"batshit crazy": code for race

Music: The Alan Parsons Project: Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1987)

Diane passed on a link to an editorial in salon.com by Gary Kamia on "Psycho Christians and the Media." The by-line is hilarious: "Why the press gives McCain a pass for consorting with batshit holy men, but condemns Obama to talk-show hell for the same sin." As most folks know by now, McCain accepted the endorsement of Rev. John Hagge and actively sought the endorsement of Rev. Rod Parsley, both of whom have said patently wacky things (like the Catholics conspired with Hitler to kill off the Jews; like Islam is an evil religion; like we need to annihilate Iran to hasten Christ's return and the Rapture; like Deity created the world in seven, god-time days and then made the first man out of dirt and then turned one of his ribs into a companion to serve him). Kamia argues that

The media's double standard is all about deference to perceived mainstream norms, and tiptoeing around the Christian right. Despite their cartoonish views, the media treats Hagee and Parsley as quasi-mainstream figures, which makes McCain's relationship with them non-newsworthy. The dirty little secret of mainstream American journalism is that it operates within invisible constraints that conform to some imagined Middle American consensus.

Kamia says that in some polls 45% of "Americans" self-identify as "born-again" or evangelical, which would seem to indicate the mid-way consensus is imaginary only in the concrete, material sense: a very larger number of people actually believe there is a coming apocalypse and Jesus is gonna come back, and they hold similar images in their heads about how this unfolds (e.g., Left Behind). Now, lets just admit it: such views are no more "cartoonish" than the idea an omnipotent god twinned himself into a human, was born to a virgin, and then had himself nailed to a cross to bleed to death so that he could miraculously resurrect himself and, thereby, save humanity from the finality of death. And UFO-driving "Grey Men" built the pyramids.

Absurdity or "batshit crazy" beliefs come with the territory of most religious systems (not all). Faith is often defined by the ability to suspend disbelief in something like "Jesus was an Astronaut" or if I just understand the "law of attraction," then I can get laid, make lots of money, and refurnish my kitchen with top of the line stainless steel appliances. If you believe in some sort of conscious life after the only reality that is certain, then you'll believe just about anything. This means that about 95% of the world's population is batshit crazy, I reckon. I don't believe in an afterlife, but count me in anyway.

Nevertheless, Kamia makes some great points, all of which betoken the corporatization of the mainstream news media: no longer is journalism about truth or public service; it's about advertising and making money. As John Murphy points out, news reporters fashion themselves as celebrities in order for larger paychecks; recent debates have demonstrated that the questions asked are more about the moderator's self-branding than the information elicited from the candidates. Because the "bottom-line" is, in fact, the bottom-line, Kamia's argument that MSM does not want to offend or alienate audiences makes some sense.

But, the double standard of coverage goes deeper than celebrity news or selling eyeballs to pharmaceutical companies inventing diseases. Why are McCain's connections to Hagge overlooked, while Wright becomes Obama's albatross? What makes Wright's rhetoric particularly newsworthy? Um, Wright is black. I know this is mindblowingly genius but: the double standard is about race, rhetorical norms among different "raced" groups, and the inability of a mostly white reporting corps to report on "the other" in a sensitive way. Sure, Bill Moyers does. Sure, there's the PBS New Hour, but these are the exceptions to the rule. For example: go back to review Wright's address to the National Press Club. Everything is measured and even-steven until the Q&A. The uber-white and upper-classed moderator opens the Q&A by immediately distinguishing between two audiences, the "noisy" black people and the white press corps. That gesture alone signals the double standard Kamia is trying to explain: only someone who did not understand and accept African American vernacular norms would do something so stupid.

At lunch last week a colleague was pushing me on my defense of Rev. Wright's rhetoric. "How is what Hagge says any different from what Wright says?" I responded as I have on the blog, that they are coming out of two very different rhetorical traditions. Wright's rhetoric is more associative and figurative, performative, coming out of a tradition of double-consciousness. If you take him literally, you're missing 80% of what's going on in his preaching. Hagge, on the other hand, is literal. He's the classic "straight man" to Wright's signifyin' in a sense. She responded, "but when Hagge says the Whore of Babylon is the Catholic church, that's figurative." So there we went at lunch, round and round, and I found myself utterly incapable of explaining my self. The only argument that got traction with my friend was that Hagge advocated for foreign policy changes, while Wright does not.

"By incessantly attacking Obama as strange and scary, which is certain to be his strategy," argues Kamia, "McCain will be tapping into this already existing media bias toward sensationalism." It's clear to me that "strange and scary" means "black," and "sensationalism" means racism and racist-appeal. If Obama turns out to be the nominee and the race is indeed Obama campaign, we will be seeing one of the most racist contests in decades. In the days of segregation, racist politics was explicit, in your face, the n-word was bandied about, you knew the "strange and scary" other was raced. Today, the very same politics will be shrouded in a coded rhetoric that masquerades racist observations and tensions in the language of capitalism. Clinton already let slip the "white voter" word in West Virginia. That will not happen again. The double standard will be maintained over racial otherness, but we dare not speak its name.