The Republic of T.

It depends on how you look at it. Admittedly, I was a bit over-stimulated by being in the media room during this weeks presidential forum (even though I was immediately reminded that I was not media, “new media” status notwithstanding). And I had just written that homophobia probably wouldn’t be addressed, even though the forum kicked off with a kind of circle-jerk discussion about racism and racial discrimination. So I was stunned when Barrack Obama actually spoke the word “homophobia” while answering a question about the AIDS epidemic.

Tavis Smiley: Senator Obama?

Barack Obama: I think John’s prescriptions are right. I would add the issue of prevention involves education and one of the things that we’ve got to overcome is a stigma that still exists in our communities. We don’t talk about this. We don’t talk about in the schools. Sometimes we don’t talk about it in the churches. It has been as aspect of sometimes a homophobia, that we don’t address this issue as clearly as it needs to be. I also think there’s a broader issue here. This is going to be true on all the issues we talk about.

The problems of poverty, like of health care, like of educational opportunity, are all interconnected. To some degree, the African American community is weakened. It has a disease to its immune system. When we are impoverished, when people don’t have jobs, they are more likely to be afflicted not just with AIDS, but with substance abuse problems, with guns in the streets.

So it is important for us to look at the whole body here and make absolutely certain that we are providing the kinds of economic development opportunities and jobs that will create healthy communities, that we’ve got universal health care that ensures the people can get regular treatments. Those are the kinds of strategies that, over the long term, are going to make a difference in our communities.

And while I was somewhat disappointed with how quickly he danced away from the issue, and failed to include it in his list of “social diseases” affecting African American communities (after all, homophobia is likely involved to some degree in substance abuse and violence), I was so stunned to hear the word even used at a forum focused on issues facing African Americans that I missed the significance of his next comment, in his exchange with Sen. Biden on the same question.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, current events, elections, gay, gay rights, hiv, homophobia, obama, politics, race

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is it me, or would eliminating the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine have made a difference in the Whit House too? Know what I mean?

Now the New Orleans/Katrina question is a huge one. Of course there should be a guaranteed right to return, and of course the no-bid contracts to Republican/Bush cronies should stop, but no one

asking those of the candidates who are also members of Congress what they are doing about it. Or why they’re not doing anything about it as African American Political Pundit notes.

Who is watching the store? not Congress, not the Congressional Black Caucus, not Fox News, not the American people. Now do you really understand why the troops are no coming home?

It’s all about the money folks, its all about the money.

Meanwhile, Republicans are giddy over their “pick-up” opportunity in New Orleans.

On Darfur, definitely agree with everything said re: Africa. And if we get a Democrat in office can we finally do away with the “abstinence-only” debacle we’ve been exporting to Africa, which in its own way a kind of slow genocide? And once we “stop the rapes” can we also restore funding to the women’s clinics that offer care to women who end up with fistulas as a result of multiple rapes? The funding that the Bush administration cut?

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, courts, crime, current events, elections, politics, race

Now we’re on to HIV/AIDS, and I’m waiting to see if any of the candidates will mention the failure of “abstinence-only” and it’s devastating impact in Africa.

Oh. My. God. I guess I have to eat some of my previous words.

Obama actually said the word “homophobia” in his answer on HIV/AIDS, and the riffed for a minute on the metaphor that “we are infected” with a number of other things that make us susceptible to the epidemic. But he didn’t make the natural leap that we’re infected with homophobia. Black ministers are spreading it from the pulpit and that’s one of the reasons why it’s taken 25 years for the Black Baptist Convention to even mention HIV/AIDS.

But I guess I should be somewhat pleased that homophobia even came up at a forum on issues for the African American women.

Oh, and Hillary, it was gay communities that addressed the epidemic first, when nobody else in government cared. That was the Reagan era, and things did get better in the ’90s. Thank you.

Biden, you didn’t get tested for AIDS you got tested for HIV antibodies. Geez.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, current events, elections, gay, gay rights, health, hiv, homophobia, politics, race

[Ed. Note: Updated once I realized that I had the wrong link for Richardson's education issue page.] Richardson just gave an answer on education that has one major problem. He wants to “fix No Child Left Behind.” If by “fix” he means “take it out behind the barn and shoot it” or “turn it into something completely different and unrecognizable” then he might be on to something.

Of all the candidates, Kucinich is probably the only one I could whole heartedly support. If only he actually had a chance of winning.

Gravel actually made some sense when he pointed out how many scholarships could have been funded by the amount spend on the war in Iraq.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, blogs, current events, education, elections, politics, race

Deval Patrick, a black governor who supports marriage equality, just stepped onto the stage. It’s the only issue not likely to be debated tonight, since it appears nowhere in the Covenant with Black America, and I suppose that’s a small blessing all things considered. It probably would not be pretty. And Democratic candidates are not leading on the issue anyway, and at a time when even Republicans are trending more progressive in gay issues.

On the other hand, the first question out of the box is one about whether racism is still a problem. So, here, at a forum where the civil rights movement will be invoked over and over again, and the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision has already been invoked, we can talk about one prejudice that almost no one would say is no longer a problem, but we cannot talk about another prejudice that is almost certainly a problem for black gays and lesbians.

Dodd just brought up discrimination. Well.

Edwards brought up healthcare, and there are black gay & lesbian couples who cannot get health benefits because they can’t get married. Economic disparities are worse, too.

As Gravel just asked, “When will we learn? When will we learn?” (Albeit concerning a different issue.)

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, blogs, current events, media, politics, race, television

Well, that didn’t take long. No sooner did I sit down, open up my iBook and get online than I learned that there’s been an apparent about-face at PBS. I though Luntz was let go, but apparently the Republican consultant and only the Republican consultant will be giving post-debate analysis after the Democratic candidates forum.

