Bush camp solicits race of Star staffer

[priller]

Actually it was Cheney, for another of his warm and friendly speaking appearances.

http://www.azstarnet.com/dailystar/dailystar/32301.php

President Bush's re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.
 
The Star refused to provide the information.
 
Cheney is scheduled to appear at a rally this afternoon at the Pima County Fairgrounds.
 
A rally organizer for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign asked Teri Hayt, the Star's managing editor, to disclose the journalist's race on Friday. After Hayt refused, the organizer called back and said the journalist probably would be allowed to photograph the vice president.
 
"It was such an outrageous request, I was personally insulted," Hayt said later.
 
------

For security reasons, of course...

[Spiffarino]

1. This is damned big news!

Kick!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Yep.

Cheney apparently was afraid the person might be brown skinned, and he doesn't trust anyone who isn't melatonally challenged.

[Tight_rope]

34. "Cheney doesn't trust anyone who isn't melatonally challenged"!

As though being caucasian would make the challenge any easier for him to avoid. Maybe he was planning on wearing something that might relate to the persons racial background. :shrug:

[priller]

3. And the best part...

Journalists covering the president or vice president must undergo a background check and are required to provide their name, date of birth and Social Security number. The Star provided that information Thursday for Popat and this reporter.

Organizer Christine Walton asked for Popat's race in telephone conversations with two other Star editors before she spoke to Hayt. They also refused to provide the information. Walton told Hayt that Popat's race was necessary to allow the Secret Service to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name.
 
----

Yeah, there are so many Mamta Popats running around.

[Cocoa]

5. "is this the same Mamta Popat?"

"no, that Mamta Popat was Pacific Islander, this one is Native American."

[okasha]

31. Matma Popats

Of course, Shrub might well have mistaken a reporter of that name for an Englishwoman given to umbrella gliding. (Look! It's one of Saddam's UAV's!)

Okasha

[w13rd0]

6. OMFG...

...Mamta Popats? And they want to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name? Ok, at just what point can we bother to remember that Cheney, when in Congress, was one of the most extreme white wing racists out there? At what point will the media say, "Gee, if I didn't know better, I might think Cheney is a cheney-ing bigot." Actually, considering that Cheney ran Bush's VP selection committee, could we see what he wrote on the rejection slips for Powell and Rice? And this is the guy that let polluting corporations write their own energy laws, laws in which they usually make it easy and responsibility free for them to pump massive TOXINS (that's WMD to you and me) into minority communities?

[msanthrope]

43. Right, and if the Secret Service had a problem with

a backround check, they would ask a campaign flunky to get on the phone?

RIIIIGHT!!!!

[bobthedrummer]

4. This ain't the Fourth Reich, yet...

:grr::puke::argh:

[Cocoa]

7. holy crap

there's no justification for this. Good for the newspaper to stand up to this, and to report it.

[snippy]

8. How very republican. n/t

[Spiffarino]

9. I'm forwarding this to Drudge

Let's see how quickly he posts it. :scared:

[John Q. Citizen]

10. Yeah, right

He'll post it right after he "sirens" the mental health and anti depressants story

[Spiffarino]

11. I did it anyway.

I'm also forwarding it to Yahoo News, the DNC blog, and anywhere else that might pass it along. This is too important to sit on. It shows the true nature of these creeps.

[soggy]

21. can you give me their email addressess?

i'll send it too. let's barrage the media with this so they know this is already out there and can't be buried!

[Tight_rope]

36. Don't bother to send it to CNN...after this week we know where they stand!

[mom cat]

13. Hi John Q Citizen and welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Tight_rope]

37. Welcome to DU John Q. Citizen!

[Jackpine Radical]

45. I copied Drudge in on the Bush Meds story the other day

along with the one on new AWOL data.

Haven't been back to look..did he use my tips?

[Spiffarino]

12. Can you change the title?

Priller, if you can change the title to something like, "Cheney wants to know reporter's race" it may garner more attention. I wasn't sure what it was about until I read it.

It's a great post and should be getting a lot of buzz. I think the title may be at fault.

Thank you a thousand times for finding this story!!

[Rose Siding]

15. Can't re-write the title

LBN posting rules require the use of the published title to cut down on duplicates. But you can throw in a buzzword or parenthesis.

[priller]

16. And now it tells me the editing time period has expired.

Oh well...

[Spiffarino]

24. Thanks, party_line.

I'm guessing you're a moderator. Can you suggest another way to run this story up the flagpole that's within the rules? I don't want to double-post, but I feel this is a huge story.

[OKNancy]

30. Cross posting in another forum is allowed

You can post it in General Discussion.

[qanda]

14. To me, this is huge

I cannot believe the liberal media hasn't picked up on this. I guess it's our job to spread it far and wide.

[mike1963]

17. Jeezus...

:kick:

[lumpy]

18. Boot

x

[HereSince1628]

19. Inappropriate in many respects. Do races of humans even exist?

I may be a bit out of touch here, but I thought that the concept of races had been replaced by "ethnicity." Is that just a "liberal" world view or what?

