Get Real, Tavis Smiley

By STAR PARKER
Scripps Howard News Service
2007-09-21 00:00:00

Tavis Smiley, black journalist and TV host, is hosting a debate and the leading Republican candidates aren't coming.

The top four Republican candidates have announced they won't make it to his PBS-sponsored debate at Morgan State University on Sept. 27.

Now Smiley is using the occasion to assert that Republicans feel it's OK to "ignore people of color" and to call out black Republicans as disingenuous in claiming that their party can really be a home for blacks.

To those black Republicans, Smiley says: "I don't wanna hear it anymore. If you want black folks to take your party seriously, then your party ought to take black folks seriously."

Look, if anyone is being disingenuous here, it is Smiley.

Last week these same top four GOP candidates didn't make it to the Values Voters debate. Twenty-five percent of the nation's voters are evangelical Christians. Do we conclude that Republicans are ignoring them?

With a little sober analysis, it's not hard to understand that, with elections now starting two years before the fact, and debate invitations from every group except the local Boy Scout and Girl Scout troupes, candidates have tough decisions to make regarding the use of precious time and money.

But Smiley isn't looking for sober analysis. He's looking for a reason to nail Republicans and show blacks that they don't care about them. So, rather than taking the heat himself for a poorly conceived event, first thing on his agenda has been to make the rounds to shows like Tom Joyner's, with huge black listening audiences, to badmouth Republicans.

Any wonder that Republicans might have some reservations about this guy?

But let's look a little closer.

If Smiley doesn't appreciate that the politics of primary season are much different from general-election politics, then you've really got to wonder what is going on with him as an analyst.

Primaries are about parties reaching into their own ranks to pick their nominees.

So it's no surprise that all the Democrats showed up for Smiley's PBS debate for them a few months ago at Howard University. Ninety percent of the black vote is Democratic, so this is a key base for the party.

Of course, they have to show up and pitch this crowd. Particularly this year, when one of the two leading Democratic candidates is black.

But why, when barely one in 10 Republican voters is black, would it be a good use of candidates' time, when they are battling each other for their party's nomination, to court blacks? The time for reaching across the divide is during the general election, not in the primary struggle.

Surely Smiley understands this basic reality that he is distorting into something else.

On top of this, he's got an event that is transparently set up for Republican failure. The host, Smiley, is a liberal, the sponsoring venue, PBS, is liberal, and the journalists selected to do the questioning -- Cynthia Tucker, Juan Williams and Ray Suarez -- range across the spectrum from left to center. There's not a conservative to be found.

Among the only possible beneficiaries of such an event would be the second-tier candidates, who can use the publicity. The other beneficiaries are Smiley himself, who gets to look important if Republicans come, and Democrats in general, who stand to benefit from Republicans showing up at a forum that is not neutral.

So why would leading Republicans show up at an event that has little tangible benefit in their current pursuit of their party's nomination, an event set up to make them look bad?

Smiley's campaign to distort reality and use it as an occasion to attack Republicans is proof enough that leading GOP contenders were prudent and reasonable to not participate in this event.

Fact is, Smiley himself, who has a TV show, produces events and writes books targeted to blacks, has plenty of opportunities to give exposure to black conservatives. But he never does.

The agenda he promotes, and the analysts he showcases and to whom he gives credibility, are uniformly on the left.

Latest is his "Covenant with Black America." At a time when more and more blacks are beginning to appreciate that the problems in their communities are based in social and moral breakdown, with black-family collapse, and the problems concomitant with this, Smiley gives zero airing to this problem, and his Covenant does not provide a platform to a single black conservative.

Yet, now he postures that he's giving Republicans a shot at his community by offering them a few sound bites in a primary debate with little import.

As they say in our community, Mr. Smiley, get real.

