Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin's repeated and dragged-out
heckling
of President Obama during his drone policy speech is simply the latest
in a disgusting and damaging repeat act that has become almost ritual.
The White House announces a major policy speech by Obama. Then the
predictable happens. Either at the start or midway through his speech,
the shouts from the floor begin. The drone policy speech followed the
act's script.
It's true that George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were at
times heckled, and in Bush's case a shoe was tossed at him. But with
Obama the pattern and sheer number of times he's been heckled top
anything any former president has received. Counting Benjamin's
eruption, the president has been heckled at least 10 times. The topper
was the infamous "you lie" rant from Georgia Congressman Joe Wilson
during his 2009 State of the Union address.
This pattern of public vilification and insult of Obama during his
speeches was set almost from the start of his White House tenure when a
small knot of black protestors verbally assailed the president at a
Florida stop in 2008 for allegedly not doing enough about predatory
lending. The pattern firmly took hold from there, and it virtually
became open season to disrupt an Obama speech anywhere and at any time.
The tea party didn't help matters with its incessant marches and rallies
that routinely featured the vilest, demeaning and borderline racist
depictions of Obama. The relentless public heckling of Obama also stems
from the even more insidious pattern of pure hate and vilification that
spews forth against Obama from a parade of websites, bloggers, talk show
jocks and more than a few GOP officials with assorted borderline racist
digs and taunts. In 2011, Baylor University researchers
tracked
more than 20 Facebook page groups and users and found them filled with
racist venom aimed at Obama.
There may be even more of them today.
Obama had the dubious distinction of being the
earliest
presidential contender to be assigned Secret Service protection on the
2008 campaign trail. As the showdown with Republican presidential rival
John McCain heated up in the general election in 2008, the flood of
crank, crackpot and screwball threats that promised murder and mayhem
toward Obama continued to pour in. This prompted the Secret Service to
tighten security and take even more elaborate measures to ensure his
safety.
GOP leaders have on only the rarest of rare occasions issued any
public rebuke of the street side abusive depictions and the torrent of
verbal broadsides against Obama.
But then again, why would they? The GOP has far superseded any insult
that a lone heckler could achieve in its self-designated role as
official heckler of Obama. There has not been a moment that has gone by
that top GOP congressional leaders have not called Obama out on some
issue. The framing of their criticism has not been polite, gentlemanly
or exhibited the traditional courtesy and respect for the office of the
presidency. This has done much to create a climate of distrust and
vilification that has made it near legitimate, even expected, that Obama
be heckled. The GOP's official heckling has taken many forms, all
mean-spirited and petty, rather than purely the customary expression of
opposition to policies that clashing political parties and their leaders
show toward each other. For instance, House Speaker John Boehner
brashly told Obama in 2011 that he could not deliver
his jobs speech
on the date that he chose. This was quickly followed by other GOP
leaders who loudly said that they would not even bother to attend
Obama's speech. Obama changed the date.
The subtle and overt interplay of race, Obama's popularity and the
temptation to some of getting fifteen seconds of fame, has become an
irresistible and combustible mix. A heckler knows that a well-timed
shout at Obama is a surefire guarantee of massive media attention.
Obama has taken two high-ground tacts that have in a sense emboldened
some individuals to take extreme license with him. He has steadfastly
refused to attribute the official and unofficial heckling to race or
nasty, personal politics. He has also been steadfast in standing firm
when there's a verbal outburst during one of his speeches of not lashing
out at the offender. He noted, as Benjamin was screaming her lungs out
even as she was being led away, that he would "go off script." He
responded with understanding, congeniality and indulgence. This took
patience and showed class. She was even handled with kid gloves in being
escorted out.
But unfortunately, this also can serve as a further cue for others to
get it in their heads that it's okay to belittle the president while
he's speaking. This sends a tacit signal to some that Obama is fair game
for a face to face public bashing.
He isn't and shouldn't be. But as the GOP, and sadly far too many
others, has discovered, there's a lot of mileage in making Obama the
most publicly heckled president ever.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new
ebook is How the NRA Terrorizes Congress--The NRA's Subversion of the
Gun Control Debate (Amazon). He is an associate editor of New America
Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban
Radio Network. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM
1460 AM Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/earlhutchinson
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