On the June 28 edition of New York Public Radio station WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show, PBS host Tavis Smiley, who was scheduled to moderate a Democratic presidential forum later that day, confirmed that Republican pollster Frank Luntz will be PBS’ and the Tavis Smiley program’s sole provider of focus group analysis for the forum coverage. Asked by host Brian Lehrer, “Just Luntz or do you have a Democratic pollster there too?” Smiley responded: “[J]ust Luntz.”

Just for the sake of being “fair and balanced” I’m going to suggest that when the Republican candidates forum rolls around PBS hire Susan Estrich and only Susan Estrich, or Donna Brazile and only Donna Brazile, or James Carville and only James Carville — you get the idea by now — to do the post debate analysis. And Carville should get special consideration. After all, he’s married to a Republican consultant.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, blogs, economics, politics, race, television

OK. So the debate hasn’t started yet. But I’m here in the media room with the rest of the bloggers, and we’re all sitting with with our laptop open, and this nice young lady from C-SPAN stops by our table.

“Hi, I’m (fill in an appropriate name for a young, blonde, twenty-something woman),” she says. “I with C-SPAN. And we’re looking for some fresh faces.”

Naturally, I put on my best “fresh face” smile, and she looks at the nameplate next to me and asks the typical Washington question.

“So, who are you with? Do you write for Progressive Black Journalists?”

“Oh, no,” I answered. “I write for my blog and a few others.”

“Oh,” she said as the began slowly edging away from our table. “You write for your blog…ummm.”

About that time a woman at another table rescued her from having to say “I’m looking for some real people, not bloggers.”

“Who are you looking for?” the woman at the grown-ups table asked.

And just like that, the C-SPAN woman was gone, in search of “fresh faces,” just not too fresh.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, blogs, current events, media, politics, television

Wow. That didn’t take long. I just found out via Pam that the Republican consultant PBS hired to do post-debate analysis after tonight’s presidential forum has been dropped. PBS initially defended the choice of Lutz (and Lutz alone, apparently) as the post-debate analyst.

“It’s just helpful to have someone who does this for a living explain to viewers what it means,” Kendall said. “I don’t understand why if someone has been a consultant for Republicans they’re incapable of conducting a focus group. If anyone has a concern about the objectivity of Friday night’s program, I invite them to tune in and see for themselves.”

The objectivity of the program wouldn’t be a concern if the choice of commentators had been more balanced in the first place. So there are still questions that need to be answered by PBS, as Media Matters pointed out.

While Media Matters for America is pleased with PBS’ announcement this morning that discredited Republican pollster Frank Luntz will not appear on its Thursday-night programming, PBS has yet to address the fundamental problem with its choice of Luntz to participate in analysis of the PBS forum.

Luntz’s Republican ties, his history of being criticized by his peers for misrepresenting polling data, and his past personal and professional affiliation with GOP presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani make him an inappropriate choice to provide the sole voice of expert analysis on Mr. Smiley’s program in the wake of a Democratic presidential primary forum. The fact that PBS has not acknowledged Luntz’s partisan affiliation — either in its original press release or in today’s statement — makes PBS’ use of him in this way all the more troubling.

Given PBS’ bent for telling “both sides of the story” on issues like the Iraq war and church/state separation, why they didn’t also choose a Democratic commentator to balance Luntz is somewhat mystifying. Only slightly more mystifying is their apparent surprise that anyone would have an objection in the first place.

Oh well, we’ll see how things go tonight.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, current events, elections, media, politics, race, television

I’m getting geared up for tomorrow’s Presidential Candidates Forum at Howard U. There’s now a live Media Bloggers Association page that will publish updates from all of the bloggers covering the forum.

Speaking of which, there’s a bit of a brouhaha over the choice by PBS of a Republican — David Luntz, who’s worked on the last three Guliani campaigns— to deliver the post-debate analysis of the Democratic candidates forum. And apparently, there’s no Democratic analyst on the bill.

Prometheus has a letter from Media Matter’s chief David Brock concerning the conflict of interest.

Professor Kim is getting mail about it as well, the gist being that Fox News is apparently getting a “backdoor entry” to the Democratic candidates forum, and Prometheus concurs. (Professor Kim has also prepared a handy spreadsheet of the candidates’ positions related to issues on Covenant with Black America.)

I have two questions thus far:

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, blogs, bush, current events, elections, politics, race

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And a whole lot of other bloggers too, under one roof at Howard University. Thanks to the kind recommendations of a few fellow bloggers, it looks like I’ve been credentialed by the Media Bloggers Association, along with 20 or more other bloggers, to cover the Democratic Presidential Debate at Howard University.

Democratic presidential candidates plan to be at Howard University on June 28 to be questioned for the first time by an all-minority panel of journalists, and some student leaders view the event as historic.

Three journalists will pose questions to the eight presidential hopefuls, as Tavis Smiley and the Public Broadcasting Service facilitate what is called the “All-American Presidential Democratic Forum.”

With the author, activist and talk show host will be journalists Michel Martin of National Public Radio, nationally syndicated columnists Ruben Navarrette Jr. of the San Diego Union-Tribune and DeWayne Wickham of USA Today.

Looks like I’m finally getting in to Howard.

Seriously, though, it’s pretty cool and I’m very flattered to be recommended and get credentials to cover the event. (Since when have I had credentials?) And I’m looking forward to finding out who else is going to be there. I know Liza and Pam will be there, but the full list won’t be up until later.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, blogs, current events, elections, politics, race