(Star Parker is president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (www.urbancure.org) and author of three books. She can be reached at parker(at)urbancure.org. For more stories, visit scrippsnews.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.net)

Maybe Kia Vaughn read my last blog:-)  Or maybe she realized there was no way in you-know-where that she was going to win one red cent.  In any event, I'm glad this young lady has seen the light and is doing the right thing so that she can focus on the two top prioriteis in her life: her education and her future.

From Foxnews.com:

A Rutgers University basketball player on Tuesday withdrew a slander and defamation lawsuit she had filed against Don Imus and CBS Radio, among others, after the shock jock called the team "nappy headed hos."

Kia Vaughn had contended in the lawsuit filed in August in New York state Supreme Court that the comments made by Imus had damaged her reputation. The lawsuit also named various media outlets that broadcast Imus' show.

Marti McKenzie, a spokeswoman for Vaughn's attorney, Richard Ancowitz, said in a statement that Vaughn had chosen to focus on her education at New Jersey's Rutgers University as a journalism major and as an athlete with the basketball team.

"Her strong commitments to both have influenced her decision to withdraw the lawsuit at this time," the statement said.

A lawyer for Imus, Martin Garbus, said his client had paid no money to Vaughn. CBS Radio did not immediately return a message requesting comment.

From the Opinion Journal (Sept. 6, 2007):

The Massacre of Innocence

A stunning new book shows how elite culture made the Duke rape hoax possible.

BY ABIGAIL THERNSTROM

Privileged, rowdy white jocks at an elite, Southern college, a poor, young black stripper, and an alleged rape: It was a juicy, made-for-the-media story of race, class and sex, and it was told and retold for months with a ferocious, moralistic intensity. Reporters and pundits ripped into Duke University, the white race and the young lacrosse players at the center of the episode, and the local justice system quickly handed up indictments. But as Stuart Taylor Jr. and KC Johnson show in "Until Proven Innocent"--and as the facts themselves would show when they finally came to light--it was a false story, a toxic controversy built on lies and bad faith.

There was plenty of wrongdoing, of course, but it had very little to do with Duke's lacrosse players. It was perpetrated instead by a rogue district attorney determined to win re-election in a racially divided, town-gown city; ideologically driven reporters and their pseudo-expert sources; censorious faculty members driven by the imperatives of political correctness; a craven university president; and black community leaders seemingly ready to believe any charge of black victimization.

"Until Proven Innocent" is a stunning book. It recounts the Duke lacrosse case in fascinating detail and offers, along the way, a damning portrait of the institutions--legal, educational and journalistic--that do so much to shape contemporary American culture. Messrs. Taylor and Johnson make it clear that the Duke affair--the rabid prosecution, the skewed commentary, the distorted media storyline--was not some odd, outlier incident but the product of an elite culture's most treasured assumptions about American life, not least about America's supposed racial divide.

Click here to read the rest.

Cry Me a River, Kanye.

 
When it comes to the federal government’s assistance to Hurricane Katrina victims, tantrum-throwing rapper Kanye West feels that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”  Well, apparently West doesn’t care about throwing public hissy fits at award shows if he doesn’t win.  At last night’s MTV Video Music Awards, he was true to form.

 

From Yahoo! News:

 

Sour grapes from Kanye West — again. Shut out at the Video Music Awards, Kanye West threw a tantrum Sunday night in front of media and crew backstage as the MTV show was ending.

West, waiting for an elevator in a crowded hallway, began yelling about losing all five categories for which he was nominated.

"That's two years in a row, man ... give a black man a chance," West said, stomping around his entourage and directing his comments at a reporter. "I'm trying hard man, I have the ... number one record, man."

West said he never will return to MTV.

The rapper was nomination for five awards, including male artist of the year. This is the latest in a series of awards show outburst for West. Last year, he crashed the stage at the MTV Europe Awards after not winning for best video.

Despite winning six Grammy awards for his first two albums and earning millions of dollars as a rap artist/producer, Kanye West wants to huff and puff like a petulant little brat because he didn’t win a stupid MTV Video Music Award?

 

I got two words for you, Kanye:  GROW UP!