and vicious things he has purveyed to the American people through his phony bought and paid for "journalism." And if he won't apologize and reform, maybe it is time for a consumer boycott of Fox's major advertisers. In our corrupt corporate media system, Shawn's interview of Lotta was actually rented out to advertisers; so who paid for that piece of excrement to be on the air? Should we be buying that product?
If we analyze Trotta's brief, murderous faux pas, the language issues come to the fore.
Americans need to be told that Usamah Bin Laden does not own the name Usamah, and there are lots of wonderful people named Usamah. It is just a classical Arabic word for "lion." It is given by Christian as well as Muslim families, and some of the physicians who heal us of serious maladies are named Usamah. Moreover, there is no "o" in Arabic. It is not Osama but Usamah. It does not rhyme with Obama and is not related in any way to it. Obama is an African (presumably Dholua or other West Nilotic) word, not a Semitic one.
Then can we ban this euphemism, "take out"? In its tertiary sense, according to Merriam Webster,, it means to "eliminate, kill, destroy." If that is what it means, then say it, damn it.
Bush used to always talk about "taking out" Saddam. Well, we now know that what he meant was "to have him lynched by the fanatical Shiite Mahdi Army." A euphemism like "take out" seems less innocuous, perhaps, than just "kill." But killing should not be made to seem innocuous. People should say what they mean. If you want to kill someone, be brave enough to admit it.
Journalists Shawn and Trotta have just brought the US presidential campaign to a new low of innuendo, viciousness, cavalier disregard for the sanctity of life, and peculiar lack of self-reflection. But in most ways, they are just continuing the Fox and Murdoch house traditions.
Tone deaf, indeed.
--
Update: Trotta apologized, sort of, on Monday morning. But Fox cleverly put the apology very deep into an interview on the same subject, suggesting that Trotta retained the ability to function as a dispassionate analyst on this subject! In her apology she talked about 'falling all over herself' to make it appear as though she wished Obama "or any other candidate" harm. To fall all over yourself to do something is not to behave awkwardly but rather to be eager to do something. Was this a Freudian slip? And, why bring up other candidates. It was only Obama she wanted offed.
This "apology" is completely unacceptable and people should keep the pressure on Fox. Shawn must apologize for not interrupting her and demanding she explain herself right there.
Or maybe it is all right electronically to lynch some people, with impunity.
Here is the site of the petition to Fox to have her sacked.
posted by Juan Cole @ 5/26/2008 12:34:00 AM
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19 Comments:
This was indeed sickening, not least because Obama really is at risk.
I was horrified to see that even on dKos, a few people were trying to make the argument that Trotta was actually speaking of what she imagined would be Hillary's attitude, rather than her own vile Coulterish take on the issue.
Fox is synonomous with foul play and the only language Murdoch understands is money. Democrats should indeed push back with their purchasing power and hurt Fox advertisers.
Amen brother!!!
Australians know better than most what evil Rupert Murdoch can wreak through the media. He was an Australian until he took up US citizenship as a way to bypass US laws on foreign ownership. Then he married a Chinese employee while courting favour with the mandarins in Beijing. He maintains considerable control over the Australian political and media landscapes, even as he broadens his global horizons.
Murdoch's mother was Jewish and he has repeatedly expressed support for Israel. He has never explicitly endorsed Zionist expansionism, but neither has he condemned it. If only US Congress were in better shape, they might demand some answers from him.
Thank you, Juan Cole, for calling him out. This man is a major War Criminal whose role in Iraq has been all to frequently glossed over.
A million dead, people.
A million dead.
PS: Readers who do not understand the anti-Murdoch madness might want to check out the Wendi Deng Watchers Club for more info.
For example:
Seems Wendi met her Jake Cherry in China, where - depending on who you read - he was either "a UNICEF executive", an "American working for Guangzhou Engineering Factory" (The Australian Financial Review, 24th-25th March, 2007), or even, as Crikey suggested in a very interesting 2000 article, "a wealthy American sports goods manufacturer" and possible US government agent!
