Idiot Reporter Asks David Duke to Weigh In on Concept of a Black President [View All]

[marmar]

from AlterNet's PEEK:



Idiot Reporter Asks David Duke to Weigh In on Concept of a Black President

Posted by Steven Reynolds, The All Spin Zone at 7:24 AM on February 27, 2008.

The New Republic's Michael Crawley evidently couldn't even figure out who David Duke was.



Michael Crawley of the New Republic called up David Duke to ask him his opinion on a Presidential race that just might bring us an African-American President. Yeah, he called David Duke, who claimed to be somewhere in Europe at the time, and was using secret email addresses. This is supposed to be of some import?

The content of this interview with David Duke on the prospects of Barack Obama, a potential Obama Presidency and its effect on America. . . the contents of the interview are pretty luke warm. I'm thinking those contents are so luke warm as to be a waste of bandwidth on the innertube. Well, it would be a complete waste, since there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of animus against Mr. Obama in the fringe white supremacist groups surveyed by Mr. Crawley. Here's how Crawley describes Duke's reaction to the Obama candidacy in the New Republic:

Yet, far from railing at Obama's rise, Duke seems almost nonchalant about it. Self-described white nationalists like himself, he explained cordially, "don't see much difference in Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton-or, for that matter, John McCain." Sure, Duke considers Obama "a racist individual," citing his Afrocentric Chicago church. But soon the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People was critiquing Obama as overhyped and insubstantial in terms you might hear from, say, Clinton strategist Mark Penn. "They say he's for change. What change? He's become almost a cult figure. I don't see any shining light around Obama's head. I don't see any halos," Duke said.

Crawley couldn't get a story out of Duke that was incendiary enough when he asked about Obama. No frothing and no death threats. The story just wasn't scary enough, eh? Dig a little deeper and he got another nice angle, I suppose, that racists of the David Duke ilk are noting the supposed significance of Jewish advisors of Barack Obama. But let's be clear. That is not news. The twisted rhetorical strategy of the DAvid Duke types have always ended their winding road by blaming Jews for everything. NOT NEWS! So why give the guy print space in a major publication? ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/77971/#more