Last week, Miami New Times Blogger Kyle Munzenrieder accused Matt Drudge of trying to stroke racial flames for reporting the facts in the news.
Mr. Munzenrieder is upset because Drudge linked to stories that reported the violence surrounding the Miami Beach Urban Weekend as part of a larger collection of links covering multiple incidents of youth related violence that gripped such cities as Boston, Nashville, Charlotte, and Rochester over the Memorial Day weekend.
Munzenrieder decried Drudge because some of the incidents in question involved Blacks and gangs, stating in his blog that he thought that covering such story was “kinda racist.” Munzenrieder went as far as to offer a quote a racial Gawker conspiracy theory: “since the president of the United States is a black man, and since black voters tend to align with his party, it is to the advantage of the Republican Party and its allies to inculcate fear and apprehension about people who look like him. Hence the top stories on the Drudge Report today.”
Mr. Munzenrieder is entitled to his opinions and theories–no matter how farfetched they may be–but to accuse an editor of racism for reporting the facts in the news is the sign of a sick mind.
The mainstream media has taken up Bizarro World News reporting–Good is now bad and bad is now good. Here are a few examples of this tactic:
- Remember when gas was over $4 during the Bush Presidency and all the hardship stories that the press reported on how Americans were suffering? During the Obama Presidency $4 gas has a silver lining: since the number of drivers on the roads are down, carbon emissions are down too.
- Unemployment numbers during the Bush years was often around 4.5-5%, but Democrats (supported by their pals in the media) often accused Bush of only creating “McJobs” (i.e. burger flipping jobs). Yet in the Era of Obama, we have to simply get used to unemployment numbers near 10% and all of a sudden burger flipping jobs, well, are not such a bad thing.
- Remember too it was considered a heroic thing to members of the press when Democrat leaders like Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi pointed out the number of Americans struggling to make ends meet during the Bush years. Yet when former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich called Obama the “Food Stamp President” because 45 million Americans are now on food stamps, members of the media accused him of using racial code words.
I wonder if Mr. Munzenrieder would level the same charge of racism against other members of the media if these incidents of youth violence had happened during the Bush Years.
It would seem that members of the media such as Mr. Munzenrieder have settled on a tactic they feel will get President Obama reelected in 2012: if you believe in reporting on the actual facts behind a news story (over the objection of the gatekeepers in the mainstream media), then you must be a racist.