@Thom_Hartmann blog: Conservative Media's Attempt at October Surprise
by Thom Hartmann,posted Oct 3 2012 1:51PM
On Tuesday, Fox so-called News, the Drudge Report, and the Daily Caller threw together a rather pathetic - and racist - attempt to create an October Surprise against President Obama. And in the end – they failed miserably. Yes – the kings of the rightwing media bubble released what they called “Obama’s Other Race Speech” yesterday evening, which they promised would create controversy and unleash accusations of racism against the President.
It did neither. That’s because the so-called bombshell video was already well-known and had been publicly available on the web ever since he gave the speech 5 years ago in 2007. The video shows then-Senator Barack Obama speaking at Hampton University in front of a largely African American crowd.
In the speech, Obama accurately pointed out that when Hurricane Andrew hit mostly-white parts of Florida, the federal government waived the requirement for local matching funds for rebuilding, but when Katrina hit mostly-black New Orleans, the Bush Administration still wanted the city to pay the matching funds. And to Fox News, that was a declaration of a race war.
Oddly – Fox News already aired the speech back in 2007, believing that it would cost Obama the Democratic nomination. It didn’t – so now they’re dusting the video off again five years later to try again.
The Mitt Romney campaign is denying any involvement in the video re-release. White House reporter at Mediate, Tommy Christopher, best summed up the whole fiasco when he wrote, “This will be remembered as the day Sean Hannity, Matt Drudge, Tucker Carlson, and much of the right wing prepared to board their white resentment mothership, only to have it crash and burn.”
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