DEATH BY A THOUSAND PAPER CUTS
By Malik Isasis













The pavement is littered with the bodies of celebrities the corporate media have built up, only to destroy. What has been done to Brittany Spears by the corporate media for instance is nothing short of sadistic torture porn for public consumption. The same could be said about how the corporate media covers politics.

Just as the corporate pundits began using sexist innuendoes against Hillary Clinton to destroy her credibility as a presidential candidate, the corporate punditry have swung the pendulum in the other direction, using race against Barack Obama with a lot of help from an unforeseen political operative hitman and former president, Bill Clinton.

The corporate media, as they have with every other black presidential candidate, smirked and patted Obama on the head with low expectations when he announced his candidacy for president. Since the media assumed Obama never had a chance in the first place, they toyed with him like a killer whale does with his food. Then Obama won the Iowa caucus, in a mostly white state. Eventually, the corporate media like the killer whale stopped tossing the seal and ate it.

After Obama’s victory a narrative began to emerge. Bill Bennet, a racist and Republican operative for CNN said of Obama’s win: I have been watching him. I watched him on Meet the Press. I watched him on your show, watched him on all the CNN shows -- he never brings race into it. He never plays the race card. Talk about the black community -- he has taught the black community you don't have to act like Jesse Jackson; you don't have to act like Al Sharpton. You can talk about the issues. Great dignity. And this is a breakthrough, and good for the people of Iowa.

Bennet has foreshadowed what was to come. However, it wasn’t expected that the Clintons would begin this whisper campaign by injecting race, but it was unavoidable in a country so completely obsessed with race.

When Blacks Count

The corporate media has been called out on its sexist narrative against Hillary Clinton, but not for its racist attacks against Obama. The Clintons have used this opportunity to tap into the xenophobic nature of the American populace by starting a whisper campaign e.g. if Obama wins in South Carolina, it would be because of the black vote, thus causing white voters to coagulate against Obama. Black folks are always accused of block voting, incidentally white voters always block vote, but because white supremacy is the default setting of this country, the cognitive dissonance goes unchallenged.

The corporate media is using the Clintons’ racist attacks against Obama as a cover to create their own destructive narrative, taking the Clintons’ narrative even farther. Now that black folks are supporting Obama in larger numbers, the corporate media are flogging white voters by making Obama the “Black Candidate.” This was why black folk were slow to support Obama because we knew that the media would pull the carpet because black folks' votes are only valid in the eyes of white folk when white folk are in agreement.

Back to the Future

I predicted what the media would do to an Obama candidacy in my essay Black Man Running on 12.11.2006:

I think Barack is nuanced and understands that the media is not his friend. He knows that the media is setting him up for a glorious fall. Howard Dean can testify to this truth. Dean, who knows what it’s like to be a media-darling, was a front-runner in the 2004 Presidential Race, but it was when he lost a primary race in Iowa to John Kerry and tried to rally his supporters by cheering, “Yaaah!” that the media took him out like a professional hit job. It was if everything was already aligned. Dean in his campaign, did threaten to break up large media conglomerates, is there a connection?

The media is not your friend Barack.

They are trying to make you precious, make you hire a grip of overbearing political consultants who will neuter your political passion (remember John Kerry?)…you’re going to become too safe to speak your mind, too safe to offend anyone, too safe to speak truth-to-power, just like your possible running mate, Hillary Clinton.

Exactly one year later on 12.11.2007, I wrote in my essay They Love Me, They Love Me Not:

The corporate media and their henchmen won’t come straight out with their plans of sabotaging Obama’s campaign; they will do it with a smile and blame it on his inexperience. Just as Howard Dean’s surge was interrupted in 2003, they the corporate media will try and interrupt Obama’s surge with a whisper campaign and it will be death by a thousand paper cuts. So they hope.

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