A friend of mine, Trevor Coleman, wrote the following on a Facebook post yesterday after watching the CNN Republican Presidential Debate, the last one scheduled for 2015. I gotta say, of all the commentaries I’ve seen following that debate, this is the only one I’ve seen so far that bothers to mention the fact that no journalist of color – not just black journalists but any journalists of any color – were a part of that debate. We were excluded. Shut out. And believe you me, as carefully as these debates are negotiated and scripted, this was hardly any kind of ‘oopsie’ sort of accident. Said Trevor:
“CNN ought to be ashamed of themselves for participating in such a sham. They try to claim some kind of mantle as the so-called cable news network that “plays it down the middle” yet deliberately excludes their own journalists of color from participating on Presidential Debate panels. And no one should buy that patronizing crap about choosing people based on experience or agreement with the political party involved in the debate.
Just how is it playing down the middle when you collaborate with a highly segregated and aggressively racist political party to exclude from participating, journalists of color who represent as much as 40 percent of the nation’s population?”
Here’s the thing: this is a party not only at war with itself, but in a state of self-destructive transformation. The witless segment of the party has been gaming and gaining for years, steadily scheming on how to grab hold of the wheel and drive everyone over the cliff in a search of paradise at the bottom of the well. The inmates have taken over the asylum and have begun hanging drapes. It’s not just that those leading the Republican charge are OK with being racist, intolerant, and immune to factual accuracy, they are downright proud of it all. Because this is now who they are now. They proudly represent the blindingly white and excrutiatingly ignorant. In Trump They Trust.
So why on Earth should it come as a shock that they didn’t want any black folks asking the questions? Or Latino folks? Or Asian folks? Or anybody but white folks? And why should we be surprised that CNN went along with it?
This is show business, folks. No room for issues. Facts either. And definitely no room for any possibility of probing questions from those ‘other’ folks who don’t look like the candidates.
Well, OK, there’s that one guy, but…
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