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04/09/2006:

"Invisibility Looks Good on You": The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney"

A Washington press corps that stood idly by while Bush and Cheney plundered the country, wrecked the environment, spied on Americans without a warrant, tortured civilians and lied the country into a war that will only get worse, woke up one morning and collectively decided: "Let's all play Get Cynthia!"

Let's get her for being too outspoken, bringing up the wrong issue at the wrong time, failing to get with the program, becoming a distraction, leaving House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi beside herself with rage.

Let's get her because, hell, she practically volunteered for it, and besides, she's an easy target, standing practically alone, fired upon at will by Republicans -- who seem to think her story cancels out DeLay, Abramoff, Katrina and Iraq -- and virtually undefended by Democrats, except by the rolling of eyes heavenward, as though to say, "Oh, please! We're not responsible for HER!"

Rep. Cynthia McKinney has now apologized for her part in the face-off at Checkpoint Cynthia. It was not enough to stop the cartooning of the coverage. Already the news wires are spinning her statement as a complete about-face, an abandonment of everything else she has said about the incident. Look, she said there was racial profiling in Washington! Look, now she's apologizing!

Journalists are reporting this story as though it were their job to "get" her, breathlessly revealing that the woman who receives more hate mail than Teddy Kennedy employs a part-time bodyguard, as though it proved something about her mental state.

But note, please, Rep. McKinney did not take back anything she has said about racial profiling in the nation's capitol. And the fact remains that, while each day's mail brings a new wave of personal threats, some of the people charged with protecting her affect not to recognize her. A Republican colleague offered the suggestion that she could announce "I am a Member of Congress" each time she passes a security checkpoint. But McKinney has served for eleven years, not eleven minutes.

Here's a test of media fairness: how many times, over those eleven years, have you seen Rep. McKinney on CNN, NBC, ABC, or CBS, asked to explain her views on Iraq and the Middle East? Not once, you say? Read on for the "why come" of it all.

The leaders of her own party turn their backs while she endures the most vicious racial stereotyping I've seen, since the last time I looked at that old KKK rag called the "Thunderbolt" when a fellow college student stuck a copy in my face back around 1963. "I know it's probably racist," he said, "but it's funny," as if that would have made it all right.

It wasn't funny, it was disgusting...
counterpunch.org


Racial Profiling from the Halls of Congress to the Studios of MSNBC: The Assault on Cynthia McKinney
Joe Scarborough, political hack and host of Scarborough Country on MSNBC, went on yet another odious rant on April 3. This time his scurrilous remarks were aimed at six-term Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The Congresswoman is accused of punching a Capitol Hill security officer in the chest (with cell phone in hand). After McKinney skirted a metal detector (members of Congress are not required to go through metal detectors) an officer, according to a witness, asked McKinney to stop several times. The officer claimed that he didn't recognize the six-term Congresswoman (although each officer is given pictures of members of Congress); it seems that the confusion was due to McKinney's new haircut. What would they have done to Dick Cheney in hunting gear? McKinney's lawyers allege that a skirmish ensued after the officer "harassed" the Congresswoman and forcefully grabbed her by the arm. The Washington Post quoted McKinney, "Let me be clear: This whole incident was instigated by the inappropriate touching and stopping of me, a female black congresswoman."

If you were watching Scarborough Country, you wouldn't have heard McKinney's claim, because Scarborough dove right into slanderous commentary and demonizing drivel: "How do you solve a problem like Cynthia McKinneyThe six-term Congresswoman from Georgia has long been considered an embarrassing fact of life for constituents, Congressman and Capitol Hill police." Scarborough went on to misquote McKinney, asserting that the Congresswoman claimed that George Bush knew about 9/11 and didn't do anything about it because it helped Bush's family's stock portfolio. Scarborough ended his diatribe with words of reassurance, "The good news, saying stupid things is not a crime." That's right, because Joe Scarborough, media guardian of Natalie Holloway and defender of creationism, would have jailed a long time ago.