Update: Thanks of course for the recs. Also, MSNBC’s Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow were apparently blacked out last night in Southern Ohio. Obama’s interview was not aired. It is hard to believe this was a coincidence.
Also posted last night on Daily Kos but since modified and updated.
I just watched John King’s five minute “hit piece” on Scioto County Democrats and on Appalachians. If you haven’t heard, or didn’t see the piece, Scioto County Ohio is right on the bottom of Ohio, about 90 miles due south of Columbus on the Ohio River. We are-as many people keep telling us-right in the thick of it. In 2004 Kerry won Portsmouth and lost the county-but the margin was surprisingly close. Hillary won the primaries here in Appalachian, Ohio by huge margins-and Bill Clinton carried the area twice.
Yesterday, John King came to Ohio and constructed a carefully planned and executed propaganda piece on Portsmouth desigend to show that “white people won’t vote for Obama” (at least not in Scioto county) and that therefore, Obama will lose Ohio. It was simply put, Republican agit-prop and a disgusting display of the lack of journalistic ethics.
Follow me below the fold to learn about what is actually going on here in Scioto County.
The piece begins by showing pictures of Portsmouth, Ohio and noting the hard economic times of Portsmouth. This much is true. Starting in the 1970’s the jobs went away, leaving Portsmouth high and dry as its population dwindled (the population of Scioto County has stayed the same). It’s a perfect example of why the “free trade” dogma doesn’t work and why NAFTA is such a potentially powerful issue here.
Aside from that, John King is living in a reality of his own making. It’s clear he came here looking for the story he wanted:
1.Hillary voters won’t support Obama;
2.People in Portsmouth have some kind of unique claim on racism and are just a bunch of ignorant people (and they call Obama elitist for one out of context dumb statement).
Below, I explain how little John King knows about Portsmouth, Appalachia, Southern Ohio, racism, culture-or Hillary voters.
Let me start by relaying an anecdote. Earlier this evening I got off the phone in a conversation with an older woman who is on the Democratic Committee for my area. We talked for a while about her support of Hillary and her disappointment that Hillary was not nominated for the VP slot.
Does this woman have any hesitation at all about supporting Barack?-No-none at all. She is firmly committed to voting for Barack and committed to working to help him win. As she and I talked we both came to understand we had one important thing in common-we are both Democrats. And we also both strongly agreed on the amazing capacity of Palin to lie and that Sarah Palin is no where near the candidate Hillary was. I relayed to her my own views during the primary and how in spite of supporting Barack I respected Hillary as tough and smart, while disagreeing with her on specifics. We also talked about how in the end, I would have bucked up and supported Hillary.
Nor did John King show a picture of the Democratic Party headquarters I know. He arrived early this morning (a time when there are very few volunteers and seems to have made a point of filming only black volunteers). I have come to know and respect one of the African American women working for Barack and I can tell you, I am proud to have people like her on my side.
And as much as it pains me to say it (because it shouldn’t matter but it does) the overwhelming majority of volunteers are white and female. Yep-that’s the social reality John King can’t acknowledge. Reportedly, he returned later in the day when the headquarters was buzzing, but chose to use his footage of the morning. Nor did he bother to interview the Obama field organizer.
He included a short snippet from his interview with Randy Basham, local Democratic Party chairman. I didn’t see the whole interview so I don’t know what Randy said. Instead he made Randy look like he was saying race is the only problem here in Scioto County. But it’s not. Everytime I talk to base democrats-either through canvasing or phoning they are strongly on board.
His interview with Steve Sturgill Sr. who is a firm Obama supporter again seemed to zero in only on the racial angle.
Does race matter in Scioto County? Of course it does. But are all the peope here just ignorant, racist boobs like John King seems to think? No they are not.
Obama’s primary problem in Scioto County is two fold:
People here identify strongly with Bill Clinton because they see his Presidency as a period when the country was on the right track. Amazingly, most see through the phoniness of the Monica Lewinsky “scandal”.
As I was discussing with my cultural anthropology class this morning (and my students agreed with me) this is an area where ties of kinship and family are very strong.
What does this mean? Hillary, to a lot of people her was “kin”. They liked and accepted Bill and saw him as someone who was on their side. That good will and name recognition, along with Ted Strickland’s support (our native son-Ted once taught at my University) spurred her victory here in Scioto County. Of course it also helped that Bill came and it hurt Barack that he did not.
What Bararck needs to do in Scioto County is the following:
He needs to come here and he needs to come with Ted.
When he comes, he needs to go down to the Super Walmart where there used to be a coke plant that closed a few years ago. It is powerful, potent symbol of the loss of the manufacturing economy and the rise of the Walmart economy-good jobs traded for bad jobs. And he needs to speak about this issue. And then he needs to come to my University and talk to us there about education, the economy and get the students and the faculty fired up.
There are lots of us here who are working for Barack. We have made thousands of calls and knocked on hundreds of doors. The base of the party is with us and we have the support of people like Todd Book and Victoria Palin (congressional democratic contendeers) and Ted Strickland. Tom Reiser, our candidate for Scioto County commissioner is with us.
But on the whole it is pretty clear: John King chose his reality and ordered his world around it. It was just plain bad journalism. One place that John could have come is the University-which woudl probably have presented him with inconvenient facts that didn’t fit his narrative.
Oh, and I must close this post by noting the special efforts of Richard Becker (our field organizer), of Jeanette, of Becky, of Peggy, Doug, Carolyn, Charles Patty, and many, many others.
I have long thought CNN at times bordered on dishonest. Now I know.