By John Brummett
It’s important that you know that I hardly ever — all but never, in fact — watch Sean Hannity on Fox News.
Life is too short. Hair must be washed. Fingernails must be clipped.
But there happened to be wild political news last Wednesday.
President Obama released his birth certificate. Donald Trump took credit for this extraction and then changed course to suggest that maybe Obama, even if a real American, didn’t deserve by grades and scores to get into Columbia and then Harvard.
This was racist, of course. First this hideous being, this thing called Trump, questioned the natural-born Americanness of a president who was of a different skin color and of an uncommon, vowel-ending surname. Then, foiled, Trump essentially was given to wonder publicly how a man of that complexion could get into an elite school.
So I wound up surfing that evening onto MSNBC, where Lawrence O’Donnell was going off deliciously on Trump for this offensiveness and racism.
O’Donnell was lambasting his own network for keeping around such a clown as Trump on a tragically popular television program and for apologizing for him merely by having an unidentified executive remark as follows to The New York Times: “That’s just Donald being Donald.”
I became curious as to how Fox might be handling this news about its presidential front-runner, this Trump. That is to say I was wondering how Fox would spin this uncomfortable development in service to its ongoing missions of Republican apologia and Obama hatred.
That is how I came to click over to see that Hannity was lamenting this diversion into race politics that took vital attention away from how we need to cut taxes and remake Medicare.
Hannity was moderating a three-member panel’s full agreement with him, anchored in the middle by a thin blonde whom I took to be Ann Coulter.
When this thin woman of long blonde hair commenced talking, spouting angry right-wing talking points angrily, I continued to believe I was beholding Coulter.
But then the camera offered a close-up and an identifying line across the bottom of the screen. This was not Ann Coulter. This was the press spokesman for the Arkansas Secretary of State, Mark Martin, he of the famous blundering, the chronic overspending and the FOI resistance.
This was Alice Stewart, former press aide to Mike Huckabee and, before that, a Little Rock television news personality. She was identified as a “Republican strategist.”
She told Hannity that Obama was playing the race card. She said it wouldn’t work because the nation, in 2012, would elect an economic conservative as president.
I was beset by mixed emotions. Half of me was laughing at the ludicrous notion that Obama was the one playing the race card. The other half was curious as to what the Arkansas secretary of state’s spokesman was doing on Hannity ridiculing the president and getting identified not as what she was, but as some supposed Republican strategist.
So, two days later, I called her at the secretary of state’s office and asked. She was terse, but sufficiently responsive.
She explained that she was known to Fox from her work as a spokesman for Huckabee’s presidential campaign. She got invited to come to New York and appear. She took a day’s leave from Martin’s office, exercising her right as a free-speaking citizen. She got Martin’s permission, she said.
She said she might do the same thing again if asked and if Martin could spare her services for the day.
She got identified as a “Republican strategist” mainly for the broad convenience of the phrase and not because she maintains any ongoing business concern as a Republican strategist, she said.
Was her appearance inappropriate? It’s a tough call, one I’ll fudge by saying I am less certain of its inappropriateness than of its poor judgment.
The secretary of state’s main spokesman — his deputy secretary of state for public affairs — is entitled, of course, to express her personal political views on her own time and if invited to do so by a news network.
But the secretary of state has certain election services duties. Stewart’s Coulter imitation on national Republican television showed an insufficiency of respect for the professional appearances of fairness and objectivity in her boss’s performance of his obligations to voters and taxpayers.
Florida showed us in 2000 the bad things that can happen when your secretary of state is a hyperpartisan.
The only way Stewart could serve these two masters seamlessly would be if they were approximately the same. Let us hope, nagging and growing appearances to the contrary, that our secretary of state is not the same as a Fox blowhard.
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John Brummett is a columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jbrummett@arkansasnews.com; his telephone number is (501) 374-0699.
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:23 am
Still hung up on Florida. Remember if both candidates had carried their home states then Florida would of been a non-issue.
May 3rd, 2011 at 7:44 am
frankhoff: i will remain hung up, thank you, any time any state, and especially a large swing one, cannot produce credible election results toward the selection of an american president. that gore lost tennessee says something about gore, and something about tennessee, but nothing about lame-brained ballots in florida and a republican secretary of state who advanced a republican advantage and a democratic state supreme court that pushed for a democratic one, leaving us never to know, never to know, who won the frigging thing. otherwise, thanks for responding, and always good to hear from you.
May 3rd, 2011 at 12:42 pm
First, let me say that I have always believed Obama was born in Hawaii and that the whole birth certificate/university records (non)issue is a sideshow.
Nevertheless, let me point out a few things:
(1). People openly questioned the intelligence of G.W. Bush – - don’t you think there was some latent bi-coastal bigotry at play here?
(2). People questioned G.W.’s acceptance into both Yale and Harvard as being the result of familial connections rather than merit.
