My good friend and former colleague Mike Wagner was so inspired by the SHOCKING [!!!] release of the 2007 Obama video last night that it pushed him directly into the nefarious world of blogging. Here are the introductory paragraphs of his first post:
There are lots of things to say about The Daily Caller’s release and reporting and Hannity’s televised reveal of the (not-at-all) SHOCKING video of not-yet-President Obama giving a speech to a predominantly black audience in 2007 at Hampton University. After reading Carlson’s Daily Caller article in which he claims that Obama uses an “accent he almost never adopts in public” (except here and, according to Rush Limbaugh, here and here) and Hannity’s yelling at Juan Williams over Hannity’s apoplexy that Obama’s voice sounds different than usual in the video, one could introduce Carlson and Hannity to the concept of code-switching among many, many, other things.
While there are other important issues that this whole deal raises in terms of race in America and white privilege, for instance, I am not an expert in those areas; I want to stick to areas that I know well when posting in this space. I want to call attention how The Daily Caller’s decision to “release” the video, their reporting about the video, and Hannity’s show covering the release of the video are an affront to journalism.
I recommend reading the myriad ways that Wagner highlights the affront to journalism perpetrated by Carlson and Hannity last night.
Bump.
Code switching is one of the only things I remember from my socio-linguistics class in college. We all do it and we do it many times a day.
