The local media’s sycophantic coverage of Obama is laughable *UPDATED*

Even though Obama has been gone from the White House for more than two years, the media’s sycophantic love affair with him continues unabated.

Obama media kiss Barack Obama recently appeared in Oakland, California, to join with basketball star Steph Curry, at a My Brother’s Keeper event. For those who don’t know, My Brother’s Keeper is an organization that the White House started in 2014. The White House described it as an initiative “designed to determine what works to help young people stay on track to reach their full potential.”

Although framed as something to address all young men (who, regardless of color are falling behind women in every metric), it’s apparent that My Brother’s Keeper really is a black outreach organization. Although that sounds illegal to me on discrimination grounds, I’m not going to quibble because it’s long been obvious that young black men struggle. Of course, I suspect that the organization will not offer the best outreach to all young men, regardless of color or location, which is to avoid crime, stay in school, get a job, get married, have children, and stay married. That’s a proven recipe for success.

Anyway, this post isn’t about My Brother’s Keeper. It is, instead, about the laughably sycophantic article The Marin Independent Journal published regarding the Oakland event. I’ll simply quote here all the lines referring to Obama:

Recording star John Legend opened Tuesday’s event to spotlight the mission of My Brother’s Keeper, an Obama initiative to reduce gun violence and mentor boys and men of color. But there was no question who the real star was: Obama, clearly comfortable surrounded by 23 young men on the stage and bantering with his friend, Curry, as they hosted a town hall question-and-answer session.

Obama masterfully moved from serious subjects such as prison reform to Leo’s question about whether Kendrick Lamar has dropped better albums than Drake. Now in its fifth year, My Brother’s Keeper has spread to 250 cities, and many young men came to Oakland from around the country to attend the week-long events.

A relaxed Obama did not shy away from their questions:

[snip]

On full display was obvious admiration shared between Obama and Curry.

[snip]

Like a comedy team, the NBA star and 44th president measured frank talk about societal issues with cheap shots at one another.

Obama opened with: “For those of you that don’t know me, I’m Michelle’s husband, Barack. This is Ayesha’s husband, Steph.” After referring to “old men, older men,” Curry paused and glanced over at the graying Obama. The former president got one of the last laughs, though, responding to a question about overcoming childhood struggles.

Slogging through author David Debolt’s bromantic writing, all I could think of was this video:

In addition to the sloppy kiss bromance, though, DeBolt managed to include Leftist political talking points. I mention that because it’s important to understand that Lefty journalists, no matter how inconsequential the article or the outlet, don’t do straight articles. Instead, they slip it into everything statements that have a subliminal effect on credulous and uninformed readers:

To any youth in the crowd without a father, Obama pointed out it might not always have been by choice. Years of discrimination, a disproportionate number of people of color ending up in the prison system and a lack of job opportunities might have been factors.

(To give Obama credit, according to DeBolt, after pandering to the “it’s the system, not anyone’s personal responsibility” paradigm, he did say, “Often times, fathers, men may not have been able to provide that consistency they may in retrospect might have wanted to. We can all be surrogate fathers. We can all be big brothers. It turns out if you give somebody some attention … people respond to that. My father might not have been in my house, but there were a whole bunch of men who taught me something and guided me.”)

DeBolt also made much of the founding events behind My Brother’s Keeper, as well as the people who are being feted at the events:

Obama founded My Brother’s Keeper in 2014, two years after George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. Martin was unarmed. Before Obama and Curry took the stage, the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and Oscar Grant — Sybrina Fulton, Lucy McBath and Wanda Johnson — joined a panel with Legend, who also is an activist, and shared their hopes and advice for the young men at the conference.

Just to give a little perspective to that paragraph, Trayvon Martin, a wannabe gangster, was trying to beat George Zimmerman to death. Oscar Grant was part of a mob causing a major, and dangerous, ruckus at a BART train station in the East Bay (near Oakland), and refused to cooperate with police. The officer who shot him was afraid that Grant was going for his gun. I have no information about Jordan Davis’s shooting and therefore will not comment about it.

I don’t have a big wrap-up here. I guess I just wanted to show that every local reporter is auditioning for the Times or the WaPo, at least ideologically. If you want real news — facts without spin or unseemly adulation (or, in Trump’s case, irrational hatred) — don’t look to America’s print media. It’s a dinosaur, possibly more dangerous in its death throes than it ever was during its life.

UPDATE: And I just caught this amazing bit of dishonesty from an article in the same paper, this one about the stupid John Wayne kerfuffle:

In a week when the U.S. culture wars focused on actor Jussie Smollett’s reportedly false claim of being the victim of a hate crime and on Donald Trump calling immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border a “national emergency,” people also were on Twitter fiercely debating John Wayne’s infamous, racially charged 1971 Playboy interview, during which he observed, “I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.”

I don’t know about you, but I heard Donald Trump calling “illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border a ‘national emergency.” Only our staggeringly dishonest media could, without a blush, make the crime that Trump was calling all Mexican immigration, including legal immigration, a national emergency. The media is a Black Death, a pox, a locust plague, a ravaging horde, and all sorts of other noxious things that destroy whole societies.


[give_form id=”59195″]