Discussion: Obama Takes Media To Task For Ignoring Baltimore Until Violence

Discussion for article #235772

Part of the problem in Baltimore is total lack of jobs for younger people…trade deals aren’t going to help that. Lack of work along with police brutality is the perfect recipe for riots. The new governor is tough on rioters as he should be but he’s also just lowered funding for education and increased funding for jails. Exactly the wrong move.

21 Likes

This President has done more with less help from Congress than any of his predecessors.

37 Likes

Once again, the adult in the room.
And speaking of irresponsible journalists, that slithering toad Leslie Blitzer has been treating the events in Baltimore as though they are the latest incarnation of “Grand Theft Auto”, and anyone at CNN who had the abysmally braindead idea to send that fucking moron Don Lemon into the field really needs to be fired and find work as an attendant in a gas station bathroom.

35 Likes

BAM! I’m going to shamelessly repost what I posted earlier, because it jives perfectly with BO here hehe:

“Trippin said: I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King”

Precisely. Whenever this happens, the MSM and the know-it-alls and the blathering nincompoop politicians all lament the “violence” and the “self-destruction” and how “counterproductive” it is and something something opining in ways that indicate a knee-jerk tendency to latch onto explanations that have as their premise that there is something endemic, something inherently wrong with these communities that they resort to these “tactics” and this “behavior” in order to express their frustration. This time they seem to have hardcore latched onto this “where are their parents” talking point meme, but it takes other forms as well.

The reality is this: everything they are saying shows just how much they are part of the problem. The fact is we are talking about communities who are consistently and ardently expressing themselves in peaceful ways, approaching the government and their representatives and community leaders in the appropriate manner AND THEY ARE CONSISTENTLY AND SYSTEMATICALLY IGNORED in response. Ralph’s 100% on the money when he uses the word “NEGLECT” in his post. These simpering asshats on the boobtube and in the papers and the conservative jackholes who use this as their opportunity to belittle and demean these communities are, in fact, merely highlighting just how much ignorance is birthed from said neglect. They wax surprised and horrified and ask idiot questions about why these communities don’t protest and seek redress of their grievances in a peaceful manner BECAUSE THEY HAVE FAILED TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE 99.999% OF THE TIME DURING WHICH THESE COMMUNITIES ARE DOING JUST THAT. They’ve been ignored the whole fucking time they’ve been doing exactly what these dimwitted fucktards are now sitting around wondering “why don’t they do that instead of throw a riot?” And the ignorance is WILLFUL. It’s on purpose. By deliberately ignoring years and years of and instance after instance of these communities making peaceful attempts to bring attention to their plight and use legitimate processes and avail themselves of their “representative” gov’t in order to get the help that is needed, these fuckers in the MSM and the GOP and what-not get to finally, at long last, turn their attention to the situation ONLY when there’s a riot and ask oh-so-smugly “why can’t they do this peacefully?” as if there is something intrinsically…nay, GENETICALLY…wrong with these communities that they are incapable of civilized discourse and debate. It’s then all used as the excuse for continuing to neglect the underlying problems and continuing to ignore the myriad peaceful pleas that have been and continue to be made and, most importantly, to tell themselves that they’re not bad people for going back to ignoring the whole situation because “look at how awful those people behaved…how can they expect us to make an effort to help when they act like that?”

The watched pot never boils. The ignored pot boils over. It’s that fucking simple.

27 Likes

If there’s been one characteristic I’ve admired with Obama, it’s his constant encouragement to zoom out, see the context, the bigger picture. We really need to start cultivating that quality more, or at least recognizing and admiring it when we find it sprinkled here and there among people in public life.

39 Likes

“If we think we’re going to send police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there — without as a nation and society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up communities, and give those kids opportunity — then we’re not going to solve this problem,” he added.

“We’ll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities, and occasional riots in the streets. And everybody will feign concern until it goes away,” Obama added. “Then we’ll go about our business as usual.”

SPOT. ON!

30 Likes

“If we think we’re going to send police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there — without as a nation and society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up communities, and give those kids opportunity — then we’re not going to solve this problem,” he added.

