Obama, Davies... and the news media.
While wading through the buckets of coverage on the upcoming US election [does anybody else just LOVE Michelle Obama?] I came across Anne Davies in today's Age:
"In this election, the blogosphere has become the front line for smear and innuendo, whether it be allegations that Senator Obama is a Muslim or that Mrs Palin is a book-banning, gun-toting bigot."
This bothers me on so many immediate and deeper, need-to-be-thought-out levels that haven't even occurred to me yet. What leaps off the page is equating "Islam" with "smear and innuendo - or at least inferring that some people are using it in that way - without ANY thought, reflection or analysis of some of the inherent problems with that automatic assumption. One kind of smear: being a bigot. Another kind of smear: being a Muslim.
I suppose I wanted something - a sentence, anything - on the incredibly problematic nature of this equation, where culture or religion is essentially equated to intolerance or narrow-mindedness. [This isn't to say that Sarah Palin IS any of those things, but rather that a discourse that equates the two as similar kinds of allegations is deeply troubling.]
So do we just give up on the hope that the mainstream news media can be capable of this kind of deeper analysis, a place to draw out power relations, assumptions and social structures? Or perhaps that's an unrealistic expectation to begin with, and that's where research and scholarship comes in?
All I know is that this kind of reporting, which blends 'news' and 'analysis' and 'observation' is certainly not helping.
posted by deep in thought @ 9:13 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
What I also find disturbing is that the Obama website has a section devoted to combating the 'smears'.
To be fair, those saying 'he's a Muslim!' are using it as a derogatory term - so... ugg.
I guess the unfortunate reality of American popular thought is that being Muslim is the same as being a 9/11-radical-Muslim.
That being said - I don't think media like this or the Obama campaign's phrasing helps the cause of making 'Muslim' a non-epithet.
Oh, also? She is book-burny and gun-totey.
You're right - and it's precisely that which bothers me. I may be off-base here, but I honestly think we should be able to differentiate between the kind of 'slur' which calls someone narrow-minded and the kind where a particular racial/religious/ethnic/cultural background is the basis for a slur.
Although to be fair [again] I also have problems with the barely disguised class-based attacks on Palin that are around, which are just as offensive as the gender-based ones AND as the 'you're a Muslim!' stuff.
I guess what's really infuriating me is the complete and utter lack of discussion and analysis of this stuff in the news media, so that what passes as 'analysis' in the Age is really just contributing to the wider cultural-political stereotypes you're talking about, and the ever-deepening link between Islam and fundamentalism in post-9/11 political and media discourse.
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