November 6, 2008 — vol. 44, no 13
Letters to the Editor
This is the time when black America has a reason to rejoice. Even if Barack Obama hadn’t won the presidency, this community demonstrated that it was willing to stand up and vote for an intelligent and thoughtful man who is a prime example of what America can be about.
In Boston, if you had believed the rantings broadcast on double-talk radio, you would have thought that a Marxist, socialist black racist was about to take over the White House and destroy American culture. The commentators made it sound like the sky would fall if the American public voted Obama into office, spewing the same sort of scare tactics that failed to keep Deval Patrick out of the State House. This time, with the White House on the line, they failed again.
What better way to describe the fear-mongering promoted by an “elite” group of local talk masters made up of the following: a neo-con right winger who couldn’t make it in the New York radio market; a pair of sports talk jocks who once equated an escaped gorilla to a METCO student; a rape suspect; and a disgraced former House speaker who attempted to disenfranchise the black community in this town.
I have yet to figure out why these people have been given dominion over the airwaves. But what is particularly galling is the treatment dished out to callers who disagree with their right-wing drivel. Apparently, “being able to disagree without being disagreeable” is still an impossibility for most of these talking heads.
Yet, as their fortunes seemed to go into a free fall on a national scale, the conservative true believers continued to drink the Kool-Aid and carried on believing the adage that desperate times call for desperate measures. Maybe the realization that the old tactics that worked in the past two presidential elections didn’t work this time caused the Republicans to turn upon themselves.
Hopefully, the voting public will be the winners after the dust clears.
Marvin Clark
Boston