How times have changed:

“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”

John F. Kennedy

3 Likes

A friend on Facebook also posted a video showing an older black woman completely dressing down a young black man dressed in a mask in Baltimore… you can’t tell if its a relation or two strangers. Isn’t this exactly what the Official Asshats running for the GOP Presidential nomination (Rand Paul et al.) keep bleating ‘needs’ to happen? Why do we have to turn to Facebook to see this?!

5 Likes

Hey, “If it BLEEDS it LEADS” is all the MSM knows.
It is no longer NEWS, it is INFOTAINMENT.
i.e. “Bread and Circuses”

8 Likes

Whoa, who let this moonbat radical fringer crash an Obama press conference?!

</sarcasm>

1 Like

That’s right, Matt.

Mr. Obama is a President who has labored in a media environment perhaps the worst since the days of Boss Tweed.

So the Big Picture is the one splashed on the screen courtesy of Fossil Fuel News, which is about all we have now, thanks to people of MY generation letting St. Ronnie in, and then going to sleep for the next 20 years.

Listen:

The MSM is the top and the bottom of what ails us. This country is too big for the situation to be otherwise. Maybe if it were the size of the U.K (the size of NC and VA combined), we could communicate without it. I KNOW that people float this idea of “the web” and social media as able substitiutes, however, THE MSM IS ABLE TO ENFORCE A VIEW OF THE NORMAL, a view that we all crave to make sense of a nation as big as this one.

And the 0.001% know this.

14 Likes

I watched not even 5 minutes of Wolf yesterday…disgraceful though the young Latino reporter on the street was trying to inject some reality…It’s a shame CNN can’t be looted and burned.

4 Likes

President Obama is one of the few leaders in the United States that is honest enough to point out that the solution to many problems is more complicated than people are willing to admit.

22 Likes

I think the government has a role to play in creating jobs and education in inner city neighborhoods. It should not be up solely to folks with essentially zero resources to build up their neighborhoods. When people have no way out of poverty, are abused by the police, and have no education, or job opportunities you’re going to see riots inevitably.
Republicans love to gut education to have money to afford tax cuts for rich folk. In my state, Arizona. our legislature recently passed a budget that zeros out funding for community colleges and cuts our 3 state universities by $99 million dollars. And K-12 was also cut past fat and muscle. Arizona courts have said the state must pay back $350 million they took to “balance the budget” in 2009. The state is refusing to follow the court order. This is what I mean when I say republicans do not support education.
When Bush was in office the Congress gave rich folk a HUGE tax cut ($750 billion over 10 years). The thinking was rich people are “job creators” and they’'l start up businesses with this money. What actually happened was that cash went straight into bank accounts and personal investment and not job creation. if Congress were to get involved in working on problems like we see in Baltimore it’s got to be in ways that will be pointed and do some actual good.
But hoping Congress will help is probably a pipe dream.

13 Likes

It seems to me that he is saying none of us want to ask what we can do for our country and instead prefer to just ignore the real problems that our country faces… Or do you seem to think that you too should not be asking what you can do for your country?

5 Likes

Yawn. Without gov’t providing infrastructure, such as schools, services and yes, “opportunity,” that other communities have, then there’s nothing these people can do for anyone, even themselves. It all starts somewhere, and if the gov’t is failing to provide even the baseline and basics, then gov’t is failing period. You can dribble the “takers” and “moochers” and “entitlement whores” talking points and sentiment all you want, but there’s a big bad reality out there for which you appear to have nothing but disdain because you haven’t been forced to ever live it.

12 Likes

OCCUPY

#ALWAYS

should have been “Occupy the Media” in addition to Wall Street.

Hell…didn’t anybody see Warren Beatty in “Bulworth”???

His words (which apply especially to the “interview” Warren had when in shorts and sweatshirt during one of the final scenes of the movie) were spoken in 1998. Very true now and spoken when the bulk of the Baltimore demonstrators were infants.

6 Likes

I think Miguel did a great job reporting from the street.

2 Likes

Every time I think of the infrastructure projects which could have been implemented if John Boehner had simply ALLOWED A VOTE, I feel like doing un-printable things (to un-printable people).

10 Likes