The Black Caucus' Fatal FOX News Embrace
by Leutisha Stills, chief congressional correspondent, CBC Monitor
"We are witnessing an intricate choreography of institutional
corruption at work."
The leadership and majority of the
43-member Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is certainly "dancing with the
Devil" in their obscene pursuit of presidential debate face-time on FOX News,
the Republican Party's media mouthpiece and the nation's most relentless source
of anti-Black propaganda. We are witnessing an intricate choreography of
institutional corruption at work, a fatal tango that reveals the true
personalities of the dancers, an unequal embrace that can only lead to the
total subjugation of the subordinate "partner" - the Black public.
In a political environment in
which a choice of the "lesser of evils" is considered inevitable, the Black
Caucus has chosen the greater evil: FOX News, the most virulent purveyor of
"hate speech" in U.S. corporate media. By making this deal with the arch-demon,
the CBC confirms much more than its own institutional slide into irrelevance as
a source of social change, a catastrophic meltdown documented by the CBC
Monitor in twice-yearly Report
Cards and periodic analyses since September, 2005. If the Caucus can't say
"No" to FOX News' offer of a presidential debate slot in September, it is
incapable of saying "No" to any corporate media actors that deign to
share an episodic byline with the CBC, no matter what their daily crimes
against truth and the dignity of African Americans.
"If the Caucus can't say ‘No' to FOX News, it is
incapable of saying ‘No' to any corporate media actors."
The FOX-CBC deal reveals the
groveling mentality of a Black misleadership class that watches African
Americans get their asses kicked every day of the year by Rupert Murdoch and
the entirety of corporate media, and then rewards the worst perpetrator
because he sent (cheap) flowers to the hospital room. Such a mentality -
masquerading as sophisticated political strategy and astute "gamesmanship" -
renders the Black pretenders to leadership utterly incapable of confronting the
mass media death squads that murder the truth - and "disappear" real Black
leadership - in every newscast.
The ‘FOX Effect'
Caucus leadership appears to
believe - as does much of the Black misleadership class - that they are
"playing" the mega-companies against each other - when, in fact, it is Black
America that is getting played. The CBC's Faustian
bargain with Roger Ailes
- president of FOX News Channel and
chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group, former media advisor to
Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and Rush Limbaugh's first
syndicated television executive producer -
has neutered the Caucus as a voice for truth-in-journalism and African
Americans' rights to treatment as full citizens, rather than caricatures and
whipping boys, in media. Having debauched themselves so publicly with the
Republicans' media whore, how can they credibly challenge any of the other
corporate racists that dominate the American political dialogue.
The only difference between FOX
and CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and their corporate derivatives, is that FOX News has so
successfully branded itself as the anti-Black network that it sees
advantage in attaching the victims' brand name to its dreadful product. In
exchange for two hours of air-time, an inconsequential amount of cash and other
dubious emoluments, the Black Caucus effectively signed a "We ain't mad at you,
boss" letter, absolving FOX of its hourly blood-libels against African
Americans.
"The CBC's Faustian bargain with Roger Ailes has
neutered the Caucus as a voice for truth-in-journalism and African Americans'
rights to treatment as full citizens, rather than caricatures and whipping
boys, in media."
It
should be remembered that Roger Ailes was also president of CNBC in 1993. What Ailes
has created under Rupert Murdoch's corporate umbrella is the formidable "FOX
Effect" - a rightward riptide that has swept all semblance of objectivity and
fairness from mass media, substituting reactionary shibboleths for real
analysis, with Black folks always playing the villain in the American drama.
FOX News is the leader of the pack, but the other networks are the same breed
of hound - all yelping after Black blood and primed to rip progressive politics
to shreds.
Rather than confront the
mega-media corporations that distort reality beyond recognition and
systematically strangle Black and progressive voices, the Black Caucus opted to
trade what's left of its formerly good name for much less than the Bible-time
value of 30 pieces of silver.
Sleeping with the Enemy
We at the CBC Monitor, along with
our colleagues at Black Agenda Report, signed and actively support
ColorOfChange.Org's ‘Dancing
With The Devil" campaign to thwart the illicit CBC-FOX liaison. Under the
direction of James Rucker, the group has gathered more than 16,000 petitioners
to urge that the CBC refuse "to participate in debates sponsored by a network
that is hostile to the interests of Black America." But it is necessary to
expand the dialogue that ColorOfChange has initiated. The basic premises that
Black Caucus leadership deploys to justify "sleeping with the enemy" must be
challenged, if we are to win anything more than a show cancellation.