The population of the Asian subcontinent seems, at least potentially, to be very ethnically diverse, how the heck does someone of "Indian" ancestry express membership in something as limited as race?

I do appreciate that Cheney is the exemplar par excellance of the right wing personality...drawn not only to archaic ideas on the basis of "tradition" but also keenly attracted to arbitrary disctinctions that faciltate the identification of "US" vs "THEM." Category crisis isn't something with which Dick could cope very well.

[Coventina]

20. There is no such thing as "different races"

You are correct.

There is one race: The human race.

Any biologist can tell you that. The concept of "multiple races" is a holdover from our bigoted past.

On edit: clarity

[rexcat]

22. We are all part of one "race" and it is called the...

Human Race, whatever that means!

[HereSince1628]

23. As a democratic zoologist I see how at least one human is a chimp

Actually, all the traditional systematic categories require arbitrary boundaries. Considering the role of more or less endless paraphyly resulting in "distinctions with no difference" the role of classification in systematics became haunted with various biases. Although molecular methods promise to sort out ancestor descendant relationships, the realization that horizontal as well as vertical gene flow are involved in inheritance seriously complicates the gloriously parsimonious view of such original minds as Willi Hennig.

I can see how humans at some levels must have seemed to C. Linne like an entirely different family, but at the same time I can see enough similarities to place humanity well within the same genus as chimps. "Know Yourself" translates as _Homo sapiens_, but it doesn't resolve phobias that society has about humans being within rather than along side of the fabric of nature.

[Spiffarino]

25. Ohhh, not fair to chimps!

;)

[HereSince1628]

26. Well, Bush isn't a Bonobo he's a _Homo_

And I truly didn't mean to disparage my Pan-like cousins or humans who have been tagged with the term "homo."

I'd say Bush is an ass, but it would caste a shadow on all democrats!

[candy331]

27. Need the race to make sure that it is the same Dick Cheney

to distinguish him from another who may have the same name.Lame sick excuse for blatant bigotry and hatred. Will they ever, no I suppose not.

[Whoa_Nelly]

28. Write a letter to the Star

and congratulate them on their integrity. I did. The emial of the author of the article is at the end of the story.

Author email:
[e-mail]

[Spiffarino]

29. Wrote 'em!

The text of my email:

I read your excellent article on the internet about the Bush staffer who called wanting to know your photographer's race. It was utterly appalling, and I am very impressed and heartened that your organization held fast against such an inappropriate request.

Kudos to you and your EIC for being unafraid to publish a story critical of Bush/Cheney. Too many journalists today are frightened to death of pushing a story that BC04 might construe as negative.

I have emailed the link to your story to all my friends and have seen it posted in blogs on the internet. This is getting traction...great job!!

[SammyBlue]

47. I wrote this to MY hometown paper, the Arizona Daily Star

I would like to say briefly that what the Star, and you, did to the Bush/Cheney attempt at racism was fantastic. How dare they demand the race of the photographer you used?

How does that have any bearing on anything? Personally, I hope this shows you, your editors and the Tucson voting public how out of touch and intolerant this administration is!

Hats off for telling Cheney (professtionally, of course) to take his directive, shove it and then telling him to go Cheney himself!

I'm sure Kerry/Edwards won't ask you to divulge that information.

Aram S. Katz
Tucson, AZ
Proud liberal democrat
Business Owner

[Democat]

32. If this was Clinton, it would be a huge national scandal

Instead the Bush ass-kissing mainstream media will ignore it.

[Tight_rope]

33. What an insult to the Amnerican people!

To know that the White House is knowing practicing racism.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

35. This article should be blasted out to every single media outlet.

[goforit]

38. The White hoods are on!!!............This is unbelievable!!! and typical!

[PopSixSquish]

39. You Have Got to be Kidding Me!!!!

and the worst part...

"Walton told Hayt that Popat's race was necessary to allow the Secret Service to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name.

"It was a very lame excuse," Hayt said."

But what do you expect when the leader of the Republican party, his doofusness, can't tell the difference between Barak Obama and Osama Bin-Ladin. Never mind Saddem Hussein.



:wtf:

[Spiffarino]

41. Totally off-topic, but...

...that's a great screen name. Chicago was an excellent movie.

Now back on topic: Racist #@&#$*s!!!!

[Az_lefty]

40. These racist MF's!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

this needs to be shouted from the roof tops. The Daily Star
is out of Tucson, we're fairly progressive down here.
:mad:

[Spiffarino]

42. Forwarded to TPM

I'm hopeful that Josh will put this on his blog.

Fingers crossed...

[MisterP]

44. well, if you're black, they drag you onto the stage and have

pictures taken of you. I recall one fellow saying that photo-op blacks (all reporters, I recall) at GOP conventions were like a packet of chocolate chips airdropped into Antarctica.
That's why they "needed" her race.
For photo-op planning.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

46. It's the lead article on Buzzflash this morning

just thought ya'll would want to know. And I posted it to a couple of forums that would be interested in it. It's getting a bit of play anyway.

Did it ever get cross-posted to GD?

[Retrograde]

48. My race? 4X100m relay

n/m