If the findings of a new Pew poll are any indication, race—or more specifically, the declining prospects of African-Americans—ought to be at the very center of the presidential campaign. Today, notes Juan Williams, summarizing the grim numbers,
only 20 percent of black Americans think life is generally better for black people than it was five years ago, the lowest positive response to that question in polls going back 24 years. Only 44 percent of black people expect life to get better; that’s well below the 57 percent who predicted a better life for black people when the same question was asked in 1986.
And yet, race is playing the smallest role in any election since 1964. Part of the reason for this is the absence of a black Democrat using the presidential primaries to campaign indirectly for the leadership of black America. There is no Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton in the contest. Barack Obama’s appeal, though it has a racial element, is primarily to the same sorts of upper-middle-class Americans who once thought Adlai Stevenson a model of gentlemanly intellect. But more importantly there has been a shift in attitudes that make it harder to use race as a political issue. The Pew Poll found that
71 percent of whites and 59 percent of Hispanics feel that personal behavior—values, education, hard work—is what holds back those black Americans still trapped in poverty. But what is most striking is that a small majority, 53 percent, of black Americans agree that “blacks who can’t get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition.”
Confirmation of the shift described by the Pew Poll can be found in the controversy surrounding a new survey by Congressional Quarterly, which found that Detroit was the most crime ridden city: “More people were murdered in Detroit than in San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, and San Jose combined—and each one of those cities has a bigger population than Detroit.” The findings were contested by the American Society of Criminology, which denounced it as an “irresponsible misuse” of crime data. Not surprisingly, Detroit’s African-American police chief concurred. “Every year,” said Ella Bully-Cummings, “this organization sends out a press release with big, bold lettering that labels a certain city as Most Dangerous, USA…. It really makes you wonder if the organization is truly concerned with evaluating crime or increasing its profit.”
But strikingly, the Detroit Free Press refused to be assuaged by Bully-Cummings’s attempts at displacement. The Free Press took mocking aim at the chief’s
bizarre defense that the report didn’t account for all the crime victims who are druggies and felons. That, of course, is supposed to show that crime isn’t “random” in Detroit, so the city is not that dangerous…. Applying the chief’s logic, why even bother to count undesirables as whole people? When a drug addict gets gunned down by a drug dealer, or an ex-con is shot in a robbery, those should be half-murders. A victim with two priors maybe counts as only a third.
(The phrase “whole people” refers, of course, to the Three-Fifths Compromise, the amendment to the Constitution that defined slaves as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of allocating seats in the House of Representatives.)
Philadelphia’s soaring black-on-black murder rate similarly has made it harder to play racial politics. In 2003, corrupt mayor John “If you want to play you have to pay” Street won re-election by campaigning against an alleged white racist plot against him. But the new mayor Michael Nutter (also an African-American) won by making honest administration and cleaning up the violent crime that’s shaken the city—and not institutional racism—the central campaign issues. “The sad truth,” argues Henry Louis Gates Jr., “is that the civil rights movement cannot be reborn until we identify the causes of black suffering, some of them self-inflicted.” There’s no political hay to be made out of that conclusion—which may be why it’s had such a hard time gaining traction.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. Wurzelbacher may not have a “journalism degree” from BU, Northwestern or Syracuse, but that is probably an asset to reporting. You imply that because he hasn’t some fancy training, he can’t report. I don’t agree, and think the lack of fancy training would make him more trustworthy in my eyes.
Hmmm.
“Indeed, will Joe be any more capable than the average MSM correspondent of reading an Israeli newspaper; or interpreting a mosque sermon on Palestinian television; or assessing the strategic significance of a given Israeli operation or Hamas rocket-attack?”
I disagree with your premise.
I think JtP will be -better- than the average journalist hack because he is/was a plumber.
Plumbing isn’t journalism where the difference between fantasy and reality depends on your mood. Plumbing is a real-life trade where not knowing the answers, not having experience and not having the context means you’re going to get a face-full of s–t from a broken pipe.
I’m sure JtP doesn’t have the experience to adequately report on the issues.
However I’m also certain that JtP doesn’t have the outsized journalist ego that would prevent him from -asking- the necessary question to get the background.
And, if I can point this out, JtP also doesn’t have the nearly universal implicit pro-Palestinian attitude that seems so prevalent amongst the jet-set journalist crowd.
