Blaming the Racist, Misogynic, Paternal Messenger.

A new survey shows our news, as delivered by the most influential media writers and commentators, is predominantly written by white men. What about the women and the minorities? Slim to practically none. Old news, right?

Now graft this onto yesterday's media revelation, finally delivered by a white man, former President Jimmy Carter, that - gasp! - much of the opposition we see to Obama's health care reform is because he is, ahem, a black man. Women and minority writers have been calling this for months, yet the big media slept through those accurate analyses. It's taken the white folk, one a white woman (who's getting "racist" thrown at her ever since) and one a former president from the south (now getting what Fox calls "widespread criticism"), to call it for what it is. Not that either is being deemed credible; pitch, as it were, sticks to anything that gets close to it.

How are Republicans reacting? "What's that black president doing in our house?" Michael Steele, the token black Republican and apparently the only man alive able to define racism, is denouncing Carter as "playing the race card."

Let's see how white media process that. I assume it will be same as it ever was. But that's what you get when white paternal authority presides: no voice for the other. (Incidentally, I wonder what else the Republicans will pull out to damage health care reform. Rather than resort to discussions on policy, I am afraid we may get the kitchen sink.)

Who's the deliverer of the poll showing this great disparity in how our news is created? The Atlantic Monthly, hardly a bastion of egalitarianism and fairness itself.

via Lucinda Marshall at Feminist Peace Network