We have noted in the past how many mostly white liberal organizations obsess over Republicans being mostly white:
The latest example is Bloomberg News, named after this well-known white person:
I was alerted to an August 1 news analysis by a tweet terming a Bloomberg News article “The dumbest article on the internet right now.”
That’s a rather Big Gulp to fill, if you ask me, but I think it’s warranted:
House Republicans Set to Defy Obama Are Mostly White Men
The core group of Republicans who are pushing the House toward a showdown with the White House over the debt ceiling and government spending is made up of 41 members — all white men except for two.More than half are from Southern states, their average re-election vote was 65 percent and most have served for fewer than five years in the House.This small, homogeneous group of lawmakers is exercising out-sized influence as it bucks the House leadership, eschews compromises with President Barack Obama and exerts a rightward influence on a Republican conference of 234 members.
What does race and gender have to do with it? I posed that question to the reporter, Greg Giroux, who is white:
And the Editor in charge of the article, Jean Cummings (formerly of Politico), who is white:
My email was as follows:
Hi,I’m going to be writing about your story tomorrow, and was wondering if you could give a statement as to why you deemed it relevant to focus on the race and gender of the people in Congress opposing Obama.Specifically, do you believe that the race and gender of the Congressmen opposing Obama are causally related to their policy positions opposing Obama? If so, in what way do you believe there is a causal link? If not, why did you choose to highlight race and gender as the major theme as evidenced by the headline?If you could respond by 10 a.m. Eastern [Sunday], that would be appreciated.William A. JacobsonLegal Insurrection Blog
So far, no response.
This type of distraction is all too common. Remember when WaPo played the same game regarding Republicans who signed a letter opposing the potential nomination of Susan Rice? WaPo plays the Rice card:
“Could it be, as members of the Congressional Black Caucus are charging, that the [97 Republican House] signatories of the letter are targeting Ms. Rice because she is an African American woman? The signatories deny that, and we can’t know their hearts. What we do know is that more than 80 of the signatories are white males, and nearly half are from states of the former Confederacy. You’d think that before launching their broadside, members of Congress would have taken care not to propagate any falsehoods of their own.”
WaPo ignored, of course, the attacks on the other Rice (Condolezza) by white Democrats.
I think it would be good to get answers from Bloomberg News as to why the focus on the race and gender rather than the policies. Particularly since the leadership of Bloomberg LP doesn’t itself exactly “look like America”:
Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into an obsession at Bloomberg News, or I might start confusing it with Salon.com:
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY
