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Media critic: Josh Marshall "must go"
An exasperated Bob Somerby is asking for Josh Marshall to "go", following last weekend's developments.
In short, Josh Marshall baselessly asserted on Saturday, October 11th, that a lady "apparently" called Obama an "Arab Terrorist" on a town hall meeting Friday. However, the video clearly shows the lady saying "Arab" and only "Arab". To Marshall's credit, he immediately claimed that it was 'unclear" that Quinnell had said "terrorist", although the question remains as to why Marshall did not explain what made the baseless claim "apparent" in the first place.
Is it apparent or unclear?
Neither did Marshall care to explain why it was "unclear" when no one in the world can hear the word "terrorist" in the video. In fact, there is not a hint that the woman used the epithet.
Marshall also claimed (falsely) that in the post-town-hall-meeting interview, Quinnell called Obama terrorist. In fact, Quinnell simply answered the question of whether Obama was an Arab or not. Here is the transcript of Quinnell answering questions from one "Noah":
Noah: Yeah, I know which one you're talking about. And just to be sure to make sure we got your quote OK, you called Obama and Arab terrorist?
Quinnell ardon?
Noah: You called him an Arab terrorist? Is that correct? Why do you think he is an Arab?
Quinnell Because his dad is. If you... I'll send you the paper.
Note that Noah ultimately realizes that his "terrorist" claim is made-up and chooses instead to ask why she thinks "he's an Arab" (he drops the "terrorist label).
I would not go as far as calling for Marshall's early retirement, but he certainly needs to smarten up.
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Gee...what a surprise. No snide comments on this one.
October 13, 2008 9:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oy. This and a fair-sized asteroid would add up to a mountain.
October 13, 2008 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
That would be an honest answer if a right-wing blogger were lying about the words of an Obama supporter.
October 13, 2008 10:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tom, seriously, you have been following Josh for a long time. You know that there are allegations that supporters of McCain are ramping up a racist campaign that is significant to the point where Senator Obama's safety, heaven forbid, is in danger. This theme is all the rage in the blogosphere and in the MSM.
I have followed Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler for a very long time, almost as long as I have followed Josh. He's a rational and fundamentally liberal observer of the American political scene. He has devoted countless pages to railing against a media that trashed Al Gore in 2000 and, to a lesser extent, John Kerry in 2004. In this campaign season, he has been relentless in attacking the media for just now discovering that John McCain is no maverick and is in fact and has always been a garden-variety right-wing zealot. Bob Somerby is no stooge for the Republicans.
Is Somerby just making this stuff up, or does he see what I see? Maybe it's because I supported Hillary and Josh supported Obama and did things like cite to Matt Drudge in seeking to smear HRC as a race-baiter. I don't know; I see plenty of reasons to support Senator Obama over Senator McCain, and none of them has anything to do with whether John McCain's supporters are a bunch of haters. Frankly, I see all kinds of upping the race issue on this side of the fence, and I see Josh taking the lead with this nonsense.
Unlike Somerby, I believe that Josh should stay where he is, but sorry Tom, Somerby has a good point, and a salient point too. I think Josh is either trying to score "hits" by raising blood pressure, or he has just lost sight of what made him such a stand-out with so many of his earlier supporters. But playing with racial or ethnic bigotry, whether one is liberal or conservative, is a dangerous and heinous game.
You're correct that this and an asteroid might make a mountain, but this is the asteroid upon which you and I spend quite a bit of time. I like my asteroid to be guided by candor, intellectual maturity, and truth. There are more than enough screamers and alarmists out there.
P.S. This person who called Obama an Arab is an idiot and an apparent bigot even if she didn't call Obama a terrorist. Of course, even if it were true that Obama was of Arab descent, it would be and should be absolutely irrelevant. Our next president, Barack Obama, is an American.
October 13, 2008 10:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice.
October 13, 2008 10:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bwak:
Thank you. I know I'm treading on dangerous ground here, and I know you and I have not always agreed, but I genuinely appreciate your recognition and I sense that you understand that I am writing in good faith and that I take issues of race incredibly seriously. I don't want to take our eyes off the prize by obfuscating what to me is the most critical implication of our racist society, and that is that nagging and persistent inequality of opportunity in the African American community.