I believe those are valid criticisms.
Therefore, wouldn’t it also be legitimate to question whether or not Obama’s acceptance into the Ivy League was based on affirmative action rather than merit?
(3). Can you imagine the conspiracy theories the Left would spin if a Republican President was named Hans Dietrich – - – and said Republican had a father who was a right-wing German immigrant who moved to the USA in 1945?
May 3rd, 2011 at 1:24 pm
captain: if indeed some questioned george w.’s academic credentials based on a bias against the privilege of his birth, then i must ask: on what basis do some question obama’s credentials? i don’t think you intended to advance my point, though i do believe you did.
May 3rd, 2011 at 3:27 pm
Some may question Obama’s academic credentials on the basis of whether he was given preferential treatment due to affirmative action.
But that line of questioning is not necessarily “racist, of course.”
It WOULD be a racist statement to claim that Obama, because of his skin color, could not possibly qualify for the Ivy League. But it is not racist to ask whether he received preferential treatment because of his skin color.
Anyway, few people outside of the liberal orbit listen to the cries of “racism” any more. You guys have gone to the well one too many times with that canard.
May 3rd, 2011 at 5:25 pm
One last word – I really hate racial/identity politics. And I dislike conspiracy theory politics as represented by “Truth-ers”, “Birth-ers”, and soon-to-be “death-ers” (in the wake of Osama Bin Laden’s demise).
I truly believe it gets in the way of discussing much more important issues. . . .such as what Mort Zuckerman writes about here http://www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2011/04/26/the-national-debt-crisis-is-an-existential-threat
May 3rd, 2011 at 8:07 pm
captain, if our president had graduated in the lower half of his class (as did his predecessor), you might have as valid a question as asking whether W got in as a legacy student. Because he (Obama) graduated magna cum laude, aka with high honors, such speculation is meaningless.
The only reasons for leveling this accusation are racism and exploiting racists.
You are correct that our economy, of which the national debt is an element, is a far more important issue than is the made-up nonsense of the birthers and their tribble mobility scooter spokesmodel. I’m sure that you have done your due diligence and identified which presidents and their fiscal policies in the last 50 years have added the most to the national debt.
May 3rd, 2011 at 9:13 pm
roald, I have never questioned Obama’s credentials either with his citizenship or his academic record. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t necessarily label as “racist” those who have. I think Obama is a very intelligent man, but just with the wrong ideas.
Yes, I follow the budget. If I had to rank the Presidents over the past 50 years whose policies added most to the National Debt, I would rank them as follows:
(1). LBJ
(2). Barack Obama
(3). GW Bush
(4). Ronald Reagan
May 4th, 2011 at 7:23 am
Caption. You seem to give a lot if NOT total responsibility for budgets to the president. The president only proposes a budget, but it is the Congress that actually determines the budget which the president signs off on. Remember when president Clinton did NOT agree with the 1995 Republican Congress and the federal government shutdown(Years 3-4 of Clinton’s Administration). It was then that federal budgets started to get away from being deficit spending.
May 4th, 2011 at 9:32 am
FrankHoff, I was merely responding to Roald’s statement:
“I’m sure that you have done your due diligence and identified which PRESIDENTS and their fiscal policies in the last 50 years”
May 4th, 2011 at 4:34 pm
Captain, your guess about presidents and their contribution to the national debt would be wrong. If you look at deficit change as a fraction of GDP by term, the winners (or losers if you prefer) would be W at 20% increase, HW at 15%, St. Ronny at 11.3% and 9.3%, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton all reduced the deficit (normalized as a fraction of GDP). It is too soon to tell about Obama, though he may move to the top of the list. Much of the reason for that would be using proven techniques to pull us out of the worst economy we have had had since the great depression.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms
I have no issues with people who challenge Obama’s policies or think that he does not have adequate experience. I can think of no reasons other than racism and exploitation of racists for challenging his legitimacy to be president – birth place, education, previous career, etc.
Can you?
May 4th, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Roald –
It can be misleading to judge a President’s performance on the deficit strictly by analyzing the deficit/surplus during the years they were in office.
President’s often enact programs in which the real costs don’t materialize until long after said President leaves office.
I rank LBJ #1 because he enacted Medicare/Medicaid which currently consumes 21% of the Federal Budget (a % that is projected to grow.) My guess is that the programs enacted by LBJ probably consume 30%+ of the budget – - -far more than any other President in the last 50 years.
* * * * * * * * * *
I think people have different reasons for propagating the “Birther”, “Academic Credentials” conspiracy theories. Some probably are racists. Some love publicity. Others are just nuts. Partisans tend to believe the worst about the opposition – - -
May 8th, 2011 at 8:46 pm
Captain, the cost of these programs may be high, but the benefit to our citizens is also high. To my mind, it is money well spent. Far better than spending on the military or giving handouts to large corporations.