Sublime, meet ridiculous
Posted April 8th, 2008 at 5:20 PM by Jon HamHere’s the headline on a story in the Chicago Sun-Times: “Suburban Obama delegate quits over ‘divisive’ remark.” Here’s the subhead: “Says when she called black kids ‘monkeys,’ she was asking them to get out of tree.”
Being a newspaperman of many years, I know a thing or two about headlines. They are supposed to accurately convey the essence of the story. Now, any reasonable person would have a problem with a woman, whether an Obama delegate or not, calling little black children monkeys. If she did. Check out what she really said (emphasis added):
Ramirez-Sliwinski “came outside and told the children to quit playing in the tree like monkeys. The tree was not on Ramirez-Sliwinski’s property,” Carpentersville Police Commander Michael Kilbourne said.
Any reasonable person would have to agree that “she called black kids monkeys” and “she told the children to quit playing in the tree like monkeys” are two very different things. But most newspaper headline writers, reporters and editors are not reasonable people.
April 8th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Now this is quite a double standard. Obama rushes to persuade a delegate to step down for saying one (1) comment that could be misconstrued as racially offensive.
This is the same fellow who defends spending 20 years being mentored by a man with a history of outright racially offensive comments.
What, does this woman not even “measure up” to Obama’s grandmother?
April 8th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
I’m amused by the canard involving who the tree might have belong to — I know I’ve yelled at kids for acting like idiots quite apart from the property involving. If I can see you, it is in public. Don’t act the fool — or the primate.
April 9th, 2008 at 8:18 am
[...] – Doubleplusundead scoffs at John McCain’s “outreach” to evangelicals. – Matt Lewis is already planning for 2010. I have some bad news; if we don’t take care of business in 2008, there definitely won’t be a home for conservatives in the GOP in 2010. – Charlie Sykes notes that, at a time of historically-high gas prices (and climbing), the official position of the Doyle administration is to jack up the federal gas tax by 40 cents per gallon. You can bet I’ll have more to say on that once I finish sobering up (I did the legwork last night before Drinking Right, which unlike SAB Miller and Absolut Vodka, is a good call). – Marshall Manson says, “Just fix it.” – Sister Toldjah has your Obama quote of the week. – Jon Ham has the outrageous headline-that-cost-somebody-her-job headline of the week, which in this case helped cause an Obama staffer to lose her job. – I know Drinking Right was yesterday, but it’s a triple-shot weekday on Obama; Anwyn notes the campaign very-actively practices affirmative action. – Make it quad damage; Carol Platt Liebau questions the objectivity of one Martha Raddatz of ABC News, who magically found “80% support” for Obama among the troops in Iraq. – Jim Hoft spotlights the next likely Hiliary lie. You don’t take just 7 years off of bowling and do as bad as she did on Ellen Degeneres’ show (I should know; I’ve taken 7 years off and my game, such as it is, didn’t slip that bad). – Speaking of that, Paddy O’Furniture has a word picture puzzle. Since he’s too shy chicken (I should know the difference, I’m shy) to ask Katie to jump in, I guess this will have to count as the invitation. – Bill Quick continues to hammer the Scandi-owned Absolut. – Ace goes straight to the lightly-blocked crapper. – Tom McMahon pulls out a classic quote from a liberal icon to skewer the Left. – Ed Morrissey reports a highly-placed politician (leader of his party, actually) had his wholly-owned subsidiary that controlls that locale’s elections declare it “dangerous” to release the results of the biggest election of that locale. Doyle’s kicking himself that it was Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe that thought of this particular method of vote suppression first, and that he didn’t think of it before April 1. – CDR Salamander says, “Good, bad, the Osprey is about to be the chopper with the gun.” He also notes there isn’t exactly a sense of history among those who feel salt spray (F-4 sans gun, meet F-35 B/C sans gun). – Lance Burri has some Blogging Healthy tips from the Badger Blog Alliance. My work here is done. [link] [...]
April 9th, 2008 at 8:28 am
The Morning Scramble – 4/9/2008
Because I can’t stand the weather…
- Doubleplusundead scoffs at John McCain’s “outreach” to evangelicals.
- Matt Lewis is already planning for 2010. I have some bad news; if we don’t take care of business…