Let's turn the tabloid tables on Rupert!
Oh and BTW:
Saudi Wahhabis are major stockholders in News Corporation.
Just sayin'....
"Well, both if we could."
Now we know what "fair and balanced" means to Fox.
Juan, your comments on Fox "News" are exactly on point. No one could have said it better. But the scary thing is not Murdoch or Trotta, it's the fact that there is a significant audience in this country that finds truth and wisdom in their America-hating propaganda.
Dear Juan, while I fully and unequivocally subscribe to your viewpoints in this piece, I should like to recommend your readers to read George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English language". In the second paragraph of this essay, Orwell writes:
"A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts."
I deeply believe that this essay must be incorporated into the curricula of our children at all schools.
Kind regards,
BF
Where do I join the petition ??
fox deserves to be shut down !
"maybe it is time for a consumer boycott of Fox's major advertisers"
show some teeth and let's get started. pick out only one advertiser and let's see how effective a boycott can be. it is the only way to deal with these people.
-carmen
san francisco
This, along with Huckabee's and Hillary's initial comment has disturbed me to the core. These comments are not being made about any other candidate. The only reason I can think of is Obama's race. I have always been one to be very slow to charge racism in any situation. To the point, in fact, that some accuse me of being naive. But in this case I can see no other explantion. I always knew that there was racism towards Obama's candidacy, but I thought it was something isolated to the ill educated. Obviously, I am wrong. It is in every level of our society and evidently quite acceptable.
At Nuremberg, we tried and occasionally executed "journalists" and publishers like Julius Streicher along with Nazi officers and political leaders. If it ever comes down to that, Mr. Murdoch and other members of the corporatist media ought to be put in the docket along with Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and the others who were responsible for this illegal war, among other crimes.
Euphemism is a moral disease, rampant in government and the military, offering deniability or humor where there should be neither. "Bit the dust" or "joined the choir invisible" may be jocular colloquialisms that occasionally allow avoidance of the emotional pain of death, but "pink mist", "hose 'em", "take 'em out", and the plethora of similar terms of diminution, and hosts of acronyms encouraging the loss of moral meaning, that have come to be the working vocabulary of the military I believe are in the roots of PTSD. The only way one can spend years venerating the Ten Commandments, join the military and break half of them, and then go home and act like nothing happened, is if one’s own culture says that’s ok. When the culture begins wonder if its sons and daughters are doing the right thing, then the wastage of bodies of the dead and wounded is compounded by the wastage of spirits of those who returned without a scratch.
The oath taken when joining the military carries a strong but invisible implication that the society will forgive one if, in the course of defending one's country, one "strays" (there it is again) from the moral norms of the society. This societal acceptance worked in WWI, WWII, and Korea. It even worked to a large degree in the 1990 Gulf War because Americans, American troops, and American media managed to maintain a sympathetic view of Iraqis, and even many Iraqi troops (Saddam made ‘em do it, the poor guys). And too because George I, unlike his offspring, was smart enough to stop before he got himself stuck in the sands of the Middle East. But public acceptance of what the US military made US soldiers do in Viet Nam eroded and eventually evaporated under the gaze of the tv camera, leading to a military generation of "unforgiven" soldiers, a tragedy considering the real cause was the war’s leaders and architects, combined with shifting moral standards of the US military. And the same thing is happening today.
It took a quarter century after Viet Nam for the US military to recoup its public reputation, and a tremendous amount of military funding was spent on PR to promote a public perception that important lessons had been learned, that critically important repairs had been made, and that the dark chapter of our own failings was behind us. But it appears clear to me that the military did not learn, that repeated mention of the lessons of Sun Tzu and Battle of Algiers was an concerted effort to rebrand the military, rather than leading to a change of practice. The military’s real “advance” made since Viet Nam was the realization that much more attention must be paid to controlling information, the news media, and public perceptions, and in this alone the US military has succeeded. Improvements in the effective rate of killing, without parallel improvements in what must be done after the killing, does not equate to success, because the definition of success is peace, not killing. Death is not an end, but a setting in motion of ripples of emotion that trigger other actions. This is, in fact, what Memorial Day is all about. The fallen motivate us, as they do all people, including our now and future enemies, their fallen being ones we killed.