The decision by Democratic
frontrunners Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Chris Dodd and Bill
Richardson to boycott the FOX-CBC debate has probably made the issue moot, in
the narrow sense: it is doubtful that FOX would give airtime to holdouts Joe
Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. (We were especially disappointed with Ohio Rep.
Kucinich, whose voting record is more
progressive than the majority of CBC members). However, unless Blacks and
progressives come to grips with the central questions raised by the CBC's
scandalous affair with the GOP's Hard Right Harlot network, we will have
achieved very little.
"The fault line is between those in the CBC who have
capitulated to a corporate-dominated media, and those who continue to resist."
The most definitive corporate
media article on the subject appeared in the May 27 issue of the New York
Times, under the headline, "For
Democrats, Debate on Fox Reveals Divide." The "divide," according to the
piece, "exposed fault lines among two major constituencies" - meaning divisions
between the majority of the Black Caucus and activist progressives. But the NYT
reporters got the paradigm wrong: the fault line is between those in the CBC
who have capitulated to a corporate-dominated media, and those who continue to
resist.
Here is the list of the signers of
the CBC
letter defending the coitus-disgustus between the Black Caucus and
FOX News, as posted by Daily Kos:
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick (MI)
Bennie Thompson (MS)
James Clyburn (SC)
Sanford Bishop (GA)
G.K. Butterfield (NC)
Mel Watt (NC)
Danny Davis (IL)
Bobby Rush (IL)
John Lewis (GA)
Keith Ellison (MN)
Charles Rangel (NY)
Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX)
Stephanie Tubbs Jones (OH)
Sheila Jackson Lee (TX)
Donna Christian-Christensen (VI)
Diane Watson (CA)
Al Wynn (MD)
Elijah Cummings (MD)
David Scott (GA)
Yvette Clarke (NY)
John Conyers (MI)
Hank Johnson (GA)
Al Green (TX)
Corrine Brown (FL)
And here are those listed by Daily Kos as non-signers:
Julia Carson (IN)
William Lacy Clay, Jr. (MO)
Emmanuel Cleaver (MO)
Artur Davis (AL)
Chaka Fattah (PA)
Alcee Hastings (FL)
Kendrick Meek (FL)
Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL)
William L. Jefferson (LA)
Barbara Lee (CA)
Gregory Meeks (NY)
Donald Payne (NJ)
Bobby Scott (VA)
Ed Towns (NY)
Maxine Waters (CA)
In narrow ideological terms, one cannot make heads or tails
of the lineup. Some of the most consistently progressive CBC members (John
Conyers, John Lewis, Keith Ellison) endorsed the FOX forum. Some of the most
right-leaning members (Artur Davis, William Jefferson, Ed Towns, Gregory Meeks)
opposed the venue. Others seem confused. As JackAndJillPolitics.com
reported, pro-FOX signatory Dianne Watson (CA) earlier this year said:
"Fox News brings the right-wing side of the news, and
there's no sense in participating in that kind of game-playing. We're very
serious about taking the administration in November [2008] and I wouldn't trust
getting an accurate and true portrayal of our views on the issues if Fox News
is coordinating it."
"A majority of Black federal
lawmakers are selling out to Big Media."
Clearly, two factors are at work here. One
stands out in graphic relief in the breakdown of the CBC vote on the corporate
media's COPE Act, in the late Spring of 2006, which would have rolled back
decades of Black/poor/urban victories against the rapacious telecom industry.
As then-Black Commentator editor Bruce
Dixon wrote:
"Only 46% of Democrats in the House of Representatives voted
against it. But in a stunning repudiation of its own historic claims to
be the ‘conscience of the congress' and the authentic voice of African America
in national affairs, a mere 13 out of 40 voting CBC members in the House
summoned the courage to buck the tide of corporate cash and stand up for their
constituents.... Two-thirds of the Caucus capitulated to corporate power, a more
shameful showing than Democratic members as a whole. As ‘conscience of
the congress,' the Congressional Black Caucus is pretty much over."
