Obama 2008 - What racial barriers do you mean?

Racial barriers

"Obama shatters racial barriers," reads the behemoth headline in this morning’s Sacramento Bee. Are there racial barriers to presidency? If so, they are not legislative; they can only exist in the racist hearts of the voters.

…But we, the country, chose Barack Obama for president. California, a decidedly blue state (not noted for being mired in antiquated traditions of prejudice), chose Barack Obama for president. How are we, the voters, a racial barrier and at the same time the proponents of the candidate in question? Will we wear this slanderous label? Fortunately for the nation, the headline suggests, Barack Obama triumphed over the voters. Is that how election works? Is that how this election worked?

I am confident that the Bee would not say so.

Poor press

This is only a single example of poor press, and we have only considered the most attention-grabbing portion of the paper, but this sort of codswallop is not anomalous in my local paper, neither in some other papers across the country. We have an interest in our news providers; we choose to pay them for keeping us informed of the doings around us.

If you’ve watched “All the President’s Men,” the film about the journalists Woodward and Bernstein, who brought the Watergate presidential scandal to light, consider what fell within their demesne as journalists. If you haven’t watched it, I recommend it to you.

I have long been unsatisfied with my local paper and so do not patronize it. It is my perception that it reads like it was edited by a remedial high school elective class. The matters that receive focus tend toward the sensational, rather than the useful. Many matters I find represented with obvious bias. Will we continue to pay out for whatever drivel spills from the press onto the page?

Reading has been long considered an exercise for the mind, but it is not so if the reader passively accepts whatever drivel has spilled from the press onto the page—and how much worse when the reader pays to keep the provider employed. Let us inform our news providers what we will sanction and what we will not.

I will write to my local paper.

Amendment:

I have perhaps erroneously declared that the voters are not racist when I really meant to say that they are not racist in the way that the press would have us believe. In truth, I believe that the votes of many were influenced by race in this election, that for some, there was little examination of policy compared with the examination of pigment.