Perusing The Root during my lunch break today, I came across this headline, "TV's Golden Age of Rage: O'Reilly, Hannity, Olbermann and the rise of white rage on cable television." I immediately clicked on the link, ready to read what I thought would be a brilliant dissection of white paranoia and white frustration with non-white male progress (and its perceived byproduct, white male stagnation) as propagated by the "news media."
But then I got to this part:
But now, try to think of a single African-American newsman who's exhibited—and gotten away with—the type of antics their white counterparts do each and every day on America’s top news channels. Don’t feel ignorant if you can’t. There aren’t any. But why?
Ugh.
This article, which isn't entirely wrong about the racial double standard, does succeed in diluting the force of an argument against such a standard by arguing that what Black folk want is the ability to do stupid ass shit too.
Look, I'm all for reminding people of racial double standards. But in this case, I don't know that we should be arguing for Black people to act a damn fool on the news.
Or, to put it another way, the article misses the point. The issue with cable news right now isn't that its unfair that Black folks can't behave the way Hannity, Beck, and O'Reilly behave.