Monday, February 12, 2007
News / News Bites Obama: Uppity or Just Smug?
Posted by Michael Miner on 02.12.07 at 12:04 PM
Edward McClelland, a frequent Reader contributor who's covered Barack Obama for this paper in campaigns gone by, offers a few stinging recollections in a critical but ultimately friendly commentary posted Sunday by Salon. DailyKos.com describes McClelland's piece as "incredibly negative," but if you think that, you've drunk the "Obama juice" McClelland writes about and believe the senator is beyond criticism.
But DailyKos makes an interesting observation. Originally Salon touted the story on its home page with this display copy: "How Obama Learned to Be a Natural: Today he drips with charisma and inspires fawning admiration from all quarters. But Obama began his journey as an uppity young man with little political future." DailyKos argues that the word uppity in the intro guarantees that McClelland's story will be read as a slash-and-burn job.
It's a word that doesn't appear in the story itself, at least not in the published version. "I did use the word uppity in my original draft--referring to Obama as a cocky young man," McClelland allows, "but that was changed to 'presumptuous,' understandably. I wasn't thinking of the racial implications when I wrote it. After all, I was talking about one black politician challenging another, so uppity wouldn't have the same racial connotation in that context. Maybe the copy editor saw that version and seized on the word.... It definitely influenced the way some readers looked at the piece."
Smug. Presumptuous. Insults safe in any company.
Comments (2)
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Mr. Miner. What is your thing about Obama? Who cares about Obama, really? He is just a politician and makes speeches. Yackitty-yack,yack. Why don't you write about Beyonce Knowles instead of this filler stuff about talky politicians? Beyonce is beautiful, and as we know beauty is truth or vice versa., and that is all we know or need to know. Something like that. A picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe more in Beyonce’s case. A good picture of Beyonce is worth a dozen speeches by Obama. You know, of course that Beyonce was just was named the cover girl for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. That is the "coveted" cover girl position, I might add. The Sun-Times tried to get something going about Obama is a swim suit that a few weeks ago but it went nowhere. Nothing. As a media critic you should be wiling to comment on this. Which would you rather have, a copy of Obama’s announcement speech or the Sports illustrated swimsuit edition? Do I make my point or what? Obama, NO, Beyonce, SI! By the way I’m a big fan of yours, but I’d be a bigger fan if you‘d print pictures of Beyonce, like Sports Illustrated does. Get with it. Ralph A Gugliamucci Citizen and Critic
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A correction seems called for here. DailyKos did not call McClelland's peace "incredibly negative" - nor did it make any "interesting observation," nor did it argue anything. It was MissLaura, a POSTER at DailyKos, who said those things. Some mainstream journalists still don't seem to get it. There are no editors at DailyKos, nor is there any collective editorial policy or attitude. The comments on McClelland's Salon piece are not the result of any institutional decision made by DailyKos. This is a fundamental difference between DailyKos (not to mention many similarly Scoop-based blog sites) and a newspaper. DailyKos enables MissLaura, or any other front-page blogger, to post her comments in a manner which leaves her beholden only to herself. Her comments do not represent the opinion of anyone other than herself (including Kos himself, the blog's proprietor of the blog). The response comments posted beneath MissLaura's article may reflect other individuals' agreement or disagreement with what the salon editors did to McClelland's writing - but again, each blog post reflects only the opinion of its author. So it's inaccurate and probably unfair to claim that DailyKos, as an entity, said anything at all about the McClelland piece, since there is no editorial intermediary between MissLaura's typing fingers and the appearance of her writing on the DailyKos web page for all the world to see. Kos simply provides the web page - nothing more. It's also worth mentioning that there's hardly any way of knowing how many people at DailyKos agree with what MissLaura wrote. No doubt many of them (perhaps even a majority) ignored her post completely in their rush to read more substantive material in the various "Recommended Diaries" which run down on the right-hand side of the page - which (as many longtime Kos readers know) is where the real action is, since those diaries gain "recommended status" via the collective acclamation of readers, not by any editorial decision of Kos or whomever.
