What's the Right-Wing End Game of This 'Racist Obama' College Video? “Wait till they see what happens March 1 …” –A. Breitbart Internet raconteur Andrew Breitbart made grand overtures about how he was set to release damning footage from Barack Obama’s college days that would connect the president to former Weather Underground terrorists and show how his 2008 campaign was all about racial division and class warfare. March 1 came and went, and so did Andrew Breitbart — the Big Government founder apparently suffered a Big Heart Attack, and his footage failed to emerge (condolences, really). Enter BuzzFeed. The zeitgeist-heavy website, led by ace video researcher Andrew Kaczynski, beat Breitbart.com to the punch on Wednesday by releasing “the mysterious Harvard/Obama/race video that the Breitbart folks have been talking about.” The radical Obama looks pretty damn tame: </noscript> It doesn’t much matter what’s on that tape. In this case, it doesn’t much matter who Professor Derrick Bell was. About the only two interesting facts about this “damning” footage are Obama’s schlubby wardrobe and how if you close your eyes you’d hear the very same Obama’s speech patterns two decades ago. But the story doesn’t end there. Breitbart.com Editor-in-Chief Joel Pollak wrote shortly thereafter that “the video has been selectively edited–either by the Boston television station or by Buzzfeed itself.” And because what right-wing paranoia would be complete without complicity, Pollak added additional footage “has been hidden by Obama’s allies in the mainstream media and academia.” “There’s far more coming on Derrick Bell. This is just the beginning. And this video is a smoking gun showing that Barack Obama not only associated with radicals, he was their advocate.” Pollak, along with Editor-at-Large Ben Shapiro, appeared on ‘The Sean Hannity Show’ tonight to discuss the tape and show everyone in America the real story. That piqued Matt Drudge’s interest. While everyone fights this out in partisan terms via Twitter and their websites, we’ll instead ask a more pragmatic question: What is the end game here? Let’s even say there’s more footage that shows Obama standing there in a shirt that reads “Kill Whitey.” Let’s say he professes his deep hatred of Caucasians and says Jeremiah Wright didn’t go far enough. What then? Hasn’t this man been President of the United States for more than three years and white people as we know them are still hangin’ around? What was Breitbart, and now Pollak and Shapiro, trying to prove exactly? How does digging up 20-year-old video change anything? There’s only one goal here, and that’s to stoke white fear. It’s almost as if the people promoting a “damning” video and the people who want to believe it most are legitimately scared that a racist, classist Barack H. Obama will wipe white people off the map … in his second term. You hate President Obama’s policies? You don’t like what he stands for? Vote him out in November. That’s your right. But if you need a two decade-old video of a college-aged Law Review president to help make that decision for you, well then, you shouldn’t even be allowed to vote. Slade Sohmer is co-founder and editor-in-chief of HyperVocal. Tweet him @hypervocal. Slade Sohmer Slade Sohmer is editor-in-chief of HyperVocal and co-host of SiriusXM's daily "Politics Powered By Twitter" program. Tweet him at @SladeHV.
Corn 07.03.12 @ 5:45 pm I heard Obama actively rooted against the Celtics because the leaned too heavily on Bird, McHale and Ainge. He shouldn’t be voted out of office, he should be voted out of the solar system. Respectly, Corn Garhoot
Cassandramitchell14 07.03.12 @ 7:30 pm And everyone was trying to find the mysterious memo getting GWB out of service why ?????
Damen Lester 07.03.12 @ 7:39 pm GLAD I FELL upon your website…. Most interesting crock of stuff (LOL) I have ever seen. Wont be back for sure.
PaulHavemann 07.03.12 @ 8:29 pm Really? It doesn’t matter what Obama’s core beliefs are? That’s what you’re going with? In that case, why should the media pretend to explore what Republicans believe, since core beliefs aren’t important? For that matter, isn’t that the end of “gotcha” journalism and October Surprises? Let me correct that conclusion for you: “But if you need old video of Republicans to help make that decision for you, well then, you shouldn’t even be allowed to vote.”
Xian Do 07.03.12 @ 8:57 pm So, let’s see… You made a big deal about how Breitbart’s found footage is no big deal…and you made a big deal claiming it was no big deal before anybody could see for themselves whether or not it was indeed a big deal. As The Bard was known for saying: “Methinks thou doth protest too much…”
Xian Do 07.03.12 @ 9:09 pm By the way…even though this footage highlights how Obama associated with racist hatemongers and anti-American socialists before he was elected President, it is not necessarily about Obama alone (you’re right…we can vote the guy out this November if we want). This footage is also about how the Mainstream Media are using their bully pulpit to push an agenda rather than doing their jobs: being journalists. After all, if John McCain had spent his earlier days worshiping at the Westborough Baptist Church and associating with the likes of David Duke and Eric Robert Rudolph…and the media deliberately covered up this info…my outrage and disgust would be that same as it is about the media covering up Obama’s past. I have no doubt you cannot say the same.
Dervish_Twirl 08.03.12 @ 4:13 am Absolutely NO comparison. Derrick Bell is HARDLY a race monger unless you consider agitating for civil rights and equality for blacks racism. In today’s warped world of the right I’m sure that’s the case. And Jeremiah Wright is hardly racist either. He said nothing that could even be construed as racism. It’s all projection.
Xian Do 08.03.12 @ 11:17 pm And yet the elites in the media & academia have been hiding this footage from the public for years. Clearly they…and we…know something about Bell and his CRT (Condescending Racist’s Theory) that you apparently don’t. Otherwise they woudn’t have tried so desperately to hide it from us. I rest my case
Don Fredrick 09.03.12 @ 2:18 pm So, the voters should not care that Obama’s law school mentor was a man who argued that blacks convicted of crimes should get lighter sentences than whites simply because they are black? Or that Obama and Bell were demanding the hiring of professors based solely on gender and race? Or that Bell’s buddy was Jeremiah Wright? Or that Michelle LaVaughan Robinson (Obama) was part of a sit-in demanding the hiring of blacks and women? Or that Bell believed that property rights should be abrogated so that wealth could be redistributed?