Bruce
October 13, 2008 11:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce, check out this old blog post by Emma Zahn I just ran across, about a January 2008 post by Josh Marshall:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/emma_zahn/2008/01/cryptoevangelical-code.php
She's talking about Josh's "update" on that post. I think you might find it of interest, both humorous and serious, and understand the cross-cultural communication problemos implicated there better than your average Noo Yawker. :-) It was interesting for me to watch several months later as we got all kinds of posts on TPM 'splaining the mysterious faraway foreign world of Appalachia.
October 14, 2008 1:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent AA, and that's just what we're talking about here. By the way, when the dust settles and we're finished counting the votes, I predict that Senator Obama will win in places like Pennsylvania and West Virginia by getting votes from all "those people" out there in flyover country whom we with the fancy pants degrees or other bases for talking about "those people" were dismissing as ignorant or worse. And the weird thing is it ain't that simple, i.e. there are lots of people out there who are going to vote for Senator Obama who maybe wouldn't want their kid to marry a black guy or gal. Funnier thing is (or not), probably lots of those folks falling in that category are "liberals" who live on the coasts and have fancy pants degrees and stuff, and who speak with reckless abandon about all those ignorant folk out there in flyover country over their coffee and New York Times. I'll say it again and I'll keep saying it: life is just not that linear.
October 14, 2008 7:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wish I could rec your comment, Bruce. I don't understand why many of the so-called "progressives" at TPM have such rigid minds, behaving no differently than conservatives who are stuck in their own modality. The world is not black and white.
October 14, 2008 3:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I get the impression that this entire imbroglio is more a matter of focus. When I went back and read the post in question - it seems that the focus on "terrorist" is secondary and the key is whether or not the underlying narrative of McCain's campaign is mis-educating supporters and facilitating an environment of discrimination/hate.
I suppose there is a mountain under the appearance of rabid supporters at McCain rallies, but I am not sure what it is. I take that back - the mountain is inter-blog/pundit warfare. Snake - meet tail. (one could get into parsing the parsing, but there is not enough meat on that snake to go around)
The truth of the matter is - and this crap showed up on this site - is that somehow we the voter are being told that we should be concerned that Barack Hussein Obama is not really black, he is Arab. His bloodline can be broken down into 1/10 of a percent accuracy.
all I got is WTF?
October 14, 2008 4:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
I consider it a molehill still. The news is what McCain is promoting, and how McCain is acting to attempt to defuse what he has started. Equivalently important news is what Obama does and says.
What Josh imagined he heard means squat. The video got hugely more play than Josh's assertion.
No mountain.
October 14, 2008 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's it! No more TPM for me.
Geez
October 13, 2008 10:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
This post and its commentary is rather illustrative of the phenomena that you must either be "for" something or "against" something. If you are "for" something it is perfect, no warts, no cracks, nothing. If you are "against" something, it must be a blight on society.
A reporter must always be factually correct. Reporters are humans, humans make mistakes. The point that the DAILY HOWLER brings up is not the worse mistake in the world --
-- but it is a mistake. It should be corrected by Josh. We would expect nothing less (and rightly so) of a conservative blog misquoting something at an Obama event.
I have found my discussions with conservatives to be far more persuasive when I don't pretend that Obama is perfect, that I don't pretend that Obama has all the answers, and I don't pretend that Ayers wasn't something of the equivalent of Tim McVie in intend (regardless of whether he was convicted or not).
To be dismissive of the truth makes one no better than the "other side" which routinely does it. And lowers your ability to call the other side out.
The definition of intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time. I can have Josh make mistakes while still claiming that Josh runs an interesting website. I can still support Obama, even if he has relations with people who have unsavory pasts.
October 14, 2008 3:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Clearthinker:
Nobody has been thinking with vivid clarity as you have been these past couple of weeks. Well-said. Very well-said.
Bruce
October 14, 2008 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with Clearthinker (somewhat suprisingly, I must admit).
I also think the same goes for the discussion about the role of race and race-baiting in this campaign. I wish that, instead of leading to taking sides (either it's happening everywhere or it's not happening anywhere), we could have an honest discussion about race that didn't lead to accusations of bigotry and screaming matches.
It's easy to say that one bigot at a McCain rally doesn't mean that racism exists in this campaign. But I live in that flyover country that you are talking about and I've been out canvassing for Obama since March. Race is playing a role, in both a positive and a negative way. There are people who "don't know why they don't like him, but they just don't trust him." When you dig in with these people, some of them will be honest with themselves and get to a place where they will admit it's because he's black. If you can get there, it's an opening to explore that attitude and possibly open their minds. If you can't, you move on.
