It Begins. AP Charged with Racism for Accurate Transcription of Obama's Speech. [ArthurK]

What begins? Full On Campaign Season, that's what. It's time to practice the proper usage of the President's most potent weapon to get re-elected - The Race Card.

We're talking about Saturday's speech at a Congressional Black Caucus get together. Where he harangued the Democrat's most loyal faction to stop whining and start getting busy getting him the second term he's entitled to.

From the AP transcript.

Take off your bedroom slippers. Put on your marching shoes," he said, his voice rising as applause and cheers mounted. "Shake it off. Stop complainin'. Stop grumblin'. Stop cryin'. We are going to press on. We have work to do.

How does racism pop up? Acknowledging dropped g's is Raaaaacist!

On MSNBC, the African-American author Karen Hunter complained the news service transcribed Obama's speech without cleaning it up as other outlets did--specifically including the "dropped g's."

But McWhorter argued

the g-less version "is actually the correct one," noting that the president's victory in the 2008 election was due, in part, to how effortlessly "he can switch into that [black] dialect."

Whatever the reason, Hunter found it offensive. "I teach a journalism class, and I tell my students to fix people's grammar, because you don't want them to sound ignorant," she said. "For them to do that, it's code, and I don't like it."

It's Code! See? It's magic campaign time where words means whatever the commentator wants them to mean so long as it either makes Obama look good or his critics look bad. In this case, AP let the veil slip and showed Obama changing his lingo for one audience. And let the rest of the world see it - and that must not be seen! AP is to be mildly scolded for this mistake. The official line from the MSM is that Obama doesn't pander. Don't Differ From the Line.

While I was reading this I thought about how Bush 43 was treated. Fortunately, I was on my medication - otherwise my heart might have stopped. The very next paragraph...

It's worth noting that the same sorts of arguments arose during George W. Bush's presidency, with the White House cleaning up the president's speeches to make him sound smarter, and news outlets sometimes not doing so.

"Sometimes." Cute. Anyway, they did acknowledge it. But this was posted in some sort of AP blog - I'm not sure that counts.

Tom Kent, the AP deputy managing editor for standards and production, said in a statement to The Cutline. "In this case, our reporter, who was there in person, felt the spellings were appropriate to convey a particular touch that President Obama appeared to be intentionally making use of."

Conservative bloggers agree--mainly because the story showed Obama pandering to a black base.

"Now that the presidential campaign season has begun," Courtland Milloy wrote in an op-ed column for the Washington Post, "it's okay for President Obama to openly court black people again."

We're going to see The Race Card played early and often this campaign. IMHO it's not going to work as well as they expect. We've elected a black President! That's armor.

posted by Open Blogger at 08:58 PM

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