Joe Wurzelbacher might not be your average Joe. He cited “The Theory of Money and Credit” by Ludwig von Mises among his favorite books.
Give him a chance.
Maybe being a member of the MSM is overrated. Yaacov Lozowick’s recent posting about Meryl Yourish is a case in point.
And when the MSM’s idea of a reporter is someone like Dion Nissenbaum who has no compunction about writing what amounted to a press release for unrepentant murderer Samir Kuntar, maybe the term “credible reporter” is an oxymoron.
I don’t have any training in journalism. I studied literature instead. I never even took a journalism class. I just went over there and started doing it on my own dime.
Not just anyone can do it, but a university degree isn’t necessary. My intensive studying of Shakespeare and Milton were good for me, but didn’t prepare me for this job.
No the reporters typically say that “Bush lied us into war” and that more pressure needs to be put on Israel. Let’s see how Joe does.
Mr. Totten:
Your oustanding reports from Iraq – the best written, in my opinion – show your training. I should have guessed you studied literature rather than journalism. Your writing was crisp, engaging, and struck just the right tone – neither overly sentimental nor robotically detached. Insofar as any training for journalism is possible, I would think reading great literature would be ideal. (I would think classical training, in addition to Shakespeare and Milton, would also be useful, especially for war reporting.)
If a man with no executive experience can be elected the President of the United States, if a woman with no foreign policy experience can be nominated to Secretary of State, if a man with no intelligence experience can be nominated to head the CIA, then surely a man with no journalism training can certainly go to the Middle East and act as a war correspondent (in fact, journalism experience should be the last thing any reporter needs. Good judgment and a hard nose for sniffing out the truth is more valuable.)
Well, I understand your point but come to think of it, when I see “experts” like Christianne Annanpour or Geraldo Rivera talk about the situation in the Middle East or brag about how many times they’ve been there and how many people they know in the region (as if that alone was any better than actually studying History in any good library), I think Joe might just be as good as…
In fact, he might even provide a more accurate reporting (these days, there’s no reporter without an “opinion”) of the situation of both sides.
Hmmm.
“If a man with no executive experience can be elected the President of the United States”
With that. If a woman with nothing to commend her but her father’s fame can be considered for the US Senate …
It is rather curious the burden of experience, and the lack of it, and how it is applied depending on the political party of the individual.
I’m with Totten on this. The fantastic job he’s done proves the point. Of course Joe may turn out to be a moron — but there’s no reason in what we’ve seen of him so far to think that. Of the hundreds or thousands of journalists covering the middle east over the past 50 years, how many could interpret sermons in the mosques? Seven years after 9/11, do any of the major networks or other media have reporters who speak Arabic, Dari, Pashto, Urdu?
As for military knowledge, that’s even more pathetically absent among MSM reporters, many of whom have no idea what they’re covering except to get casualty numbers.
I thought the whole point of alternative journalism was to open as many new channels as possible. If Joe “discredits” PJTV, another will come along.
reporters should not be interpreting / assessing the significance of operations, sermons, etc. in the first place, as they do not have the proper education in such matters(theology, military stategy, etc.), which is an issue that undermines and contradicts this article’s very argument. Perhaps, it is Mr. Tragerthat could use a refresher course on basic journalism.
Chris Bolts Sr., #8,
You, sir, have a way with words. I’m also glad to see Michael Totten weigh in on the subject, with his usual straightforward prose and wise counsel.
In my opinion, Joe can go and give it a try. We’ll know that he is not up to the task if, at the end of his reports, he puts on a “concerned observer” face, adopts a world-weary, faux-serious tone, and says “What will happen next remains to be seen.” If he does that, pull him. He will be no better than the MSM droids.
Ok- Joe The Unlicnensed plumber already had his 15 minutes-it’s time he go home and attend to his plumbing business don’t you think?
He proves he’s a real bafoon when he call for no media coverage of war??? Way to go Joe since Bush didn’t allow much coverage to begin with and how did that help us?
You people were the first to complain about Obama’s lack of experience, now your all for this fake who has even less experience in journalism than even Sarah Palin had in her political career. Make up your minds. Is it experience you want? Or being an outsider? I don’t even think God knows what your looking for.
At least with Obama he’s actually gotten some training in from his political career. The most this guy has done is become a political prop for McCain and voiced his stupid opinions on camera.