Since Oprah Winfrey was in London to promote “The Butler,” a movie which depicts its subjects so dishonestly on the subject of race that Michael Reagan — who personally knew the film’s key protagonists — called it “The Butler from Another Planet,” it’s not surprising that she would sputter more falsehoods about “racist” America in an attempt to stay in the public eye.
In an interview with the BBC, the self-made billionaire and long-time Obama supporter said that “disrespect for the office (of the president)…occurs in some cases and maybe even in many cases because he is African American.”
Oprah gave an odd example, citing Rep. Joe Wilson’s famous “You lie!” outburst during the 2009 State of the Union speech which, as Ms. Winfrey seems not to have noticed, was about Obama’s lying rather than his skin tone.
Oprah’s outrageous, racist blather was so appreciated that President Obama gave her a medal.
Winfrey’s claim has gotten a lot of pushback on Fox News and conservative talk radio as unsubstantiated liberal paranoia. Which of course it should, because it is.
Not a single one of my many friends who dislike this president even considers his skin color when it comes to how they feel about him.
They, and I, dislike him because he neither likes nor understands the country he leads — if you can call this leadership.
They, and I, dislike him because we believe his policies are destructive to the foundational principles of the nation and harmful to our children’s futures.
They, and I, dislike him because never accepts responsibility for his own failures and lies — which means the problems they cause in domestic and foreign policy cannot be fixed as long as he is president.
They, and I, dislike him because he has intentionally fomented deep divides in this country, worsening race relations, exacerbating partisan divides, and trying, like any two-bit Marxist revolutionary, to stir up resentment against the rich.
They, and I, dislike him because he hires the incompetent and corrupt and rewards them not based on the quality of their work but on their unfailing loyalty to Him.
They, and I, dislike him because even among professional politicians his narcissism is unmatched.
But his skin color is irrelevant.
Sure, there are small handfuls of racists sprinkled in all corners of America, but Oprah’s comments imply that they exist in large numbers among (white) people who disapprove of Barack Obama. This despite a recent Rasmussen poll which concludes that most Americans — including most blacks — believe that blacks in this country are more likely to be racist than whites.
Furthermore, it’s hard to discern what Oprah meant about disrespect for “the office” rather than the person who holds the office. After all, one would think that an old white conservative racist might hold particularly high regard for the presidency itself while particularly disdaining this president.
All this, along with questions to Oprah about how she got so rich and popular, about how President Obama’s job approval and personal approval ratings used to be much higher, including among whites, about how Obama got more votes from whites than Bill Clinton did and, in 2008, the highest percentage of the white vote for any Democrat in more than 30 years, have been discussed in conservative media in recent days.
But what was more shocking, and is getting far less discussion, is Oprah’s self-congratulatory statement that when it comes to racist disapproval of Obama, “it’s the kind of thing nobody ever says but everybody’s thinking it.”
This is what must be addressed because it, even more than Oprah’s other unsubstantiated drivel, demonstrates the true nature of racism in this country.
First, Ms. Winfrey’s assertion that “nobody is saying it” is an even more blatant (if less dangerous) falsehood than the claim that opposition to Obama is due to his skin color.
Anybody who has ever watched, or even heard of MSNBC, knows that it is the home of “you hate him because he’s black,” with Chris Matthews being the poster-child for the network’s pathetic and failed attempts to garner ratings by playing the race card. But Matthews and MSNBC are far from alone.
Here is just a handful of examples:
- Chris Matthews (August 2013): “They never say their problem with Obama is that he’s black… At least in the old days they were honest about it. Today, they’re not. “
- For more Chris Matthews lunacy on this subject, NewsBusters has compiled the “Top 20 Worst Chris Matthews Quotes Calling Obama Critics Racist.”
- Angela Rye, the Executive Director and General Counsel to the Congressional Black Caucus (June 2012): “I think a lot of what the president has experienced is because he’s black.”
- Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) (May 2011): “[T]he president’s problems are in large measure because of his skin color.”
- Alec “I’m Such a Blowhard I Couldn’t Even Keep a Show on MSNBC” Baldwin (September 2012): “If Obama was white, he’d be up by 17 points.”
- Susan Glisson of the Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi (September 2012): Some people dislike Obama because of his policies, but “there are others who object to the president because of his race, because they have a fear of blacks that is embedded in our culture.”
As the Salon.com article notes, Glisson’s opinion is conveniently “based on something called ‘implicit bias’ — prejudices that people don’t realize they have.” How smart Glisson and Winfrey must be to know so much about us that we don’t know about ourselves. But, to a liberal, that just proves how stupid (and therefore likely racist) we are.
Dozens (maybe hundreds) more examples of pundits, politicians, and entertainers suggesting that opposition to Obama is substantially racist are at your Google fingertips. Clearly, Winfrey is wrong to suggest that “nobody is saying it.”
What do all of these people have in common? They’re not all of the same race. They’re not all of the same religion. They’re all liberals. They’re all supporters of Barack Obama.
And they are all, like Oprah, pretending to be courageous by speaking baseless talking points masquerading as the Truth when their real intent is a combination of self-flattery and an attempt to silence anyone who dares disagree.
But this still leaves Winfrey’s most troubling claim: that “everybody’s thinking” that in racist America, a black president is widely disliked because he’s black.
A new poll shows that Winfrey is not alone, with Rasmussen Reports finding that 24% of Americans “believe Obama’s opponents (are) driven by racism.” The internals of the poll are illuminating: 17 percent of whites agree with the statement, but 65 percent of blacks buy into it. Only 8 percent of Republicans say opposition to Obama is race-based, while 46 percent of Democrats think so.
And this is where the liberal self-delusion, bordering on psychosis, and representing the true nature of racism in America today, comes into full view: It is alive and well among liberals — because they want it that way, hoping to beat conservatives, or plain ol’ skeptics of Leviathan, into fearful silence with cries of “racist!”
Certainly, not “everybody” is thinking that disapproval of Barack Obama is because of his skin’s melanin content. In fact, I would suggest that almost nobody in the political center or on the political right considers that Obama, “light-skinned” though he may be (oops, that comment came from a liberal, too!), is a bad president because he’s a black president. He’s a bad president who happens to be black.
After all, for a time, Herman Cain (distinctly not Caucasian) was leading the polls for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. How do you explain that, Oprah? Chris? Alec? Anyone?
What we must conclude is that Oprah Winfrey had a Pauline Kael moment, projecting her own insular — and in this case racist — views onto millions of people whom she doesn’t know and, like the president she supports with her slander, doesn’t understand.
It is likely that almost everybody Ms. Winfrey speaks to about politics is a like-minded Obama-loving liberal who can’t fathom why the rest of us don’t appreciate His greatness, and why we don’t just shut up if we’re not smart enough to see what they see.
But unlike Kael, who was a Manhattan-based movie critic, Winfrey has a quarter century of experience talking to, and making more than billion dollars from, ordinary Americans.
What can one conclude from her naïve and fundamentally racist political pontifications other than that despite 25 years talking to everyman and everywoman about everything on The Oprah Winfrey Show — the most successful TV talk show ever — Oprah herself has become little more than an intellectually-cloistered elitist, looking down on us small-minded Americans whom she, like the president she idolizes, unconvincingly pretends to love and understand?
[First published at the American Spectator.]
Ross Kaminsky is the morning show host on 630 KHOW in Denver and a past member of Heartland’s Board of Directors.