The signatories to the CBC covenant with FOX
News comprise three-fifths of the Caucus - a shameful number that, along with
the previous year's COPE Act vote, proves a majority of Black federal lawmakers
are selling out to Big Media. But why? And at what price? This question
cannot be answered by simple tabulation of money - although telecoms like FOX
are among the biggest spenders around. Direct FOX donations to CBC members and
their organ, the CBC Institute, are so meager as to more resemble copper than
"pieces of silver."
The Deal
The CBC's affair with FOX was begun under
former chairman Elijah Cummings, the congressman from Baltimore, home of
historically Black Morgan State University. According to the May 27 NYT article,
"In June 2003, its political action committee, known as News America-Fox, made
a $1,000 contribution to Mr. Cummings's political committee." The article
continued:
"The Fox group later made contributions of at least $1,000
each to other caucus members, including Representatives Sheila Jackson-Lee of
Texas, and Gregory W. Meeks and Edolphus Towns of New York. The political arm
of the caucus itself received a $5,000 contribution from the Fox group, in May
2006. And on the Web site of its foundation, the caucus lists News Corporation
among several dozen corporate sponsors."
That's chump change. Far more disturbing, in our view, is
the FOX-CBC deal to create internships for Morgan State students. Down South,
this would be called "fattening frogs for snakes" - feeding eager, aspiring
Black journalists to a corporate prevarication apparatus, to be shaped by the
likes of Roger Ailes into talking-reading frontpersons for The Enemy.
Does the CBC really believe that young Black interns will
somehow change the political content and behavior of FOX News? If so, they are
terminally naïve. Blacks that ultimately "make the grade" at FOX will simply be
darker cogs in the infernal propaganda machine. Their presence merely serves to
validate management as an "equal opportunity" world-class liar. As with the
debate deal, the CBC becomes an ally in FOX's campaign to clean up its image -
without altering the product/content. Paycheck-dependent employees cannot
change the political culture cultivated by the owners, especially tycoons as
fervently reactionary as Rupert Murdoch, a man on a lifelong mission to
dominate the global means of communication in order to impose his own
troglodyte worldview.
"The CBC
becomes an ally in FOX's campaign to clean up its image - without altering the
product/content."
The CBC's collaboration with FOX News reveals
a Jim Crow-era logic that sees integration - not self-determination - as the
end-goal of Black politics. This twisted logic inevitably leads to capitulation
to Power, which has become sophisticated enough to absorb elements of the
opposition (in this case, Blacks) while continuing to pursue the same evil
mission. Would Black internships with Halliburton and Bechtel - corporations
that stole billions in the "reconstruction" of Iraq and New Orleans - alter the
war- and misery-profiteering nature of the beast? Of course not.
Back in September, 2005, entertainer/activist
Harry Belafonte shared with a Town Hall meeting of the Congressional Black
Caucus some of the last words he heard from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I sit here deeply concerned that I suspect we're leading
our nation on an integration trip that has us integrating into a burning house,"
said Dr. King. Belafonte added, "I don't think we quite understood how
prophetic that remark was."
The Black Caucus should have pondered more deeply
Belafonte's and King's words. But by then, the CBC was locked in its fatal
embrace with FOX News - they had entered Rupert Murdoch's "burning house."
Rather than conduct a frank discussion of its FOX ties among
members and with the Black public at-large, CBC leadership maintains the
charade that the CBC
Institute - the chief interlocutor with Murdoch - is a separate and
distinct entity from the Caucus: an insult to African American's intelligence.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), chairman of the Institute, derided
opponents of the FOX deal as members of "liberal activist groups" - raising the question, What
political flavor is he? - and falsely claimed there was a
"clear consensus" for
the FOX deal within the Caucus.
African Americans in Congress would do better - and set a
much-needed example - by traveling as a group to every Democratic and
Republican debate to critique - and, if required, denounce - the substance and
tone of the questions presented to presidential candidates. Even the media
giants would find it difficult to ignore such "direct action" by Black
America's highest ranking federal elected officials. The CBC might even begin
to live up to its slogan, "The conscience of the Congress."
But first, they must examine their own consciences - and
make amends to a wounded Black public.
Leutisha Stills can be
contacted at LeutishaStills (at) hotmail.com.
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