On the positive side, the Obama campaign office is a picture of post-racial society. People of all ages, races, and backgrounds are, through the course of working together, having the opportunity to form bonds and friendships with those that they might never meet in their "regular" lives. It's a beautiful thing to come together in hope, rather than out of anger or fear.
Back back to the down side, many of my friends and fellow volunteers who are not white come back to the office reporting racially charged situations they encountered while canvassing. They are also careful to avoid canvassing in certain neighborhoods.
This stuff exists out here in "flyover country" even if you folks on the coasts are so much more evolved. The McCain campaign, in my opinion, is exacerbating it. They are taking it right to the edge. It is dangerous and it is disgusting.
The best way to combat it is to talk about it, openly and honestly. Not to take sides. Is Josh favoring one side more than the other? Maybe. But at least he's not hiding from the ugly truth because it's uncomfortable to talk about.
October 14, 2008 8:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Orlando, please, nobody is trying to push racism under the rug. I understand racism exists, at least as well as you do I submit and I see and here innuendos and more on a daily basis, I understand that the McCain campaign and some of his supporters have probably gone "to the edge" as you say, and I also understand that the race issue is and has been exploited by elements of the Obama campaign and supporters thereof. Talk about honesty? It's fine to stick up for Josh, but when he's full of shit, when he acts like Sean Hannity acts, I say honesty requires that we call him on it.
I don't mean to pick on you Orlando, but I am also getting tired of those who say that other people are trying to push discussions of race under the rug. The only discussions of race I've seen at the Cafe is that the other guy behind the tree, but not me, is a racist. Please. I think issues of race are far more complex than reiteration of the undisputed fact that there are racist people out there. I also think, and this is my fundamental point, that the most important issue about race in this country is very simple, and that is that there is a nagging, irrefutable, and inexcusable gap in opportunities for whites and blacks with respect to employment, housing, education and overall mobility.
But if you want to support Josh's alleged progressive approach to racism (an approach which I think is grounded in this instance in sensationalism and yellow journalism), and blanche at criticism of what he has done, then worry not. I have no doubt that the vast majority of posters around here are lock-step behind your sentiments. And so it goes and so it has, and so it will probably continue to be.
October 14, 2008 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce, I'm not trying to pick a fight with you either, and maybe I didn't make my point clear enough.
My point is, boiled down, that when we start talking about racism, we all (me too) get really defensive and take a bit of an all or nothing approach. I wish we (including me) wouldn't. So, when I see what amounts to a written eye roll from posters every time the issue of racism is raised, I find it as dishonest as it is unproductive.
Please understand that I am not accusing you of this. But I hope that you can at least admit that the phenomenon exists, here and elsewhere, as much as the refusal to acknowledge that the Obama campaign and/or supporters are using racism as a cudgel.
It's not a matter of EITHER McCain is race-baiting OR Obama is using race to suppress criticism. It's vastly more complicated than that.
October 14, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, Orlando. Don't be in such a rush to judgment on me. I did mean to comment on your "terrorist" blog (before the great software switch) that I respected your consistency of definition -- quite refreshing at TPM really. I find you rather logical. Perhaps you find me the same way. I dunno. Either way, I always thought there was a helluva lot of common ground between us and I greatly respect your ability to agree with me in public regardless of whatever emotional reaction you have of me in private.
October 14, 2008 8:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bruce,
Given who are you, and what you do, I very much appreciate that comment. Truly. Thank you.
October 14, 2008 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've had the same concern about Josh repeating the "Terrorist" part, especially after seeing the video of the post-rally interview. But it wasn't Josh that injected the word 'terrorist' as Josh notes here:
Among others it was Ana Marie Cox, among 'other's.Also, let me note that if anything making the assumption that Quinnell did say terrorist is actually being generous to McCain since otherwise McCain's correction of Quinnell clearly implies that an "Arab" is the opposite of "a decent family man, citizen."
October 14, 2008 9:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are wrong. Marshall clearly told us that Quinnell "apparently" called him a terrorist, and this opinion was based on him watching the video.
You also ignore the factg that Marshall lied about the lady calling Obama terrorist in a separate interview that occured after the town hall meeting. The transcript is in my original post, but I believe you didn't read it.
October 14, 2008 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
You say among "others", but can you tell me who are those "others" who saw or heard the lady (firsthand) utter the word "terrorist"? I haven't heard any other names.
October 14, 2008 9:29 AM | Reply | Permalink