The continuing right-wing effort to make a hero out of Michael Browns killer, Darren Wilson, may not turn out so well, if the past is any guide. Remember Cliven Bundy? Donald Sterling? George Zimmerman?
Just because liberals dont like someone doesnt mean he should automatically be a hero to conservatives. There was a point when even the National Review seemed to recognize this editor Rich Lowry once wrote a column titled Al Sharpton Is Right, about the need for charges to be filed against George Zimmerman, when Florida officials were dragging their heels.
But that time is long gone, apparently. And as a result, the right seems well on its way to aligning with the reemergence of a 21stcentury form of lynching, even while furiously insisting that they are totally post-racial. Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling the more readily and thoroughly renounced didnt kill anyone, of course. But Zimmerman and Wilson both did, and both, to varying degrees, acted under color of law, which is precisely how plain old-fashioned lynching used to work, in a shadow realm that would not have allowed the killing of whites (except, of course, for race traitors who allied with blacks).
It didnt take long for people to start rallying to Darren Wilsons defense. In less than a week, several hundred thousand dollars had been raised on his behalf with a healthy smattering of hateful racist messages in support, such as I would have donated double this amount, but you missed his accomplice and Fox News had run a flood of false, unsourced stories, claiming that Wilsons eye socket had been broken, implicitly proving that he had been in a heroic struggle for his life.
It was the overnight creation of what Joan Walshcalled a thriving franchise of the nations booming white grievance industry. In contrast, things moved more slowly when it came to making George Zimmerman a hero. Fox News and most of the rest of the right virtually ignored Trayvon Martins killing for months, and even when they suddenly snapped to, it took a while for them to adopt Zimmerman as one of their own. Now, in contrast, its all happening at warp speed.
Two decades ago, the acquittal of the officers who beat up Rodney King touched off the most widespread urban riot in a generation, but there was nothing similar in that coverage to the way that first Zimmerman, and now, apparently, Wilson are being treated as heroic figures. Given the role right-wing media plays in hero creation, it was only natural to turn to Media Matters for some perspective, and senior fellow Eric Boehlert made several points to Salon, to describe how we got here.
First, Boehlert reminded us, todays conservative media were unlike anything in existence in 1992; second, that it was Obamas relatively benign comments that led conservatives to politicize the killing of Trayvon Martin; and third, that conservative medias 16-month involvement in smearing Trayvon Martin and defending George Zimmerman had created a new narrative niche, which was now readily filled with similar attacks on Michael Brown and defense of Darren Wilson. (Though Boehlert was describing the broad sweep of developments, one Media Matters blog post highlighted Geraldo Riveras virtually identical pattern of victim-blaming in both cases.)
Finally, more broadly, Boehlert noted that white victimization and thus rallying around victim/heroes is the cornerstone of Fox News programming, even as its embraced the ideology that racism has been eradicated (never mind the actual facts), and concluded that the real racists are those who still talk about race.
We have a right-wing media thats very different from the Clinton era right-wing media, in which, everything has to be partisan, Boehlert told Salon. If todays media had been around back then, he said, The L.A. riots wouldve been depicted as partisan. It wouldve been a left-right thing. The cops wouldve been the good guys no matter what; people obviously the looters and rioters are separate but anyone who raised questions about the beating wouldve been agitators, probably wouldve been ACORN or were communists or things like that.
Fast forwarding to the Obama era, Boehlert continued, Youve got a right-wing media that I think kind of tipped its hand with the Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin case. For the first few weeks there was very little coverage, very little passion on Fox News or the right-wing blogs about that story. Similar points were made at the time by Judd Legum at Think Progress, Simon Owens at the Moderate Voice, and Boehlert himself at Media Matters.
Originally posted here:
Fox News is tearing us apart: Race baiting and divisiveness hits disgusting new low