Blame may be shoveled on George II, the boy king, for rigid loyalty to a broken moral compass, but the legitimacy of the military rests upon the a strictly maintained moral fabric consistent with the values of the nation
There are many, many good people in the US military. But their honest efforts have too often been thoughtlessly and selfishly wasted by the bad people who are as much a part of military culture as they are of civilian culture. And, sadly, they have also been betrayed by an American presidential administration that has set an impossible task, draped with patriotic bunting, based on an immoral premise, which has contributed an unbroken chain of disastrously stupid decisions.
Wars end when people get tired of them, or when armies run out of gas or food, or when nations bankrupt themselves trying to win. America is advancing more rapidly in these three areas than it is in rebuilding Iraq. I, for one, want that trend reversed.
And people get put on watch lists for less.
US media has become as bad as the white, right-wing media in Latin America, like Venezuela's privately-owned right-wing stations that feature whites referring to their mestizo president as a monkey. A Guatemalan told me years ago that the nightmarish right-wing hell that the US had created in Guatemala would eventually also be seen in the US, and it seems to me we are seeing it these days.
And for those who say that the US media has always been this way, I say it hasn't. Yes, white people and the media they create are always racist, and I don't mean that in some sort of abstract, academic way but in the real world meaning of disadvantaging people of color, but this sort of thing would not have been allowed before the Fairness Doctrine was rescinded by Reagan in 1987. It was the removal of that bit of legislation that opened the door to right-wing shock jocks like Limbaugh and right-wing stations like Fox. Before '87, someone saying something like this unchallenged was truly unthinkable. Even during the 1950s, you didn't have white racists going on TV and joking about assassinating Blacks. They were actually going out and killing them, but they couldn't have gotten away with being so publicly base about it in the mass media. Now, things are definitely worse in that the public has become so inured to right-wing depravity since '87 that these pundits know they can get away with just about anything, in part because the mass right-wing movement that the rescinding of that legislation helped create has intimidated most of the rest of us into silence.
Here is a list that a group has compiled of Fox advertising sponsors. Underwriters of hate speech and calls for the assassination of candidates of ANY viewpoint sohuld know that people are paying attention, and will not purchase their products or services.
http://yourblackworld.com/news/stories2/fox_news_corporate_sponsors.htm
"Trotta: Yes, I am so sorry about what happened yesterday and the lame attempt at humor. I feel all over myself, making it appear that I wished Barack Obama harm or any other candidate, for that matter, and I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I have offended. It is a very colorful political season, and many of us are making mistakes and saying things we wish we had not said."
A typical non-apology apology. It doesn't actually use the word 'if' as D. J. Dionne quoted his wife this weekend ("if an apology contains the word 'if' in it, it's not an apology"), but it's implicitly there. I'll rephrase it. Trotta's
"...I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I have offended."
really means
"I sincerely regret it [because I got caught out] and apologize if I have offended anybody [but if no one was offended then it's OK]."
Bill Jefferys
At this time Obama is not a candidate for President, merely a contender for the Democratic nomination. I believe that after the convention, when he becomes the nominee, the same remarks become illegal.
What we are witnessing is SwiftBoat_2008, where outrageous statements towards the man most likely to become the next President are made for the purpose of generating a response. Then, the response would become evidence of his so-called unsuitability to be President.
It is nothing other than a media lynching.
As is obvious, Trotta conflates and reinforces the false association between "Osama" and "Obama". What has NOT been commented on, is the subtle code in Trotta's "apology". She states, "It's a very COLORFUL (my emphasis) political season...." Besides the fact that this is a very racial code word, it is code that harkens back to the 50's and prior. It is code for "colored". I sadly feel that Trotta would have cleverly used the "N" word if she could have gotten away with it.
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